X.
Wind. It whipped through his hair. Stung his eyes, battered his eyelashes. Wind biting, clawing, tearing at his skin, yanking at fingers and cheeks with barbaric vigor. Bright tufts of golden orange snapped before his eyes. Bursts of cloud, small explosions, collided with him. It rose up like sand in a sandstorm, like the churning waves of a sea in a tempest, clouds roiling and tumbling and throwing themselves down and up in horrid heaves while Hiccup and Toothless rushed through the skies.
They raced. Hiccup leaned into Toothless so that his cheeks touched cold, scaly skin. Straightened arms braced to either side of his head, hands holding onto the saddle horn before him. Hiccup remained flattened on Toothless while the dragon rushed through high sky clouds, where the atmosphere shrieked and clouds passed by at such a speed Hiccup could see nothing. All he knew, distantly, was that the sun was rising; the bright colors from clouds reflected the sun's rays from somewhere. But the world he experienced was rushing. Snaps of color. Angry howling wind. Pumping Night Fury wings. And nothing else.
Toothless leaned forward and began a steep descent downward. Clouds puffed in vision for a moment, and then all cleared. Below Hiccup and Toothless stretched jagged expanses, sharp rocks and treacherous sholes and not a sign of life. The Mazy Multitudes. It had not been so long since Hiccup had left this area, yet he returned to it already, intent to glean more answers.
As Toothless sunk down and began weaving in and out of sword-like sea stacks, Hiccup's eyes ate in every detail of the landscape. The soupy, greenish, grayish waters. The rare pebbled shore. The open, jagged jaws of many an island, reaching out to snatch them from the air. Each stone axe and sharpened knife Toothless steered around, racing through the landscape, speeding, speeding, speeding.
They headed toward dawn. The horizon glowed like fire in this barren, slate-gray land. What might have seemed a muted yellow in other locations glowed as a distant, angry conflagration here. The sun burst this entire island chain into flames. And in the distance, rising above sharp peaks of stone, rose the burning silhouette of Fort Sinister.
"Almost there," Hiccup whispered encouragingly to Toothless. He leaned in, and the dragon picked up even extra speed. Spires of pointed peaks rushed below them.
Perhaps it was only the start of day, the very fledglings of morning. Perhaps Hiccup had left Dragon Island while the skies were still dark and brooding. Perhaps he had even sneaked out of his cabin while Astrid remained asleep – an impressive task, considering how lightly she slept. Yet Hiccup had promised his Hooligans he would investigate his suspicions first thing in the morning. This was first thing. He was keeping true to his word.
Yet he knew within his unsettled gut the true reason he vanished from Dragon Island before anyone could awake. He needed to investigate his suspicions as soon as possible, for if his fears were even partially correct, then he would be reporting back only some of what he saw, and keeping the rest of the evidence for himself.
He needed secrecy. At least for now.
The fortress grew. The sun stared up in awe at the sheer walls and abandoned bartizans. Hiccup, though, shuddered. He flew toward Sinister's most recent adjunct rather than focusing on the ancient stone; for behind the tons and tons of lifeless stone waited an equally lifeless peak of ice. Hiccup and his allies had not approached the Bewilderbeast's ice formation during the battle with the Vigilante, and after the fight, had been very cautious approaching the place. Yet now Hiccup and Toothless swooped in without any reservations towards the ice.
Toothless landed right next to the Bewilderbeast's formation, so close that neither he nor Hiccup could see the sky staring straight upwards. Hiccup craned his neck briefly to gaze at the shelves of ice, but then he shook his head, alighted from the saddle, and stepped inside a nearby frozen cave. He shuddered again briefly, remembering the last time he had stepped into one of these. It had been four years ago back when he first met his mother. But Toothless, burbling, seemed to understand, and shoved himself under Hiccup's shoulder to offer support.
It was a much smaller shelter than Valka's original hideaway. Unsurprising. The Bewilderbeast had not settled here long enough to construct quite as shocking of a home. Nevertheless, the high, arched ceilings stretched out and upward like a second sky, and the entire green-blue interior stretched out to such a size no human could construct a room likewise. For a second Hiccup marveled. Dragons truly are amazing creatures, he mulled, fingers tightening around Toothless' head plait, but then he focused on his task.
"Alright, Toothless," he said, hand dropping to the floor. Hiccup crouched and began to peer at the dirt beneath him. "Time to see how long it's been since the Bewilderbeast left." His braid fell forward over his shoulder as he leaned down, staring at an enormous crater which may have been a Bewilderbeast footprint. Yet it was eroded, not recent, and Hiccup stepped forward. "Look for anything suspicious, really," he said. Toothless paused, sniffed the ground beneath him, and then padded after Hiccup.
They passed more than a few piles of dragon dung. Hiccup glanced at those only briefly. Either they came from other species than the Bewilderbeast, or the feces were old. Very old. Hiccup's foot and prosthetic scraped ice across the floor as they continued wandering, Toothless dancing off to his own amusements, the chief of Berk frowning with more and more puzzlement.
Semi-recent dragon tracks scoured patches of mud. He located dragon nests near the edges of the enclosure, up on the cliffsides, and all of them showed the same signs of inhabitance. These dragons had left only a few weeks ago. When we won the battle. A few times he stumbled across a Terrible Terror or two growling on the ice shelfs, yet all in all the creatures appeared to have left as a hoard at the same time. After the battle, the dragons had left. The footprints provided that evidence. The shape of the dragon nests provided that evidence. The age of the dragon poop provided that evidence. All that was consistent and obvious.
Yet there were fewer signs of the Bewilderbeast. Hiccup pointed Toothless to the ground and requested, "Can you smell him, bud? How long has it been since he left?" Toothless concentrated on the ground, rubbing his nose against the next few yards, but then paused, stopped, and stared back at Hiccup. Hiccup tried again. "Toothless?" The dragon did not waste his time searching. He sat down on his haunches and stared soundlessly at Hiccup.
"Yeah. I'm not finding any evidence of him, either." Hiccup frowned at the nearest footprint, a mere faded imprint in the surface of the earth. "It's almost as if…" But his words trailed off and he never finished his sentence.
For Hiccup noticed something else. How he had not noticed this before, he had no idea, except that perhaps he had stared so much at the floor of the ice fortress that he had failed to see what rested on the other side of the room.
Six dead dragons.
Toothless stiffened and growled, uncomfortable. He took a few steps back.
"I know, Toothless, but we have to look," Hiccup said. After one moan, the Night Fury acquiesced and followed behind him.
The cold, frozen climate in which they dwelled had preserved the bodies well enough that they were still bloated, only beginning to lose mass from decay. Hiccup stayed several yards back from them, but kept his eyes straight on the corpses, noticed the twisted, snapped neck of the Hobblegrunt curled up unnervingly beneath its own body, noticed the sprawled position of the Rumblehorn and the enormous tears in its inflamed chest.
Hiccup and Toothless arrived at the same conclusion.
They needed no more investigation than this. Wiping his hands quickly on his pants – even though he had touched none of the death – Hiccup then reached out to grab Toothless' saddle, and the two slipped out of the Bewilderbeast's lair.
He had to force himself to point to Fort Sinister's battlements and tell Toothless to land. Even then, their investigation of the manmade fort passed hurriedly, quickly, and with no few spooks and shivers. Less sign of life dwelt here, at least beyond the spiders. Yet the distorted form of six dead dragons filled their minds, and made Hiccup jump at even the round shape of a shield on the floor of Sinister's east wing.
"Okay, Toothless, we've seen what we need," he whispered, for he could speak at nothing above a whisper now. "Let's get back to Dragon Island."
And they flew.
Hiccup's heart pounded as they took to the skies. Yet his mind noticed nothing of the sullen gray skies through which they flew. He stared blankly at the back of Toothless' head. Thoughts, thoughts whirling. Of Toothless' loss of will for those few seconds yesterday afternoon. Of the Terrible Terror's airmail message that some dragons abandoned Berk without cause. Of the stale Bewilderbeast tracks near Fort Sinister.
Of the words his mother had said in her cell.
Didn't I just tell myself I wouldn't talk to her again? he fumed to himself. Didn't I just tell myself that yesterday?
Yet his mind was so much on the Vigilante he did not even notice when a light drizzle wet his hair and poured down the back of his neck. His mind remained as foggy as the foggy weather through which he and Toothless flew.