Hi people,
I believe I don't need to write much for now, except for the usual recap...
In the last chapter, an exhausted Hiccup was taken back up to his room after being welcomed home as a hero by the Vikings of Berk. Toothless then proceded to contemplate the state of events in the village, only to be interrupted by a frustratingly persistent Astrid.
Chapter Two: A Time for Talk
Toothless wandered aimlessly through the village, gazing around at the little groups of Vikings and dragons that he saw here and there, all of them hard at work.
There was a lot to be done: numerous shelters had to be built for the new reptilian residents, a set of fairly loose feeding timetables needed to be organised, and there were quite a few rules which need to be laid down clearly for the dragon population – things like 'no defecating in the town square.'
The Night Fury chuckled to himself.
Little Astrid Hofferson had been very busy over the last week, having taken the responsibility of spreading Hiccup's peaceful teachings very seriously indeed.
He hoped that the young woman was not pestering him too much.
It had been clear how much she had missed his wakeful presence over the last week.
Several nights ago the chief had been badgering Astrid for the whole story – well, for everything she could tell him, anyway.
Hiccup was sleeping peacefully with Toothless was at his side, and the Night Fury had prompted the blonde to go one step further and tell the whole village – so she had.
Stoick had assembled every Viking and dragon in the Mead Hall one evening for the tale.
It had been a very tight fit indeed...but everyone was keen enough to ignore the squashing and snuggle in for the story.
If anything, the whole evening had actually helped the two races bond even further, as most of the villagers had ended up going to sleep in the hall, kept comfortable by the dragons' soft wings and warm sides.
Astrid had conveniently decided to leave a few of the...less critical events out of her tale, but Toothless had silently agreed with the young woman that some things were best left unsaid – certainly at this stage, anyway.
Toothless had been the only dragon who had not been present – he had been with Hiccup that night, staying by his side as ever.
In fact, he had been quite quiet and relaxed since the Battle of the Nest, almost lazy even.
It had been nice to simply sit and watch the world go by feeling his injuries healing and his strength returning, but the Night Fury could have easily been helping out in the village for the last few days without any risk of straining a muscle at all.
In truth, he simply did not believe that it was his duty to do anything more in order to help the new dragon-Viking relationship.
Thankfully, it seemed that everyone else felt the same way.
"Toothless." The Night Fury jumped a little at the sound of his own name being spoken by another dragon, but huffed irritably upon noticing who it was that was addressing him so informally.
Only Hiccup, Astrid and Stoick had ever used his human-given name.
"Yes?" His response was suitably quiet and dignified, he thought, full of the kind of authority that he should now be wielding.
Spineless was approaching him cautiously, her head cocked to one side, one eye giving him an almost fearful look.
The Nadder was the first of the dragon population to seek him out with the apparent intention of conversing about more than how to get a human's attention without frightening them, or some other little oddity.
Toothless smiled inwardly.
Perhaps he was finally about to get the hero treatment which Hiccup had so lavishly been awarded by both groups.
Oh, the Vikings had been in awe of Toothless too, and the Night Fury had found himself to be the centre of attention of many a group of ogling humans.
But the dragons...
"How are your injuries?" Toothless could almost see the cogs turning inside the blue dragon's head as she tried to ease her way gently into a conversation with him that would not end in an angry row of bared teeth and drawn claws.
"Healing up well enough.
I can walk around comfortably and feel almost ready to fly again." Toothless made sure to remove all traces of aggression from his voice.
However angry and let down he felt deep within, he could not let these innermost emotions show.
Not when he was now so close to being accepted by dragonkind as one of their own.
"Good, that's good..." The Nadder's chirping voice trailed off, and for a moment the two dragons simply stood there, eyeing each other off.
It was Toothless who broke the silence.
"Shall we walk?"
"Oh, gladly!" Spineless was evidently quite pleased that the Night Fury was drawing them away from the rest of the village.
She now trotted along beside the black dragon with the air of a reptile who had just hurdled a whole house without the use of her wings.
and was rather proud of her achievement.
"Where are we going?" Spineless clucked curiously, glancing at the Night Fury with intrigue in her yellow eyes.
"Oh, nowhere in particular – I just need to stretch my legs a little."
Reaching the edge of the woods which travelled up the up the rocky slopes behind the village like hairs on a troll's back, Toothless turned to face the open sky and sat back on his haunches, soaking up the intense heat of the sun's beating rays.
The Nadder crouched down to one side, folded her wings back over her flanks and cast her companion a furtive glance.
"I must say," she cooed at length, "it was really quite...inspirational to see the way the Vikings welcomed young Hiccup back into their village just now."
"Mmh," Toothless grunted in reply, scowling inwardly.
He could see the way this conversation was going, but not quite make out where it would end up.
Spineless pressed on, determined to reach her point.
"Even though the other humans had considered him an outsider and even shunned and scorned him as a youngling, they still found it within them to accept that Hiccup was merely different, not strange or alien, or someone to be mocked and even feared."
Again, Toothless found he had no words to contribute to the conversation, and so he let the blue dragon continue uninterrupted.
"I guess what I'm really trying to say is, well – perhaps we were a little hard on you."
"Pardon?" said Toothless quietly, turning to look at the Nadder with a single, beady eye.
The other dragon could not hold his gaze, and looked away immediately.
"It seems to me as though the Vikings simply needed to look a little deeper.
Had they done so, they most certainly would have seen a power in Hiccup which could have been turned to their advantage far earlier. Much pain and suffering on both sides could have been avoided, not to mention the loss of your rider's leg...and even your own fin."
At long last, the Night Fury thought he could finally see where the end of their conversation lay.
"But the blame for these past, catastrophic events lies not only with the Vikings of Berk, but with us, the dragons. I – I always knew it, but it was something that my rider – little Astrid – said that made me finally realise I had to admit it. To you."
"And what was that?" Although Toothless' heart was screaming at him to tear into the blue monster with searing fire and sharp talons, his voice was deadly calm.
More and more awful memories of times gone by were beginning to awaken within the black dragon, yet he held them in check.
He would not lose control, like Hiccup did.
He could not.
He must not.
"We, the dragons, always had the power to overthrow the evil Red Death and free ourselves from his tyrannical oppression. There were so many thousands of us, and only one of him. Yet none of us thought to speak up and try and bring the Nest together to defeat the monster. We all just continued on living under his claws, feeding him and serving him like the slaves we were."
"All but one, that is."
Toothless turned away.
He knew how this tale had ended, but did not like to be reminded of it...
Hissing with anger, the Night Fury felt his rage building.
He peered down at the Dragon King from his rocky outcrop on one of the highest ledges inside the Nest.
The tyrant was just gobbling up the last morsels of food which the great flights had brought back to him from the Viking village.
"Delicious!" He rumbled at length, scraping his teeth on one of the huge stalagmites which towered up from the burning stone of the great cavern's floor.
"Absolutely scrumptious! And for you to have brought back a real Viking for dessert...you do your king proud..." A wave of appreciative chittering and squawking rose up from the dragons lining the walls of the Inner Nest, but a huge roar from the Red Death silenced them all.
"But how DARE you bring back so little?" His voice echoed around the immense cavern's rocky walls, alone and unchallenged.
"You thought you could assuage my hunger with a few of the more appetising morsels? I still require food! Either you raid that pitiful village once more this night, or I will have a portion of dragon's blood as sustenance!" As the angry bellowing faded, a frantic din of fearful chattering rose once more.
The attack on the Viking village had cost a dozen dragons their lives, but their King would devour perhaps twice that many if his wishes for more aliment were not fulfilled.
The Night Fury, however, had had enough.
Leaping softly from his lofty perch, the black dragon glided down upon ebon wings towards the Red Death, his mind roiling with the rage of a slave rising up against the chains of oppression.
As the Night Fury approached the tyrant's towering form, he flicked his wings around to stabilise himself and floated upon the hot winds which billowed up from the orange depths of the volcano.
Blinded by a bitter temper which he could not control, the black dragon was oblivious to the fear which normally awoke in his mind by the Dragon King's colossal form.
But although the monster was perhaps a hundred times larger than the Night Fury, the latter bared his teeth and growled his enraged feelings in an expression of deepest loathing.
"Why don't you go and get it for yourself?"
"What?" The Red Death's eyes all flicked around to stare at the courageous, or perhaps insane black dragon before him, full of malice...and what appeared to be a little surprise; none of his subjects had ever dared to utter such words before.
"What did you say?"
"You heard me. Go and get your own, instead of making us get it for you."The Dragon King was speechless; one of his own servants, standing out from the ranks of the mindless dragon horde to challenge his might?
But the Night Fury took advantage of the tense silence to enact a revolt that he had been planning since before he could fly.
Raising his head up to look at the cavern's highest walls, he roared out to the thousands of dragons nesting in the nooks and crannies of the volcano's great fissure.
"Dragons! Rise up with me! Rise up and bring down this tyrant! Too long has he enslaved us, forced us to feed and defend him –" But the black dragon's call to arms was cut brutally short by a howl of anger.
Rising up like a monstrous grey wave from the depths of the ocean, the Red Death lunged forward at the little gnat which hovered in front of him.
But The Night Fury was too agile by far, and with a sudden beat of his wings, he was soaring up on the great plumes of hot gasses which rose up from the fiery depths below, and the tyrants maw snapped shut on nothing but air.
"Do you challenge me, little one? Would you face me alone to win the right to the throne?" The Dragon King's voice was suddenly cold and focussed, and he fixed all six of his beady eyes on the rebel's form, floating just out of his reach.
"I will destroy you and feast upon your kin!"
"But the challenge is not fair!" The black dragon threw his head back and roared to the highest rocks once more.
"Dragons! Unite with me and tear down this beast who has imprisoned you all!" This was it.
Finally, they were going to break free of the tyranny of the Red Death, at last they would –
But as the Dragon King heaved himself upwards, snapping at the lithe black form which flitted mere yards before his face, the dragons all took flight – up and away towards the vent high above.
That was it.
The Night Fury's dreams of freedom were gone, scattered by the beating wings of countless fleeing dragons.
Without them, he could do nothing against the power of their enslaver, but without him, they would be nothing more than enslaved.
Thankfully, the black dragon's common sense took precedence over his irrational anger, and he immediately joined the flight as it began to swirl up and out from the volcano's vent.
He could do more alive and safe than as a martyr in the jaws of a tyrant.
He knew that the monster would not pursue him either, for he was but one dissident in a nest of thousands of subservient dragons.
The Red Death's rage, however, was still very much present.
With colossal strength, the monster launched himself upwards and into the cloud of winged reptiles, his gaping maw snapping shut on more than a dozen helpless dragons.
The Night Fury's great speed and powerful acceleration meant that he was easily able to escape the Dragon King's thrashing form, but many other dragons were not so lucky.
Those who were fortunate enough to be eaten alive by their enslaver were gifted with a quick death between his enormous teeth, but many more were thrown against the cavern walls, their pained cries chasing the black dragon up and out into the starry sky...
Toothless never returned to the Nest after that incident, save to bring long-awaited retribution down upon the Dragon King with Hiccup in the saddle.
He continued to take part in the attacks on Berk, but only to protect his fellow dragons from Viking weapons.
Every loss of life, be it human or dragon, cut into his heart, until there was nothing left but a hatred of not only the tyrant who had caused them all so much pain, but also the thousands of dragons who had not found the courage within them to rise up and slay their oppressor.
Thus, the Night Fury had been left with no other option but to bide his time, and wait for another opportunity to gather strength and strike back decisively at the evil Red Death – only fate had intervened in the form of a clever young boy with a little wooden catapult...
"So you think that you should have followed my lead and defied the Dragon King? Even if it could have caused the deaths of many hundreds of dragons at his great claw? Even if, like with me, it could have achieved nothing but more senseless death and destruction?"
"Yes." The simplicity of Spineless' answer surprised him, and for a moment, Toothless was completely silent.
"In hindsight, it would have been better to have united and brought him low there and then," the Nadder continued in low tones.
"You set an example, Tri – Toothless. You showed us all what lengths the monster would go to in order to control us...yet still we did nothing –"
"Except for continue to raid Berk and serve his mighty highness, just as you always had." In spite of the fact that Toothless' anger was now reaching a critical point, he felt that, unlike his master, he could control himself.
The dragons' continuing inability to act may have caused so much more loss and suffering on both sides, but the Night Fury was finally beginning to understand how terrified they all were of Death.
The Red Death.
He shivered a little as a cold reminder of the beast's power came surging up from the depths of his mind and blasted him with the image of those blood-red spines and evil grey eyes, which seemed to stare at him through time and from beyond death's curtain –
"I know. That's just it. We did nothing, while you... You befriended the human who crippled you and then came back, after seven years, to confront and destroy that which had first driven you away. Toothless, we all owe you our freedom."
"No, please don't say it like that –"
"And so, on behalf of and with the approval of all of the dragons of Berk, I ask you, Toothless, to step up and lead us in this new age of friendship and peace with humans."
Toothless was utterly stunned, and turned back to look incredulously at Spineless, only to see that she was now crouched down on the ground in front of him, her wings flattened out in a sign of servitude.
The full weight of what was being asked of him just didn't seem to register.
"W-What?" he blurted out, staring with wide eyes down at the Nadder before him.
Unexpected?
Absolutely.
Undeserved?
Quite possibly.
"You're all – you mean – are you telling me that this was a unanimous decision?"
"Every mature-age dragon was given the proposal of choosing a new leader. And let me tell you, the choice was easy for all."
Toothless returned to the village alone, his mind utterly blown away by the prospect of what he had just been asked to do.
Sure, he had been seeking the respect, admiration and acceptance of his fellow dragons, but very soon he would no longer be required to see them as his equals – dragon creed required that the king be awarded complete subservience by the rest of the population, which he traditionally saw as the lesser majority.
Every dragon knew and accepted this as their way, but what shocked Toothless was the fact that they were all still prepared to accept him as that kind of leader, even though the Red Death had abused the position so.
The Dragon King was meant to be the perfect example of what every young dragon should aspire to be...
That was it.
This was consummate proof that the dragons of Berk were taking their new opportunity to forge a peaceful and long-lasting relationship with their human counterparts seriously.
In this time of change and uncertainty they needed an idol, an example, someone who knew exactly how to handle a human.
Toothless barked with amusement and the thought.
Both races had the idea ingrained in their minds that it was the humans who needed to learn how to handle the presence of dragons in their village.
But the Night Fury's seven years with Hiccup had taught him that this was not necessarily the case...
Reaching the door to the chief's house, Toothless remembered that Astrid was still inside talking with Hiccup, or perhaps just watching him sleep.
He smiled inwardly, pondering the lengths to which women would go to get their way.
He could only hope that the blond Viking was not pestering Hiccup too much – although this wasn't likely.
The boy did seem to enjoy her company quite a lot.
Shaking his head in disbelief of what was obviously transpiring between the two young adults in spite of past events, the black dragon was startled to hear the sound of his own name being uttered by an almost entirely foreign voice.
"Hey, er, Toothless?" Turning to look down the great stone steps which ran down to the town square, the Night Fury's eyes came to rest upon the sizeable stomach of a rather chubby looking Viking who could not have been much older than Hiccup.
Toothless recognised him instantly as one of the group that had distracted the Red Death back on the Dragon's Island until Hiccup and Toothless had arrived to finish the fight.
"That is your name, right?" Toothless rolled his eyes and lay down upon one of the larger stones on the pathway, soaking up the warmth which radiated from the sun-baked rocks.
The Viking boy smiled uncertainly, before making his way up the steps to stand beside the Night Fury's prone form, fidgeting with his hands.
While none of the Vikings were the least bit scared of their dragon companions, Toothless had found that at least he still had the ability to instil a little fear and awe into the hearts of the humans.
Thankfully, the chubby boy was not struck dumb by the black dragon's presence, and managed to at least speak.
"I've – I've got a message for you," he croaked, not meeting Toothless' amused gaze.
"The chief told me to spread the word to all of the dragons that he's planning a huge banquet in honour of the friendship we now share with your kind." Toothless' ears pricked up, and his mind ground slowly into motion once again, in spite of the midday heat.
Such an event would be a good time to announce his decision to not only the dragon population but to both races on whether or not he was willing to accept the rights and responsibilities of becoming the Dragon King.
In truth, the Night Fury was very far indeed deciding on the matter.
There were so many voices in his head which supported both choices – should he accept and prepare himself for the life of respect and recognition he had always dreamt of?
Or would the better choice be to politely decline and remain a free dragon, unchained and able to fly anywhere with little Hiccup on his back and not a care in the world?
"Toothless?" The Night Fury realised that he had dazed off once again, and snapped his head back to look at the chubby Viking so suddenly that it made the young man flinch violently.
"I'm – I'm just letting you all know," he said with a toothy grin.
"The chief says that none of the dragons have to help if they don't want to – us Vikings are going to sort it all out, so you just keep...you know, doing it easy..." And without another word, the funny boy turned around and trotted back down the hill as fast as his stumpy legs would carry him – it was clear that the Night Fury had a profound psychological effect on any humans around him, if only due to his reputation.
The idea of a banquet celebrating the unification of the two races pleased Toothless immensely.
For one thing, it was an excuse for the dragon population to go wild – figuratively speaking.
The Vikings would almost certainly take the opportunity to drink as much beer as possible in earnest, and the Night Fury was looking forward to seeing if any of his kind had retained their taste for the stuff since the incident almost ten years ago involving a raid which had gone into the human's brewery...
Toothless laughed at the hilarious memories of several dozen dragons flapping lopsidedly back towards the nest, belching all the way.
All in all, the notion that such an event would help to strengthen the bonds growing between the two races was well founded.
That Vast chieftain evidently had his head screwed on right.
And speaking of Stoick...
Toothless' heart leapt with the joy at the idea which exploded into his mind.
There was one more gift he could reward his master with, one more present he give grand Hiccup for his loyal friendship.
To this end, the Viking chief was the one who needed to be sought out.
With a jolt of excitement, the Night Fury leapt up from the sun-baked stone and pelted off into the village to find the father of his favourite human.
Just the usual deal, people. Two weeks 'til next chapter, reviews and comments appreciated!
Lumpyness.