To Put It In Perspective: The Queen Falls, a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter 9 (rough draft)
I'm so scared I can't stand it. There's something truly terrible about knowing that you're heading toward your own death, that you can't escape and that you won't die quickly. You can't do anything except keep enduring the knowledge as you're dragged closer and closer and closer.
I'm glad that Hiccup's not here, that he's safe - but at the same time, I miss him so much, I miss his warmth and his sweetness and, just, how he looks and sounds and smells, I miss him. I've never loved anyone in my whole life as much as I love him, not even my little sister and...and not even my father. It feels so strange to say that about a dragon, but it's true.
The buzzing in my head starts up as usual, but then...withdraws. Enough of her was in my head that I know why she's withdrawing: she sensed my anguish and wants me to suffer. I hate her SO MUCH.
No one bothers to untie my feet and let me walk to my own doom. Zombie-eyed, someone throws me over her shoulder and carries me to shore. I strain at the ropes, but they hold fast. I hate this. I wish I could at least die fighting.
Then the dragons attack.
I'm too stupefied to do more than stare at first, but gradually the zombie haze clears from my comrades' faces, and they're shocked and I'm shocked because there are dragons in our territory. How did they get here?! There are dragons, DRAGONS in the queen's territory, what-?! What-?!
They fly in roaring and blazing, shooting fire at us, and people flee. There's no reason for us to stay and fight if she's not making us; what-
The warrior who was carrying me dumps me on the ground and flees as well. The dragons look confused at our total lack of resistance for a minute, but then Stoick roars and they start attacking the palace, mostly smashing windows so they can get inside.
My shock is slowly turning to glee and elation. Hah. HAH. She would never expect dragons to show up on her doorstep, they'll finally get their revenge on her and torch her, they'll-
Except she can torch them, too. She's a giantess and a magic user, she has fire and flight and armor, too. AND ice AND lightning AND mind manipulation, and, and, and, she's going to slaughter them all and I have to DO SOMETHING but I can't because I'M TIED UP AND CAN'T MOVE.
I can hear her screams of rage now. Then a huge section of the roof suddenly explodes, sending a few dragons tumbling violently through the air. Her enormous hand reaches out like a hideous creature rising up out of its grave, she hauls half her body onto the roof and starts blasting spells at every dragon she sees.
They're no match for her. They seem so powerful to us puny little humans, but compared to her, they might as well be a flock of sparrows.
Most of the dragons have apparently realized this, since they're now fleeing just like my own people did. Poor Stoick, who must know by now that he's in over his head, confers with his beta, whom we call 'Gobber the Belch.' I'm surprised to see the two of them suddenly roar and charge the queen again, but then I realize that, of course, they're buying time for the rest of their flock to escape. They're going to die. I don't know what will happen to the Berk flock when their alpha is dead.
The queen's face is twisted with rage, she raises her hand as it starts to glow, preparing to blast Stoick into oblivion...
Then she screams and her shot goes wild, and my nose is flooded with the stench of burning hair. More dragons swoop into sight - fledglings, crowing defiance-
ONE OF THEM IS HICCUP. I scream from pure joy, I thought I would never ever see him again but there he is, Hiccup Hiccup Hiccup I love you SO MUCH.
He's barking orders at the other fledglings like a general marshaling his troops. Lusty human yells accompany him, and I'm astonished to see Stormfly and the others charging forward, thin and bruised from their long imprisonment but still waving their weapons with gusto.
At last, Hiccup dives down to me, leaving his flockmates to continue the assault on the queen. "Hiccup!"
He chirps the sound that I recognize as his name for me, over and over again as he licks my face and frantically nuzzles me.
"Hiccup~ Hiccup Hiccup Hiccup I missed you too!"
He gets hold of himself and starts attacking the ropes, but it's slow going. There are too many of them, he's having to tear and scratch at them one by one, this is taking too long and I can see the human and dragon assault teams starting to drop one by one. Meatlug stumbles to her knees and the tan fledgling is knocked out of the air and a bloodied Hookfang is sprawled on the ground looking dazed, and now the queen is reaching back to seize the brown fledgling and rip him off the ear he'd been savaging.
Then she catches sight of me. The queen shrieks my name, and shudders wrack my body. She reaches down and lifts me up, I'm screaming, Hiccup's screaming too as he zips helplessly around me, the pressure is unbearable, she's going to crush me to death- Then she bellows in pain, someone must have taken advantage her distraction, and she flings me.
If she'd thrown me up instead of out, I'd be dead. Even as it is, the pain of hitting water at such speed is unbearable, and it takes every ounce of training for me to hold on to the deep breath I'd sucked in as soon as I realized I'd be falling into the ocean. The water's not too deep here, but definitely deep enough to kill me when I'm tied up and can't swim. I'm too bruised and shocked to struggle much as my body sinks. How am I gonna survive this how am I gonna survive this how am I gonna survive this?!
There's Hiccup, diving into the water and swimming toward me, but now he can barely make any progress at all with the waterlogged ropes. I've trained to hold my breath for about ten minutes (more under ideal conditions, which these are definitely not), but my air's not going to last forever. Certainly not long enough for poor little Hiccup to get me free - he's already starting to flounder. I-
There's a much bigger impact, and now it's Stoick swimming toward us. I nearly lose some precious air to shock and apprehension. I wonder if he's here to kill me a lot quicker than drowning would, but no... He plants a heavy paw on me. Unlike Hiccup, he's big enough and strong enough to brace my body as he tears through the ropes like they're string. I'm free.
I surge for the surface and start swimming the short distance to where I know there'll be sand beneath my feet, but Stoick looms up behind us and propels both me and Hiccup to the shallows in a couple of seconds. I struggle upright and hold out my arm to my dragon. "Let's go, Hiccup!"
Hiccup eagerly bounds toward me, but stops dead when Stoick barks at him. For a moment, I think in outrage that the alpha is forbidding him, that Hiccup's going to abandon me and run off just because his boss told him, to, but no... There's something amazingly tender and even heartbroken in the way Stoick steps forward and nuzzles him, then licks a scent-mark onto him. Hiccup croons and nuzzles him back, and suddenly I make sense of this strangely strong affection between them and realize that maybe Stoick is Hiccup's father. Hiccup the runt is the alpha's offspring. All this time I thought...I hadn't realized...
Hiccup yips at his father one last time and then hurries to me, leaping to my shoulder in two swift moves as if he's always belonged there. I run, pausing just long enough to grab weapons and a shield from downed warriors before charging at the queen. I have never before had such courage against her, or felt so capable of hurting her as I do now, with the warm weight of my dragon on my shoulders.
Stormfly goes down; almost as an extension of the same move, the queen backhands Astrid out of the air. She starts to fall, shrieking, there's something wrong with her wing. Hiccup launches from my shoulder and intercepts her, flapping madly, managing to balance her just enough for them both to land without getting too hurt. Hiccup immediately takes flight again, as Astrid, grounded now, barks urgently at him.
Hiccup doesn't return to me. Instead, he rushes at the queen's face and taunts her, zipping around too quickly for her to catch, though she tries. She's so furious and so focused on him that she doesn't notice me. I can actually take my time nocking the arrow and trying for a good shot.
I hit her in the neck, though it misses her artery because the twin dragons rammed her at just the wrong moment, knocking her off-balance. I can't fault them for trying, though, especially since she turns and blasts a spell at them (it misses), allowing Hiccup to vomit a burst of fire at her and singe her back. She shrieks, swatting at him, but he's so tiny and nimble, it's like trying to catch a fly with bare hands.
She tries a spell, blasting a wall of ice in his direction, but he makes a downward flap and then claps his wings close to his body so that he drops like a stone, falling under the path of attack in time. He flares his wings just before hitting the ground and swoops away, circling around for another shot. I stab at her feet with my sword, and enjoy the harried look on her face as she can't decide whether to go for me or Hiccup.
She decides on both, aiming one hand at him and the other at me, and unleashes streams of fire. I dodge roll; Hiccup's all right, he's protected by his scales. She tries again, this time with ice, but Hiccup's on her complete opposite side by this time and I'm shooting at her butt. Kind of a waste of arrows, since that's probably the least lethal place I could shoot her in, but it'll still hurt and she'll go out of her mind with indignation, hah.
All right, enough messing around. I need to gain higher ground. I shout for Hiccup so he can see what I'm doing, then start clambering up staircases and rubble to the upper floors. The queen can see what I'm doing, too, but I don't mind her blasting at me, since the reason Hiccup's lasted this long fluttering around her head like that is because the tactic works best when she's having to split her attention between him and me.
Once I'm high enough, I start shooting for her throat and eyes. She's so busy trying to dodge my shots that she doesn't have time to cast magic. She's also too distracted to fend off Hiccup, who seizes the opportunity to flame her ear canal. She howls in agony, half-deaf now, but instead of retreating, she brings both hands up to clap them together, trying to crush Hiccup between them. She very nearly succeeds, and Hiccup staggers in the air, crying out.
I shoot her in the eye. She screams; Hiccup flames her again; now she's lost most of her senses and is apparently too crazed by pain to remember she's got magic, she's just flailing blindly as if hoping to catch Hiccup or me with a random swipe. I aim for the artery in her neck again, and this time, I don't miss.
As she sinks down, dying, blood pouring down her neck, she makes one last, weak swipe with her hand. This time she does catch Hiccup, completely at random. She knocks him senseless, and he falls.
I don't stop to think. If I pause for even one millisecond to think about it, I won't be able to do it, and then he'll fall beyond my reach and he'll die. I just shoot, mindlessly timing it by sheer skill and countless hours of practice so that the arrow hits a crevice and sticks there. It's anchored solidly enough that it can hold Hiccup's weight, and now that I have time to think about it, I'm sick with horror at what I've just done to save my dragon's life. I'm crying as I scramble toward him; I am so, so, so glad he's unconscious.
Later he'll wake up, and maybe he'll hate me, but right now he can't feel the pain of his punctured and still-tearing wing, he's dangling there completely limp instead of writhing in agony as the membrane rips almost to the bone and finally stops.
I've ruined him. He'll never fly again and it's all my fault, except I guess he'd still never fly again if he's dead, but I can't help feeling guilt wrench my gut as I reach with trembling hands to unhook, as gently as I can, Hiccup's torn, bleeding body from my arrow. "Hiccup, Hiccup, it's all right, sshh, it's all right, you're okay now, I've got you, I've got you," I babble, even though it's not all right and he is definitely not okay and what have I done...?!
I'm going too fast trying to get back to the ground, and I slip on a patch of blood. Now I'm the one who's falling. I have just enough time, before I hit hard enough to lose consciousness, to wrap my arms tightly around Hiccup and curl my body around his.
To be concluded...