"Everyone up and at it!"

The message was delivered by a loud, booming voice that was not much muffled by the fact that it came from outside the house. Viking wake-up calls were impersonal and loud. It was time to go.

Astrid bolted upright, cursing under her breath. She had overslept, worn out and frustrated by the events of the day before, and no wonder. Fighting off Snotlout, realizing that everyone was sailing to their doom unaware of what they were going to be facing, getting betrothed to a slimy coward, and then finding out that her parents weren't willing to break it off because she had been too effective in scaring said coward...

That last one stung. If she had just taken Tuffnut's advice it would have been five on one, but she knew now that she could have handled that, and Speedifist actually going through with the attempt would have ensured her parents had no choice but to break off the contract.

So much for all of that. She stood with a huff, noticing that Vanna had somehow slept through the loud call to attention. The girl was a heavy sleeper.

Astrid pulled on her armor, knowing she was going to have to fly today. At that, did she want to bring any other clothing? A week on a ship, and then the fight of her life...

Yes, she should probably bring something other than her new armor. She pulled out one of her chests of spare clothes-

Before putting it back, standing and grabbing her ax and helmet. She had left a perfectly good change of clothes in Toothless's den, and she didn't have the time to go through her room for anything else. That would have to be good. Most Vikings didn't bring spare clothes at all. She would be fine.

Astrid ran out of the house, dreading what she would see in the sky. Was it only a little after dawn, or was it almost noon? She didn't want to have to catch up with the boats once they had set off. Being late was not a good way to start this trip, even if she alone on the island could be left behind and still catch up.

Not noon, not yet. That was her first coherent thought as she ran through the busy streets, dodging slow-moving Vikings carting armfuls of personal weaponry. The sun was well above the horizon, but she could make it with time to spare if she ran the whole way.

What better way to work off her frustration with her parents? Of all the crazy things that had happened yesterday, that was the only one that had not ended well, or at least neutrally. Tuffnut had been right in saying not knowing what was at the nest didn't matter, Snotlout and company had been thrashed, and the betrothal to Speedifist should have been nothing.

She didn't understand her parents. From what she had heard that was typical, but this was different. They were doing something she could in no way see as reasonable. Helga, a bystander with no personal stake in it, had been totally on her side. What were they thinking?

Maybe it wouldn't matter. Maybe it would, though, and she couldn't just leave it like that. Ignoring oncoming problems in the hope that they'd go away was a bad idea when there was anything she might be able to do to affect the outcome. Ignoring only worked if it was out of her hands anyway.

She scowled aimlessly, forcing herself to run faster. At the moment, she just needed to keep moving.


Toothless was awake and alert when she jogged, tired but satisfied with her speed, into the clearing, breaking long-dead branches under her boots in a cacophony of snapping wood. "Up and at it, Toothless, we're taking a trip."

Then she ran right past him into his den, grabbing the cold and slightly damp bundle of clothing she had left... how long ago? The last few days felt stretched and overfilled, so much had happened. She had left these the morning of the demonstration, which was the third day. Stoick had announced their voyage the day after, and given them two days to prepare... so four days ago?

She really should have retrieved them before now. She'd have to wash them later, on the ship.

Tucking the bundle under her arm, she returned to Toothless, who was watching her excitedly. "Okay, this is going to be a quick flight." Jumping into the saddle was easier than climbing on, so she did that. Attaching the two safety tethers was simple enough, and then they were ready.

"We're going to the docks," she asserted, unsure of whether Toothless knew where that was. "By the village."

He grunted in agreement and flared his wings. She knew what that meant.

They were off. She hurriedly flipped the faceplate of her helmet down, shivering uncontrollably at the stream of freezing air. Every day was somehow colder than the last, and all the uncovered fresh water on Berk had frozen by now. The sea always froze last, after the first real storm of the long Winter season, which had not yet come.

Two more days. They had to hope that first storm would avoid Berk for two more days. It was going to be so incredibly close. They really should have waited until Spring for all of this. But she wasn't the one in charge, so that wasn't up to her. It was all up to Stoick, who was all for going now, whatever his personal motivations.

Astrid directed Toothless by way of slightly closing the fin to signal a turn and angling him towards the distant docks. "This is easy," she asserted, almost to reassure herself. It was going to take time to truly get used to flight, and she planned to spend as much of that time as possible on the trip, but the absolute basics were not difficult.

Toothless looked back at her and snorted, rolling his eyes. Of course, he would think this was boring. She remembered the raids he must have supported, flashing from one tower to another in moments. They couldn't see him, but they could see the direction the blasts came from, and when two towers were shot from opposite directions in a matter of moments, and they now knew there was only one Night Fury raiding, that pointed to some fancy flying.

"I'll get there eventually," she promised. That was met with a patronizing grunt.

She would show him. But that was for later. For now, they were nearing the docks, and this was where things could get tricky. She leaned over in the saddle to point down at the ships, her hand just within his line of sight.

They had no gestures for color. She had to settle for signaling down and go, pointing as accurately as she could at the blue stripes that marked their designated place, and saying "The blue spot on the deck."

Toothless swooped lower, descending as he flew forward, and slowing down. This was going to be a tricky landing...

But it looked like he knew where she wanted him to go, aiming right at the spot she had marked. She relaxed a little, looking down at the docks.

Everyone had stopped in their tracks, looking up with some mixture of fear and awe. Would they ever get used to this? Probably not.

Then they were there, dropping down onto the deck of the ship, Toothless's paws scuffing one of the blue lines as he scrabbled for a moment, unused to such slick surfaces-

Then his claws hooked into the wood, and they were still. He growled at the deck, pulling his paws up to unstick his claws.

Astrid unhooked the tethers and slid down, dropping her bundle of clothing on the deck. It already needed to be cleaned, so there was no point in keeping it out of the damp. They were here.

"We're going to go flying again as soon as things settle down and we're on our way," she explained, patting Toothless on the nose. "For right now..."

Another round of gestures. The sign for stay, along with that for being alert.

Toothless gestures right back at her. Stay, alert, and alert again. That had to be intentional. The way he was looking around suspiciously was also quite telling.

She smiled reassuringly. "Fine, I can stick around. I was going to anyway. But they all know they shouldn't mess with you." She hoped so, anyway. And if they did...

On second thought, he was right, she definitely shouldn't leave him here. Trusting Vikings to remember things and be reasonable when dragons were involved was a bad idea. She sat down on the deck, leaning up against the cabin their space abutted.

Toothless curled up next to her, putting his back to the wall and looking out warily. They could see and hear the docks on one side of the ship, and what looked like the Windy Isle lead ship on the other, being loaded from the other side.

How must Toothless see all of this? The people he avoided and had in the past fired on, all around him. The only one he trusted had brought him here, but he was definitely not happy with it.

"You'll get used to it," she said, feeling like she was repeating herself. "And if anyone tries anything, I'll stop them before you have to." Only a small portion of Berk's warriors would be aboard this particular ship. Hopefully that portion would not include too many troublemakers.


Astrid had never taken the time to sit and watch a warship being boarded. She always had better things to do. But now, she had pretty much no choice. She couldn't be entirely sure, but the ships might be visibly floating lower as time passed and more people boarded. There was something funny about seeing a ship visibly struggle to float after Sven the Burly stepped aboard. If the ships were living creatures, she would have pitied them.

Was pity a Vikingly emotion? No, and she didn't care. Ruffnut's advice back when her biggest problem had been rumors was beginning to make sense. Astrid wasn't acting out to take advantage of her worthless reputation, but it had definitely contributed to that time of introspection, and by extension how she saw things now. If she could go back to being the perfect example of a Viking and a warrior, would she even count? No, not anymore. And Ruffnut was right; she wasn't sure she would trade how she was now for that. She was who she was, and the Viking way didn't totally fit her anymore.

A commotion on the deck of the ship next to her caught her attention. Thunderguts' strident voice was clearly audible, as was the less deafening voice of the man he was arguing with.

"Yer boy's supposed to be here," Thunderguts yelled, berating one of subordinates. "Where is 'e?"

"I don't know!" the other man replied, yelling right back.

"Fine, then." Thunderguts shrugged, apparently accepting that. "Forget it. I'm sure ye'll find him when we get to the nest, if he's on another ship."

That was odd. Thunderguts did not strike her as the type of person to be so easily convinced of... anything, really. Something was off there; even if he was easily mollified, nobody would just stop being angry in an instant.

But it wasn't her business. Especially in this case, where it wasn't even her tribe. She put a hand on Toothless's side, getting his attention. He had been watching them too.

He turned to look at her, his eyes narrower than normal. Maybe he didn't like loud, obnoxious Vikings. If that was the case, this was going to be a very long trip.

Then he shifted one of his paws, gesturing at her.

Threat.

His ears flicked in Thunderguts' direction, and he growled softly.

"He's the Chief of an allied tribe," she said quietly, unsettled by that. "And he's more okay with you and what we do than a lot of his own tribe probably is. He's not a threat to us." She was a bit confused as to why Toothless would think that in the first place. Thunderguts wasn't even yelling at them; he had been abusing one of his own men and had calmed down easily enough.

Toothless grumbled softly, making the same gesture.

"He's fine," she repeated. "Besides, he's on his own ship. He can't get over to us." She pointed to the gap between ships. "That's only going to get wider once we set out. He's stuck on that one."

That settled Toothless down. He growled in Thunderguts general direction, but looked away after a moment, apparently at least somewhat at ease.

It was a good thing they weren't making the trip on Thunderguts' ship. This might be hard enough without Toothless disliking anyone right away.

On that note... Astrid couldn't see the actual deck from here, facing behind the ship, but she could see who was boarding, and she was keeping track. So far, a typical assortment of Berkians. As of yet, nobody she knew more than in passing. Snotlout was absent, which was a relief. She actually hadn't seen him yet. He would probably show up at the last minute.

She had seen Ruffnut, boarding the same ship Stoick would be taking, in the company of a few of the other dedicated warriors. They would be with the Chief, in the forefront of the action.

How was she feeling, being up front and center without her brother by her side? Maybe she was used to it by now.


Noon came and went. The ships left without ceremony, mostly because everyone had already celebrated the night before. The decks were packed with people, the hungover sailors begrudgingly accepting help from whoever wanted to be sure they were going in the right direction. Nobody wanted to be below deck right at the beginning of the voyage, so the main deck was crowded.

Except for the space right around Toothless. Astrid was glad she had picked such an out-of-the-way spot, because nobody wanted to come within ten paces of the Night Fury on deck. If she had set up in the middle of the deck, they wouldn't have been able to sail anywhere, Toothless preventing people from adjusting the main sail by his very presence.

It was a little annoying, given the example she was setting, sitting right next to him, but she didn't care that much. It was their choice, and if they wanted to crowd into a smaller space instead of getting close to the harmless dragon, their mistake.


Astrid had never taken a long voyage before. Fishing trips lasted a day, or at least the ones she had been on did. This, though, was a week's trip.

Somehow, she hadn't thought about sleeping on the ship. When she found out it was done by lying on bare boards below deck, she was unimpressed, to put it mildly. What was worse was that there were no barriers or dividers between people down there. She had no issue with enduring hardship, but she intended to get some sleep on this trip, and that was not going to happen lying between a snoring old man and a fat woman who whistled in her sleep.

So, she lingered on the deck long after dark, leaning against the railing and staring out at where Berk had been. It was just a tiny smudge on the horizon now, a day out.

That was still a better thing to stare at than the vast ocean beneath her. She knew, in her mind, that the ship was totally seaworthy, and that there was no reason to be worried about what might be beneath them.

In her heart, the fear of the sea she had cultivated and then ignored was coming back with a vengeance. She probably wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway.

Instead of sleeping, she was staring out into the deep, searching for lights that weren't there, unable to relax. There were a few sailors out on deck, the night crew, but they paid her no mind. Toothless was sleeping on the deck behind the cabin. At least he could relax.

This was stupid. But she couldn't stop thinking about it. They were not invulnerable here. Anything could be down there, and even her father had said ships were sometimes attacked by things from the water.

Humans had the ground. Dragons took the air. It made sense, in a scarily logical way, that something would dominate the oceans. Something dangerous, something they rarely ever saw because it lurked far too deep to be noticed, except for when it did not-

She shivered, hating her own uncertainty. Where was her resolution to not worry about that which she could not change?

That was a rational thought. Rational did not describe how she was acting now. Childish was probably a better description.

There was a muffled commotion behind her, the night crew muttering and moving around. She could hear sharp claws clicking on the deck, so she did not bother to turn and see. He was coming to her.

Toothless came to stand beside her, looking out at the ocean. He didn't make any noise, breathing quietly, and didn't try to gesture something. Their system of communication did not cover actual conversations.

She felt a little better with him beside her. He had been there too, and had seemed equally disturbed by the lights they had seen in the depths. If anyone understood, it would be him, even if he couldn't say so.

"I shouldn't be afraid," she whispered, not wanting any of the night crew to hear her. "It's stupid."

A pair of almost glowing green eyes regarded her solemnly.

She was not afraid of him. She never had been, really. Not in principle. Dragons were killable, approachable, knowable to some extent. The whole island had to fight them or die. There was no reason to be any more afraid of a dragon than of a rival tribe member. At least, that was how she had always seen it.

She knew dragons. Better than ever, now, at least when it came to Night Furies. She didn't know what might be below them, and that was what frightened her. It might know her or her kind, but she did not know it.

She couldn't stand to stare at the water anymore. "Let's go flying," she requested, gesturing the same message without even thinking about it.


The air was like ice, cold and wet. The wind howled up here, high above the ocean. The ship she had left was just one point of light, one of many spread across the water below.

This... this was better. So much better. Up here, she could not look at the water. It was just a sheet of mirrors, the moon's light making it impossible to see anything more. Here was safe.

Safe. Nothing from the water could possibly come this high unless it had wings. The few water-dwelling dragons in the Book of Dragons might be able to reach them, but those did not worry her.

Scauldrons, Thunderdrums, Seashockers, and Riptides. They all shared one thing in common. They breathed air, like whales. They were not creatures of the deep, they just frequented it sometimes. Even Scauldrons, which she had been told were almost immobile on land, lived in caves near the shore, isolated and deadly, firmly in the realm of land, not water, even though the species looked like a strange sea creature. Seashockers, the Zipplebacks of the water, traveled in pods, skimming the surface. They were almost like boats, sticking near the top of the water, because they had to breathe. Thunderdrums and Riptides were the same. Even the more mysterious, mostly-blank entries in the book of dragons that dealt with water dragons shared that trait. The dragons in question all could be seen on land, and all breathed air in the end.

All of that was to say that what she feared was not any kind of dragon, even the ones that frequented the water. It was the true deep-dwelling unknown that bothered her... and that surely could not reach up here.

"Odd, in a way," she said, speaking her mind to Toothless, "that I gain a fear of water and a way to fly in the same trip."

There was no response. Toothless was simply enjoying the flight, leading them ever higher at a shallow incline that made the increase barely noticeable. There were no clouds to touch or judge height by, further increasing the difficulty of knowing exactly how high they were.

Gliding through the dark on a Night Fury, totally at ease with the killer directly below her, but at odds with some of her own people, and in fear of what lurked below them all. Could things be any less normal than that?


The next day was filled with fishing and flying. Neither she nor Toothless was showing any real signs of having stayed up all night. Him because for all she knew night was his natural element, and her because... well, she didn't know why. She couldn't afford to avoid sleep again. She knew that much. This was an unexpected reprieve from the lethargy she had expected.

So, they spent the day in the air. She learned the exact movements Toothless needed from her to fish, and they supplied their ship with a fresh catch, along with supplying themselves. That earned them some begrudging thanks, along with a lot of muttering about why the dragons raided if they could just feed themselves.

She did not bother to answer that. Tuffnut had been right. It did not matter, in the end. That fight would play out the same whether or not the rank-and-file Viking was expecting it. Assuming they even got there.

She, on the other hand, could and was striving to be as ready as possible. Toothless continued to challenge her, introducing a new move the moment she got the hang of the previous innovation. She was beginning to wonder if a week in the air was enough to even cover all he could do, let alone memorize it and commit it to muscle memory.

And then night came, all too soon, and they set down. Toothless was tired, and she could not avoid sleep. But she did not go below deck. That did not appeal to her.

So, she made use of her other set of clothing. The armored skirt was put to use covering her as a makeshift blanket, albeit a small one, and her tunic to being a pillow, of sorts. She lay out on deck, counting on her armor to keep her just warm enough to sleep, if not totally warm in the truly frigid cold.

That setup lasted about as long as it took Toothless to realize she was intending to sleep out on the deck next to him. He glared at her for a moment, silently reprimanding her, and shuffled over to her, moving fast despite the care he had to take to not crush or strike her as he settled back down.

She glared right back at him. "You could have asked," she griped, now tucked under a wing right next to him. "I didn't want to bother you. If one of us needs to be fully rested, it's you." He was doing the flying, after all.

No response. He was faking being asleep. She knew it was fake because his ears twitched towards her when she talked, and his wing pushed her down when she tried to get up.

"Pushy dragon," she griped. Fine. If he insisted...


It was a very, very good thing she had staked out a place out of sight of the rest of the deck. Nobody noticed her sleeping arrangements. She did not care what they thought, but that did not mean she wanted to be talked about any more than she already was. Ideally, people would cease to care about her or Toothless, and treat them as they would anyone else.

That really was the ideal, and an unattainable one to boot.

On the more practical side of things, she could not deny that having her own heated blanket in Toothless's wing was nice. She had slept soundly.

"This is not going to become a regular thing," she told him, combing through her still annoyingly short hair with her fingers. "I just prefer being cold to sleeping next to the average Viking."

He rolled his eyes, looking down at the wing that had covered her, and withdrawing it questioningly.

"Fine." She gestured the sign that meant thanks, knowing she owed him that much. "And your wing is better than being cold."

He churred at her, clearly amused.

"Let's just go get food," she grumbled, not really mad.


They fell into a routine after that. Fly all day, fish for themselves and the ship whenever they felt like it, avoid the other passengers, and sleep on deck.

It was an oddly isolated schedule. She had not spent so much time with Toothless since the raft, and this time around she was alert and not starving or otherwise slowly dying.

It was not a bad way to spend a week. Toothless was not annoying, or rude, or boring. He was a dragon, and that made him just different enough to be fascinating, but not different enough to be unlike her, now that she knew where to look. She definitely preferred his company to that of the average Viking, even if she could not really talk to him. He was like her family, in that way. They didn't need to fill the silence with meaningless talk.

She did spend some time thinking about the future. There were four paths she could see her life taking.

The first was the darkest. She would die at the nest. Her people would die there too. End of story. That was the least desirable way to go. Utter failure. It would be poetic, in a way, to die in the very place she and Toothless had almost miraculously escaped, but she did not care about or even like poetry anyway.

The second worst case was that she and Toothless survived, but the attack failed, and everybody else died. In that case...

They would go home, to Berk. She would help where she could, and ensure the few members of her tribe that remained would survive, leaving the island to join other tribes, and then she and Toothless would go. There were wandering warriors for hire already, people who had lost their tribe. They could do that. It was not a desirable outcome, but if it happened, Berk was dead. She would just have to figure out who she was without her home. At least she would not be alone.

And if they did not fail? If the nest and the monstrosity somehow fell to Viking stubbornness? There were two ways she could see that going.

In the first scenario, Speedifist survived, and she eventually would be forced to choose between marrying him and going the wandering warrior route. She might choose marriage, if only because she could definitely scare Speedifist into letting her bring Toothless home. Maybe she could use Toothless as a buffer, make Speedifist build another room on the house he would have to construct anyway, and keep Toothless close. She could tolerate a spineless husband if she had full control of everything else.

That would be miserable, for a time, but it could be done. And when Speedifist died, which might be sooner rather than later, she would be free to not remarry.

She hadn't really thought that plan through. It was not happening.

Ideally, something would break the marriage contract. She didn't want Speedifist dead, but that would do it, and there was every chance it was going to happen. She could go back to Berk, maneuver her parents into not arranging any more marriages without her say so, somehow, and be happy. The details past that were fuzzy, and in that case she would still have to deal with Snotlout, but again, he might end up dead too.

Puzzling over those details helped occupy the free hours. She should not have to think about flight to operate the tailfin, so she tried to keep her mind on other things as much as possible, to speed up the transition from conscious choice to muscle memory.

It wasn't working, or at least it wasn't working fast enough. It would take her months to become skilled at doing even a quarter of what Toothless had taught her. With every new permutation of timing and tailfin position, she grew more and more impressed with what Hiccup had accomplished. In only a month of part-time flight, at best, he had kept up with Toothless on that wild ride. She was only now seeing how ridiculously good he had to be to manage that.

She was not going to be anywhere as effective on Toothless as Hiccup would be if he was here. She could only hope her lesser skill would not be the deciding factor in whether or not she or Toothless survived the upcoming battle.


Time flew when they did, and it did not slow much on the ship, either. Days passed, days of training and not much else. She barely spoke to those she shared a ship with, and they seemed fine with that.

So, it was a bit odd when one of the sailors called her over. She didn't know his name, but he seemed to be in charge of this ship.

"We need to ask a favor," he began, speaking carefully. "The Chief is on that ship." He pointed to the small outline of a larger ship in the distance ahead of them. "Can you go ask him if any of our other ships can spare a good replacement sail?"

Astrid looked up, noticing that the sail did seem oddly slack. "We aren't carrying spares?"

"We are, but our spare is one of the bad ones so it won't be as good. We'd fall behind, and I don't want to slow down the group. They will have to wait for us in front of Helheim's gate, and that's dangerous."

"What you really want is for me to first get permission, and then check all the ships for the best possible replacement," she summarized. "Will people on those ships know which is best? I don't."

"Yes, they should." He smiled gratefully. "I guess having a dragon around is good for more than easy fish and the occasional jumpscare."

"Jumpscare?" She didn't know that word, but it was a bit odd that any Viking was admitting to being scared to start with.

"A shock that is only so because it is not expected," he explained defensively. "Not actually scared, just surprised."

"I get it." Of course there would be a word that served entirely as a way to admit being startled without any connotation of actually being afraid. "Anyway, we'll get right on that."


The ships of the combined fleet were spread out, and bringing them together would take hours of effort. Getting from one to another was impossible.

Unless one had a dragon. Then, it was as simple as just flying over. Landing, on the other hand...

"Clear a space!" Astrid yelled, repeating herself for the third or fourth time. "We need to talk to the Chief." He wasn't on deck at the moment, so she would have to find him. Or, at the rate this was going, he would come up to the deck himself at some point and see her and Toothless still circling, waiting for people to move out of the way.

"What's all the commotion?" A loud, commanding voice yelled, drawing nearer even as it spoke. "Dragons already?"

"One," a particularly large warrior yelled back. "Astrid, with a message."

"What is it?" Stoick emerged on deck, looking up to the sky and finding Astrid and Toothless still circling. "And get down here. I'm not yelling to someone in the sky."

"I would," Astrid yelled back, "if they would clear a space for us!"

"Well?" Stoick looked around. "What are you waiting for?"

Someone they actually respected enough to listen to, apparently. When Stoick asked for a space, he got one, which proved the people on deck had been intentionally not doing what she asked.

No matter; she was just glad she had not decided to make the trip on this ship. Toothless set down in the suddenly open space, looking around suspiciously.

"Our ship sent me because our main sail is failing," she reported, keeping it vague because she didn't actually know what was wrong with their current sail. "They want me to find the best possible replacement among the fleet's extra sails, so that we don't lag behind."

"Good thinking, if unusual," Stoick mused. "Only because it wasn't possible before now. Go ahead. Ours, if I remember right, isn't much good, so you'll have to check another ship."

That was all she needed "On it, Chief." She flipped the tailfin, and Toothless leaped back into the air.

"That was ridiculous," she griped as they soared back over the fleet. "But at least that's all they did." She could totally imagine someone tossing an ax at her or Toothless with the built-in excuse of 'I thought they were attacking' ready to go. Vikings were rock-headed enough that they might even be believed.

The worst part of it all was that they had to do it again, without an authority figure to clear a place.

"So, which one do you think we should go to?" Astrid asked idly. She had gotten into the habit of speaking aloud while in the air, sharing whatever was on her mind. It was freeing to be somewhere nobody could possibly eavesdrop, speaking to someone who would not betray or judge her thoughts even if he could.

Toothless, in way of an answer, angled them to another Berkian vessel. They would start with that one.


Six responses so far, and a lot of frustration. Two 'no, we might need it', one 'we're already using ours', and three 'yes, but it's not very good' were all Astrid had to show for several hours of flying, waiting for a place to land, and talking to various Vikings. They were going to Windy Isle ships as well now, having run out of Berkian vessels to check.

The only saving grace in all of this was that she still had not run into Snotlout. He had to be below deck somewhere. She was totally happy pretending he wasn't even here for as long as she could. He would rear his ugly, probably still bruised head at some point.

Next came the Windy Isle ship that was carrying Thunderguts. At least she and Toothless could expect a speedy landing if Thunderguts was on deck...

Which he definitely was, standing at the rudder of his ship, personally steering them forward, though right now that job could just as easily be done by a taut rope to keep the rudder on its current course.

He cleared a place for them before Astrid could even ask, clearing half the deck in the process. His people certainly didn't want to be slow in obeying him.

She jumped off the saddle as soon as they set down, having forgone the safety straps at some point in the repetitive process of flying a short distance, gliding, landing, and then doing it all over again.

"So, stretchin' its wings, eh?" Thunderguts asked politely. "Any particular reason you're doing the rounds?"

"One of our ships needs a good replacement sail," Astrid explained, acutely aware that Toothless did not like Thunderguts, and thus hoping to get this done with quickly.

"We've got one for yeh," Thunderguts rumbled helpfully. "Oy, Skarn! Go get the backup sail."

The named Viking, who had been loitering nearby, jumped to attention and disappeared below deck.

"It'll be a minute, it's probably buried." Thunderguts smiled welcomingly. "So, what's this I hear lately about ye maybe joining our tribe?"

Astrid was only caught off-balance for a moment. "Possibly," she agreed noncommittally. "It looks like that at the moment."

"Speedifist's parents got a good deal," Thunderguts asserted. "And I got a better one."

"Sir?" She didn't like that tone of voice. Oddly enough, for once it was not directed at her, but at the dragon currently winding his way around her, even more on edge than before.

"The dragon comes with ye, right?" Thunderguts clarified. "I'm more than happy to host such a... unique... creature."

"Yes, he will be going where I do," Astrid agreed. "And as long as that hosting involves him alive, uncaged, unharmed, and with me, we're good with that." There was a chance, however undesirable, of things playing out that way. She might as well make sure there would not be any complications in that direction.

"O' course!" Thunderguts laughed, making as if to put a large hand on her shoulder, before thinking better of it. "Nobody'll mess wit' what you've got goin'. We'll be happy to welcome ye to our tribe."

That was all well and good on the surface. Astrid added one more complication to her mental list. If her life played out in this direction, she might have a Chief with ambiguous motivations to deal with. At least Stoick was straightforward. Thunderguts clearly had plans for her and Toothless, and she had no way of knowing what those were.

Well, actually, she could ask. "What would you do with us if we were yours to command?"

"No idea," was the immediate answer. "Hard to think of what I could do differently. I'll let ya know if I think of anything."

Sure. There had to be some ideas rolling around in his head, he just didn't want to share them. That was fine; she wasn't going to have to deal with him, ideally. And if she did end up needing to handle whatever he wanted from her, there was always the option of just flying away. It would be impossible to both control and use her and Toothless, and he would want to use them.

"Of course," Thunderguts suddenly added, "all o' that's dependent on whether any o' us survive the next few days."

"True enough," Astrid agreed. "What brings that up?" It had been an oddly quick change in the direction of the conversation.

"Helheim's gate," he said, pointing behind her. "We're almost there, and all bets are off in that foggy maze."

Astrid looked over her shoulder to see both the Viking sent to get the sail returning, carrying a quite bulky roll of fabric she was going to have to get Toothless to carry in his paws...

And more importantly, a bank of peculiarly low clouds on the horizon. She might not have recognized it if someone had not pointed it out, but she knew now. That was the start of the area around the nest. Helheim's gate, as it was known.

The fight was literally on the horizon, now. That needed to be dealt with before anything else could matter, and everyone knew it.

Author's Note: Really, anyone in Thunderguts' position would have some ambition for a dragon and rider suddenly bound to his tribe and people. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. For all we know, he's hoping to send Astrid and Toothless on trading missions, or to use them to talk quickly and efficiently to other tribes...

Oh, who am I kidding. The implications are so obvious I don't even feel the need to keep them unspoken. He'd use them for war of some sort, that's not even a question. Although, let's be fair, Stoick planned exactly the same thing. Different person, same ways of thinking.

It might not even matter after next chapter. I know who dies and who lives, but you don't.

Also, yes, I probably contradicted some canon past the first movie when Astrid thought about water-dwelling dragons. (And the Riptide is my own OS, aka Original Species). I don't really mind, as the only canon this story uses is HTTYD1, so contradicting later elements isn't really a problem. I kind of envy the writers who began writing when HTTYD1 was all there was, in a way. They had so much less to work with, but they had all the important stuff. Broken, one of my all-time favorite stories, was written so long ago that it came pretty close to pre-empting GotNF's auto-tailfin idea. Less to build off of, but more space to build in without hitting something canon defined already.