Hey guys! Here's CHAPTER 3 THE CASTLE! I would like to thank my beta reviewer for betaing (Is that a word?) this chapter. There will be a big END CREDITS section at the end of this story where i will give credit to everyone who needs it (The reviewers, my beta reader, me, etc, etc) So anyways let's get RIGHT into...
CHAPTER 3: THE CASTLE
Toothless coughed loudly and opened his eyes. For some reason, he was standing in the center of a stone room, and he was standing right on a platform of some kind. He heard gears stop moving and everything go silent.
"HELLO!" Toothless roared as loud as possible, trying to get someone's attention, only to be met with more silence. He walked off the huge metal platform and onto the ground.
Then, he looked down and realized he was standing on a bunch of dust. He used his paw to scoop up some of the dust.
"If you think because Hiccup's gone I'm weak, then you understand very little. If you were any part in killing him, and you aren't afraid, then you understand nothing at all. So, for your own sake, understand THIS: My name is Toothless and I'm coming to find you...and I will never ever stop" Toothless says and leaves the room, letting the dust fall back onto the ground.
Toothless continued walking down the hallways, and then he looked out of a window to see that he's in a castle, and a castle that has a VERY BIG DROP in the center. He looks up to find it light out.
"The machinery in that room is consistent with a modified long-range teleportation device, so I'm not many universes away from where I was, and I'm also in the same time zone," Toothless says while walking around, getting a lay of the land, so to speak.
"When the sun sets, I'll be able to get an exact position by the stars, and then you'll have a choice. Come out and show yourself, or keep hiding in the shadows, and that's my job" Toothless says while walking down the frigid hallway.
"Oh, what's this?" Toothless says and then picks up a shovel in his mouth. He growls.
"Are you gardeners? I hate gardeners, they always hit me over the head with a shovel, and they also have a power complex about flowers. It's slavery for idiots, or to put it simply, its slavery," Toothless says and drops the shovel before continuing to walk down the hallway.
"COME ON! HURRY IT UP! I just watched my brother die in agony. My day can't get any worse. Let's see what we can do about yours," Toothless says to himself and then freezes when he notices a monitor that has an image of him on it.
In one teleport from before, Toothless had ended up in a reality where these machines existed that could broadcast images from one location to another, called monitors.
Toothless then noticed something...watching him, it was in the distance, with evil red eyes and a devious smirk. Toothless growled and shook his head before looking at the monitor.
He then realizes that whatever this red-eyed thing sees, it's projected onto the monitor. And whatever this thing is...it's SLOWLY making its way to Toothless.
Toothless saw a shadow on the wall, and he ran quickly in the other direction. Eventually, he found himself in a long corridor with a door at the end.
He made his way over to the door while spinning and turning in fear. He made it to the door and tried opening it, only to find it locked.
He turned back around and saw SOMETHING at the other end of the hallway. He snarled as he recognized what this something was.
"You died," Toothless said and continued staring as Nightmare T' half-burned body continued slowly creeping through the hallway, trying to make its way to Toothless.
"There can only be one explanation: you're not really alive, you're just an undead corpse. But that won't stop you from killing me," Toothless said and immediately turned back to the door. He charged up a plasma blast and fired it at the door, but nothing happened. He put his ear nubs against the door and sighed.
"I know this trick. My parents used it all the time during raids. We could unlock doors and do other things with our minds. I never tried it, but if I am just that LITTLE bit like my parents..." Toothless said while taking in a deep breath. He closed his eyes and focused on the doors. Suddenly, a loud sound rang out from the door and Toothless smiled before opening the door...
Only to find a stone wall behind it. He gasped and started looking for an escape. Nothing. Nowhere else to run.
"Oh, my gods...I...I can't actually see a way out of this. I...I just realized... I'm actually scared of dying" Toothless said while backing up as much as he could, the fear shining in his eyes. And then, the burnt Nightmare T faded away.
"Was it something I said?" Toothless mumbled but suddenly, the entire castle started shaking and he turned around. He watched as the stone wall opened up and revealed a room.
Toothless quickly jumped into the room before the wall closed again. He walked around. Finding a bed, a fireplace...and a painting of a certain auburn haired green eyed Viking. Toothless looked closer to realize just how old this painting is.
"This is old, very very old," Toothless mumbled and then the smell of decaying burnt flesh hit his nose. He immediately did a 180 and found Nightmare T slowly moving towards him. Toothless started backing up.
"Nightmare Toothless, I don't know if even a PIECE of you is still alive in there. But if there is just ONE tiny piece still there, I'm sorry for what the Red Death did to you, and I'm sorry for keeping you locked away for so long," Toothless said and continued backing up.
"But you're one of my many nightmares, but you're dead. So WHO has been stealing my nightmares? What is this place? A trap? A prison? Or is it a torture chamber?" Toothless said and then picked up a stool from nearby. He through the stool out of a pretty big window and he waited until he heard it splash into the water below.
"So you obviously know you me very well, but you won't see THIS COMING!" Toothless yelled and jumped out of the window. He started doing an insane number of calculations and mathematical equations in his head. He then figured out he would survive the fall, but the chances of remaining conscious where very slim. He knew he couldn't just fly as his tail fin was still jammed shut.
And then Toothless hit the water, and he was out cold.
He couldn't breathe. That was the first thing that came to Toothless' mind when he was returned to consciousness. He quickly opened his eyes and started to flap his wings to try and get upright.
Then he looked down and saw a horrifying sight. Below him where thousands of Night Fury skulls, all lying at the bottom of the water.
Toothless swam up to the surface and found a small rock tower nearby. He entered the tower and went to the nearest room he could find.
Inside, he found a fireplace and a rack, and on the rack was a tail fin just like his. He made his way over to the fire and slowly started warming up his freezing cold frame.
"This tail fin isn't gonna work when it's wet, and it's not gonna dry anytime soon. And even then, I still have to repair it," Toothless said to himself before sighing and replacing the wet tail fin with the dry one he found on the rack.
What was odd was that the tail fin fit PERFECTLY with his prosthetic, and he tilted his head, confused as to why they would have a new tail fin for him that looked exactly like the old and wet one.
Toothless continued on his way through the castle, until he made it to a room containing a bunch of baskets of fish, and a dining table for only one person.
Toothless continued walking until he made it to a room containing a small hole in the center and a monitor off to the side.
He placed his paw on the gravel in the hole, and he looked up at the monitor.
"Whatever this thing is, it keeps following me. Why?" Toothless asks himself and then comes up with a logical conclusion: this thing is HUNTING him.
"But why do they keep showing me how far it's got until it reaches me? How near it is. Because it's...it's trying to scare me," Toothless said and started pacing around the room and coming up with an idea.
"Ok, I must be trapped in what is basically a fully automated haunted castle that seems to be a maze," Toothless said to himself and then heard something falling from down the hall.
He quickly made his way into the hall and found a garden filled with fog right next to the hallway. He slowly made his way into the garden, and the door slammed shut behind him.
He walked to the center of the room to find a part of the dirt that was not covered in grass, and he put his paw on it. He heard a crunch and he looked up and saw another shovel.
"Another shovel. Someone must want me to dig. Too bad, I'm a dragon. I don't need their shovels," Toothless said and started using his paws to remove the dirt from the ground.
"Somebody's trying to tell me that there's something important buried in this garden, and that's basically the first thing they told me. It could be a trick, could be one of my predecessors," Toothless said and then stopped digging for a second to roar.
"Because I'm not the first Night Fury here, am I? All those skulls! Wonder where they all went wrong," Toothless said and then looked through the window to see that on the monitor, it showed that the creature was in one of the rooms he had been if before.
"Tower this high, creature that slow. Probably gives me an hour," Toothless said to himself and started digging.
Toothless let out a deep breath as he continued digging, then he smelled it: the smell of burning and rotten flesh.
He picked up the shovel from nearby and used it to barricade the door. The door was being pounded on.
"Shovel and door vs. undead Night Fury. I don't like the odds" Toothless said and then the thing left. Toothless let out a sigh of relief and looked around. He continued digging.
It was night before he managed to finally dig out a word, well, a letter.
"I? What does the letter I have to do with anything?" Toothless said and used his paw to move more dirt from the stone piece. Eventually, he found a full sentence.
"I am in room T, what does that have to do with..." Toothless started and then smelt the smell of burning and decaying flesh. Suddenly, a paw jumped out from the dirt and Toothless managed to make himself very small in the pit.
Slowly, Nightmare T's dead corpse made its way out from the dirt and started crawling towards Toothless, who had his tail and back up against the small dirt wall. Toothless knew the dead dragon would reach him in under a second, so he started thinking of a way to stop it.
Toothless then remembered it had stopped earlier because he had told a truth that he had never told before. And he then realized something. He was being interrogated, but it was not enough. It wants confessions and truths about things Toothless had kept hidden for so many years.
Toothless knew he couldn't tell some of the truths, but he was scared...and he was alone.
"I didn't get shot down by Hiccup on that night because he got lucky! That has always been a lie!" Toothless yelled and Nightmare T slowed down. Toothless realized that what he said was not enough.
"Need more? I let him shoot me down because I was suicidal at the time! Is that what you want? Is that truth enough for you?!" Toothless yelled and then Nightmare T slowly faded away. Suddenly, the entire castle started shaking and Toothless quickly made his way out of the pit, and then he ran.
He eventually made it to the outskirts of the castle, only to find out that the castle is in the middle of the ocean.
Toothless sat in the middle of a room, clicking his claws against the floor once every second. Waiting.
"The day you lose someone isn't the hardest. At least you have something to do. It's all the days after that, the days that they stay dead," Toothless said to himself and then watched as Nightmare T slowly started crawling into the room.
"Took you long enough. It's been nearly 57 minutes," Toothless said and then bolted to the other side of the castle. Toothless sat in the other side of the castle and did the same thing again.
"This is my life. I count down the seconds as they pass. My life is a countdown, one that has been going for nearly 25 years now," Toothless said to himself and waited until Nightmare T got into the room he was in before he bolted again.
"If I draw the creature to one very far side of the castle, and then I run to the other side, that gives me almost 82 minute to eat, sleep, and work," Toothless said to himself before stopping in the middle of the dining hall. He quickly grabbed a basket of fish from nearby and dragged it onto the dining table.
He then started eating and talking to himself.
"My work is finding room T. The castle wants me to. It's luring me," Toothless said to himself while looking at all the scribbles he had etched into the walls. He sighed when he remembered he would have to re-draw them again.
Everyone room, if left alone long enough, reverted to its position of the moment he had arrived. A giant cleanup service.
Toothless slowly kept eating while talking to himself.
"I think this entire place is inside a closed energy time point, constantly recycling. Or maybe I'm in Helheim. That's ok, I'm not scared of Helheim. It is basically just heaven for bad people. But how long will I be here, and what did I do to deserve this?" Toothless said and let a piece of fish fall from his mouth to the floor, he then realized something.
What separated him from the dozens of Night Fury's whos skulls are in the water, and what made him unique? Special? What made him...him?
And then he realized just how long he might be here...
"Forever," Toothless mumbled to himself and then slowly but surely continued eating.
I bet you all are asking, is Nightmare T alive inside that undead corpse or not. Well, I'll leave it up to you, the reader, to decide. But in my personal opinion, i think that a bit of Nightmare T is left in there, even if it doesn't show.
So anyways! I'll see you guys in CHAPTER 4: AS OLD AS FOREVER.
This is JustANormalHTTYDFan, over and out.