Chapter 31, everybody! Y'all remember Hiro's older brother, right?...
In other news, human bones take about four to six weeks to heal—dragon bones…hmm. Also minor reference to some activity up north and discussions on whether or not it's ethical to leave Yokai to their own devices once trained. ;)
Also trying to figure out how many ribs a dog or lizard would have to get a general idea internet searches have failed me on this. And then just now looked it up and got it what is with these search engines. So…did more than the projected twenty-seven but less than what I had originally written, forty-seven, to account for the longer torso of a Night Fury. Someone who majors in speculative biology, please help. Keel bones are triangular bones that act as the sternum for birds and is where the flight muscles attach, so those make sense on a dragon. Bats and pterosaurs also have them, so yes these make sense on something flighted.
Big Hero 6 © 2014 Disney
How To Train Your Dragon © 2010 DreamWorks
Time had lost all meaning for Older-Brother.
He was still trapped in his cave, the only thing keeping him from death being the trickles of water he could get from the ice. He scratched and scrabbled as much as he could every time he woke up, but every time he struggled upright it was to increasing dizziness, and his bouts of wakefulness kept getting shorter. None of the dragons were very meaty, not with Mountain-King hogging all the food, and Older-Brother didn't have much weight to lose to begin with.
He was aware of this, was aware of all of this, was starting to despair at his lack of progress—the longer he was in here the weaker he got, the further away any chance of rescuing Little-Brother got—
I can't give up, he told himself, forcing himself back to the ice and stone, pawing at the ice, sending sharp bolts of pain through the claws he had worked down to the quick. I can't give up—Little-Brother needs me. Someone has to help.
Someone….
He was curled up around his aching stomach, the cavern swimming all around him…just…until it stopped moving….
The next time he opened his eyes, Little-Brother was there.
"Little-Brother!" he gasped, hardly daring to believe his eyes—there—there there there in front of him as he scrambled, trying to get his paws under him—"Wait—how are you here?"
Little-Brother sat there, watching him. "I'm not."
"I—what do you mean?" Older-Brother asked, finally getting his feet under him.
"I'm not here, Older-Brother—you never came and got me."
"No—no I'm trying—" Reach out—
Paws passed through him.
He shrunk back, horrified. "No."
"Believe it, Older-Brother," Little-Brother said. "You failed."
"No…no…."
"It's your fault, you know," Little-Brother continued. "You could have insisted I stay with Older-Night-Fury, you could have insisted I stay with Honeysuckle—you could have ignored Mountain-King. You know you could have."
"Little-Brother—I'm trying, I swear—"
"There's no point," Little-Brother interrupted. "I'm dead, remember?"
"No," Older-Brother choked. "No—you can't be—I'm—I'm dreaming. That has to be it. This has to be a dream."
Little-Brother sat up on his hind paws…had a weird expression on his face.
"Well, you're half-right," Little-Brother said. "More like…this has to be a nightmare."
And then suddenly, Little-Brother's claws were digging into himself—
Older-Brother froze in horror as the skull-faced Yokai shucked Little-Brother's hide—couldn't react—
Was suddenly slammed against the wall, the Yokai's claws digging in, eyes dark, teeth jagged and sharp—
"Small, but serviceable," it said, glancing at Little-Brother's discarded remains before turning that leering jawline on him. "You'll work much better."
No—no—
Its jaws unhinged, surged forward—
"GYAH!"
Older-Brother jerked awake, spinning frantically, trying to face everywhere at once—
No. No Yokai, no dead Little-Brother, just him, soaking wet—wait, why was he wet?
"Up here!"
He scented fresh air at the same time he heard the hissed call—looked up, saw a dripping hole in the ice above his head, and peering down it—
"Guys!" he gasped in relief.
Swift-Strike grinned at him, ducked out of the hole. "Incoming!"
Healing-Talon's head suddenly appeared—
A fish plopped down into the water next to him.
He gobbled it up, hardly tasting it—Honeysuckle appeared next, dropped another fish that disappeared just as quickly.
"Guys," he said thickly, trying to collect himself, shaking from relief, weakness, a lingering terror from the nightmare…."What…how…."
"We've been working on this for a while now," Honeysuckle said. "We've only been able to do a little bit at a time without Mountain-King noticing, and the ice was really thick."
"We also had to be concerned about boulders trapped in the ice," Healing-Talons added, pushing his white head over so he could be seen.
"I finally got impatient and flamed the rest of the way tonight," Swift-Strike said, butting her head into the gap as well. "We figured we were close."
"Blue-Firescales and Greenscales and Older-Light-Fury have been taking turns with us," Honeysuckle said, pushing her way back into the gap. "They're keeping an eye on Mountain-King tonight and stirring up trouble if we need a distraction."
"Which has been often," Swift-Strike said, pushing her way back in. "I think we're officially branded as troublemakers now."
"Are you well?" Healing-Talons asked.
"We wanted to bring more fish but Healing-Talons said too much after you hadn't eaten would hurt worse," Honeysuckle added.
"Guys—guys I'm—I'm fine," he lied, flexing his now-useless front talons in the water. "I've just…had a lot of time to myself lately."
Silence.
"You know we know you're lying, right?" Swift-Strike asked.
"Older-Brother, it's okay," Honeysuckle said. "Nobody's given up—we're still working."
"Has anyone heard any news about Little-Brother?" Older-Brother asked.
"Told you," Swift-Strike said. "Not yet—none of our wing-group has been allowed out except in the shallows to hunt, and we can't exactly ask around about your Terrors."
Ugh. "But you guys are all right?"
"WE'RE fine—WE'RE not the ones who've been trapped in an ice-cave for a moon-cycle."
A—a moon-cycle—Little-Brother had been alone for that long—
That skull-faced Yokai could've—
No. No he wasn't going there. Not yet.
Not while there was still hope left.
"I've been working my way out from here, but it's slow going," Older-Brother reported. "Plus, you know how some dragons want some solitude, their own cave?...Yeah I don't get that."
A trio of churring laughs, soft and nervous.
"Listen," Honeysuckle said, back in the hole. "We can't stay much longer, but we'll be back tonight once Mountain-King's asleep."
"Hey, thanks to you I can actually TELL when night is," Older-Brother said, looking at the hole. "I can keep working in the meantime."
Healing-Talons stuck his head down again. "You should rest and let the fish work. You will be needing your energy."
He was needing to get out of here, to go rescue his brother—
His legs wobbled once more and he was forced to concede Healing-Talons' point.
"All right," he sighed, sitting down. "But guys? Thanks."
"No problem," Swift-Strike said.
"We'll get you out of there soon," Honeysuckle promised.
"It is what friends are for," Healing-Talons added.
And then they were gone.
Older-Brother laid down there, not wanting to pad further into the cave and higher ground because that meant leaving the little circle of light, of outside air, of freedom.
I'm sorry, Little-Brother, he thought, resting his head on his paws to keep it out of the water, eyed the water thoughtfully before slurping some up. I'm taking forever, and I don't even know if you're still alive. Look up, at the lighter darkness at the other end of that narrow tunnel in the ice. I want you to still be alive—I don't know what I'd do if I found out you weren't.
Please…please still be waiting for me. Eyes narrowed.
Please have enough sense not to come back here.
Hiro watched, ears flipped up, as Obake undid the now-abbreviated bindings on his wing, gingerly poking it before putting fresh cloths on it. He could feel it—his wingbone was healing, was healing so much better than he could have hoped.
He was going to fly again.
And as strange as it was to say, it was going to be thanks to this Yokai, one of the most dreaded of dragon-hunters.
This was incredible—as Older-Brother would say, unbelievable. The knowledge he gained here would make him indispensable, would help so many dragons….
Some of his mirth trickled away as he reflected on this unlikely friendship. Other dragons would use his knowledge to better counter Yokai. Yokai which might be friendly like Obake turned out to be, but might just as likely be more than willing to kill dragons. Kill dragons like Obake still did, there was more than one time where he had come back smelling of fresh blood. Those times they had snuck to Obake's nest in the Yokai-nest—terrifying but important, he needed to see how their nests were laid out—those times still stank of dragons that had met their end. It hadn't been so bad after the rains, but it was still a thing.
Hiro huffed, prompting Obake to glance at him amid cleaning up the scraps of fabric—it would be dangerous to lead dragons to believe that Yokai would befriend them, unless he could figure out a way to determine if more Yokai could be inclined to be friendly. Maybe that big one that talked to Obake and brought fish, he seemed nice.
What if they weren't? What if he was right in his supposition, that Obake was a half-Yokai and therefore an outcast? Such a thing wasn't a foreign concept to dragons—Mountain-King had kicked out his fair share of dragons, and Older-Light-Fury had heard that a lone Night Fury had been caught in the thrall of a northern queen—odd, considering it wasn't really in their species' nature to be alone.
Maybe that was what this was: he was desperate and lonely and more than willing to tack draconian logic to a not-dragon. He might as well be slurping up eels.
No, no, don't think that way—watch. Obake was friendly enough, focused on making sure Hiro had enough to eat, was warm and safe, that his wing was healing—healing well enough to fly! Good as new! Something he could have never hoped for otherwise—he had even gone so far as to offer a gift-name, one that Hiro had finally accepted, had been happy to be benign to the other dragons.
So now it bore the question of what to do with this friendly Yokai once he did heal.
Hiro considered this—Obake came back with his fair share of scrapes, of the kind that suggested being plotted against. The Yokai never seemed concerned with this, and Hiro suspected he gave as good as he got. But it also suggested he didn't get along well with his flight, and the times he saw Obake interacting with other Yokai it seemed very stiff. Just flying off meant leaving him here, and Obake talked about Hiro flying again with a longing that suggested that he wanted to as well, so badly it hurt.
Laying there, watching him make markings in the bundle of leaves he called a notebook, Hiro came to an honestly dangerous and idiotic conclusion: when he left, he'd have to take Obake with him.
Oh that was fun to try to rationalize out—the base thought of once you train a Yokai it's probably cruel to release them back into the wild just sounded kind of flimsy; it'd make sense if Obake were a hatchling, but he was full-grown and obviously capable of taking care of himself. No one would likely believe him saying he was friends with a Yokai—he'd have a hard enough time trying to convince them all Obake was friendly, or at least convincing them not to kill him on sight, like you were supposed to do with Yokai.
Ugh, if only Older-Brother were here! Older-Brother would think this plan idiotic, certainly, but he'd patiently go through the entirety of it with Hiro, pointing out all the places it could go wrong and everywhere Hiro had left holes in the plan—it would enable Hiro to tighten everything up, see it from a different angle, know how to present this idea so it would be accepted.
And then what? Would it be kind to take a grown Yokai out of its environment? Would he have to take another Yokai as well so he wouldn't be lonely? Yokai ate fire-nibbled fish so feeding him wouldn't be a problem—but taking him back to Mountain-King and expecting everything to be all right? At best he'd have to hope that one of the more morbid scare-you stories were true, and that Obake would kill Mountain-King from the inside-out when he swallowed the Yokai.
Granted, killing Mountain-King would solve a lot of problems, but at the same time he didn't see that as a way to get the dragons to accept Obake—just a new reason to fear him. The Yokai killed our alpha now what we could be next EVERYONE RUN! And that was with hoping they didn't just decide to kill him—most dragons figured that an individual predator wasn't too too dangerous; a dragon could take on an individual predator on their own, almost always outweighing them and possessing more natural weapons, and a convenient escape route if things got too dicey. They would see Obake as an easy kill.
And from what he had seen, Obake was anything but.
"Now what?" Obake asked, looking over at Hiro flopping down and sighing.
"So I may have just realized that my big plan has more holes in it than a teething log," Hiro said—not that Obake would understand him. "I can't just leave you here, but I don't think I can take you with me, and I can't stay here—I need a better idea."
Obake arched an eyeridge, groom-nibbled along Hiro's spine with those clever paws—ah, that felt good. Didn't address any of his problems, but it felt good.
So he still had problems—he'd get to them. There was still no hurry right now, his wing was still healing—would heal, which was GREAT. And then he'd have to build up his wings again so he could make that flight…it would take time, but he had time.
He'd think of something.
Obake was quite pleased with Hiro's progress, all things considered.
It had been a month now, and Hiro's wing seemed to be healing quite fine, and the dragon seemed to be growing on top of that—dusty black scales were starting to be shed for glossy ones, and his torso was filling out enough that Obake could no longer count his ribs (thirty-seven total, if you were interested).
"You're getting weighty," he pointed out one day, lifting Hiro's front a little—and causing Hiro to give him a startled look. "Am I going to have to cut back on your fish? I don't want you getting fat."
Hiro huffed, batted at his hand when he teased one of those nubs, accepted the scratches to his neck and eventually rolled to his back for belly rubs. Definitely filled out, couldn't even see the keel bone that had been so prominent on him. Trace that bone thoughtfully, causing Hiro to shiver and flip back to his feet—
Give him a confused look.
"You were underfed," Obake said thoughtfully, arms crossed as he looked the little dragon up and down. "Why? How? You obviously know how to feed yourself," he said, thinking back to the dragon blasting the pond that first day. "And you have all the fish you could ever want in the ocean." Perhaps not around Yokai, where everything had been overhunted—
For that matter, why bother raiding Yokai? If dragons were after food, then why bother with here? There had to be lower-risk targets that yielded a higher reward—were they still attacking here because they had when it was still a thriving village instead of a mercenary camp? But why persist? Why continue when it became clear that there wasn't enough food to warrant going head-to-head with vicious Yokai?
It was the sort of problem he loved to shred to bits and examine from every angle, but the more he did the less he saw—Yokai and its surrounding islands were called the Ghost Archipelago thanks to their marauding ways, no resources or other villages within miles of them. You would think, that with resources so severely depleted the dragons would move on.
Better yet: Hiro and the other dragons seemed to prefer fish over any other sort of food, and with a whole ocean to tap…why bother with Yokai? Hiro didn't seem to care for fish treated the way they did, so that wasn't it…and with how many dragons they lost to the Yokai per raid…it didn't make any sense.
"Hrr?" Hiro noised, pawing at his elbow and redirecting his attention.
"I'm having a thought," he told the little Fury. "That added all together, examined from multiple angles, and considered carefully, you dragons have no reason to even bother with this island."
Hiro nodded thoughtfully, sat down with nubs and ear flaps out.
"Sometimes I wish you could talk," he told the little dragon. "In a way I can understand," he added, when the dragon huffed at him. "I'm at the point where I'm certain that for you to persist in an idiotic behavior, then there must be a reason backing it. What that is, however, I can't fathom."
Hiro tapped his claws against his snout, crumpled up in thought, not quite as shocking now as when he first imitated the motion Obake knew he himself made—dashed off, came back with a stick, smoothed out a spot of sand before scratching several lines in it.
Several lines which, if you were being generous, seemed to outline an island, dragons flying to it….
And something huge egging those dragons on.
"So you're either being chased by something, or something is ordering you to attack here," he guessed—which did not clear anything up at all. Couldn't be chased, they wouldn't stop here and then fly back the way they came.
So something was ordering them to attack.
Think, consider—froze as that concept sank in. Yes, he could understand that, understand it completely. Because what were the Yokai but mindless monsters at this point, egged on by a horrendous leader? They had become as bad as the things they fought.
"Hrrf?" Hiro noised, looking up at his snort.
"Something called dramatic irony," he told the dragon. "I doubt you'd understand."
Hiro tipped his head, looked at his drawing, back at Obake—maneuvered the stick around so he could poke Obake before tapping the drawing of that huge monster, looking back at Obake hopefully.
"I would hope that wasn't drawn to scale, firstly," Obake told him. "Secondly, we've been hunting for your nest for years—at this point only a dragon could—"
Hiro chirped in confusion at his abrupt pause, the way he was reevaluating Hiro. He wouldn't do it for Callaghan, no….
Although honestly, he couldn't see a reason to go forth and slay that monstrous beast. It was causing its subjects to suicide on Yokai, yes, and if he killed it somehow they would leave Yokai alone and….
And with no dragon raids, the Yokai could turn their attention on the wider world.
"Why couldn't you have come with this information twenty years earlier," he sighed, sagging. He had no motivation to save this place, that had ended up being a prison for him. The place it had been before…well, he had very little reason to save it then, either. Everyone—well, almost everyone viewed him as that cursed child, would have probably killed him for working some sort of quote-unquote 'magic' on a dragon to get it to be friendly. He would have done it hoping he could come flying back with arms spread wide to receive the adulation that would not have been heaped upon him…hoping to impress her.
"Hrrf?" Hiro noised, pawing at his elbow again and alerting him to the fact that his attention had drifted once more.
"Sorry," he told the little dragon. "Just entertaining the notion of how things might have been." If he had killed the dragon alpha back then the raids would have stopped, they would have had no reason to kill dragons, the tribe wouldn't have split. He would have most likely still been miserable, but he wouldn't have been kicking himself for making the wrong decision twenty years later.
He probably would have left by now.
Hiro was pawing at his arm again.
"Do dragons have a sense of time?" he asked idly, scratching Hiro behind the ear flaps. "Of the past, of things that could have been? You're intelligent enough, but dragon life seems infinitely simpler than human life—what use would you have to ponder what might have been?"
Hiro's expression was sad as he put a paw on Obake's knee, pressed in close, rubbing his head against Obake's vest. Yes, that was about his feeling on the matter too.
Shake his head—there was no point dwelling on the past. It was gone, there was no changing it.
But that didn't mean he had to continue living with the consequences—he had a chance now, a real chance….
And he would take it or die trying.
