Author's note:
It may be helpful to know that as per my policy with stories, this particular story is fully written. I am still entirely open to editing as a result of things brought up in reviews though. As such, this story will update roughly once a week (ideally every Friday, but I sadly cannot guarantee that) and will have a total of 34 chapters, including the epilogue. It will have permanently diverged from the plot of the first movie by chapter 9. T rating is for a few rare bits of violence.
Also, for anyone who follows this story, know that I slightly retooled this chapter, though nothing major changed. I felt that it needed a bit of polishing.
The Queen was growing hungry. As she considered her hunger, she decided that tonight would be a night she led a raid on a Viking village, in order to satiate her hunger. She would lead it personally, as usual. Well, as personally as a dragon that never physically left the confines of her volcanic home could lead a raid on a place miles away. For her, that was far more so than one might expect.
She began the routine of selecting one of the hundreds of dragons she had enthralled here in the volcano. Though honestly, her only real choice was between her two prize subjects. She chose one of the two at random. The unlucky one had his mind further invaded by the Queen, who seized control of his senses and physical self. Fully immersed, her consciousness was almost entirely concentrated in controlling this dragon. In this way, she was able to personally lead raids without ever risking herself. But, really, was not any dragon she completely and utterly controlled as an extension of her will, not for all purposes her self? Her only regret was that she was not able to do this to more than one dragon at a time. How glorious it would be to fight as an army, every member of it under her complete control. Maybe someday. For now, she could not even control her own body while controlling another.
She contemplated this as her stolen body took flight, and directed her thralls towards the nearest Viking village. For now, she had to settle for taking one dragon and leading her thralls into battle. For this purpose, the best choice was obviously a Night Fury. Not only were they fast and powerful, they had a little something extra. In what she considered a pale imitation of her abilities, Night Furies, at least under her control, were able to see through the senses of another, lesser creature, such as a Terrible Terror or bird. However, they, and by extension, she, were unable to do anything but observe.
This both vexed and pleased the queen. Vexed, because it seemed a slap in the face of her inability to control more than one dragon at once, as even using another dragon's abilities she was unable to do anything but observe through secondary subjects. Pleased, because that meant the only dragon even close to being a threat to her was so much weaker than she herself was.
The raid was approaching the island of interest. She could see through her stolen eyes the lights of the structures that marked food and danger for her thralls, though she didn't really care about that. She commanded her thralls to remain unseen for the moment and directed her stolen body down towards the forest. She searched fruitlessly for a few moments. Then, she spotted a Terror hiding under a log. She grabbed it with her thrall's nimble claws, not caring that she drew a little blood. Through her thrall, she made eye contact and had her thrall create a link, as only the Night Furies could do. And then there were three. She took the Terror back into the air, before dropping it on the outskirts of the village, unseen by anyone. She sent her thrall into the air and had it concentrate on the perception of the Terror. A few moments was all it took to see where the food was stored, and to make sure there were no humans lying in wait. She could have used a thrall for this, but there was no reason to. Sometimes such scouts didn't come back. She had no control over the Terror through this link, and so it flew away, fleeing the island.
That was annoying. There were only a few ways to break such a link, and she would have to chase the Terror down later. For that, its death would be slow and painful. Having done this so very many times, she knew exactly how to ensure that.
Annoyed but content, she returned to her thralls and gave the order to attack. They did so, and the flightless inhabitants of this place raised the alarm in an attempt to defend the food that she felt was rightfully hers. In order to maximize distraction, and thus food retrieved, the queen used her stolen self to destroy lookout towers. It was something she enjoyed doing, and a convenient way to do damage while keeping this valuable vessel out of harm's way. She had experienced the death of a few vessels over the course of the last three hundred years, and it was something she very much disliked. Living vicariously was pure profit, but dying vicariously was not so enjoyable.
As a result of this, when she felt something unexpected wrap around her proxy's body, right after she blasted another tower, her reaction was swift. After discerning that the body in question was plummeting towards land at high speed, and unable to do anything but wail in frustration as its wings were ensnared, she swiftly began pulling out. As her consciousness receded, she cut her connection to the unfortunate dragon in question altogether, in order to avoid his death in the next few seconds. She took a moment to reorient herself, back in her original body in the volcano.
She was not very happy. The queen sent her consciousness out once more, to a random thrall that happened to be participating in the raid. After immersing herself once more in a foreign host, she took control of the raid and directed it to its completion. As she flew herself back with the thralls, she examined the catch. Adequate, though not quite what she would have liked in terms of quantity, given what it had ended up costing her. That had been one of her two favorite thralls for leading raids. One of her two Night Furies, and the younger of the two. Oh well. She still had one more. With this thought, the one-track mind of the queen nearly forgot completely that she had ever had another Night Fury. What was not now would not be remembered. The loss of life for one thrall, however rare the thrall in question was, was inconsequential.
She piloted her commandeered body towards her nest, along with all of the others. She saw, with no empathy or regret, the other Night Fury frantically searching the returning raiders. When the other Night Fury saw her, or more accurately the slit pupils that were the only outward sign the Queen controlled a host, it despaired and flew away sadly. She wasn't worried about it trying to leave. No thrall could leave the nest and the waters immediately around it, except on raids. And no thrall could kill themselves. They had no choice but to obey her orders, and that was always one of the first. She would not lose thralls to such things. They lived to fight and die for her, to feed her. Nothing else. They died for her, not to get away from her.
She would have to consider taking revenge on that specific place at some point. It had killed one of her most valuable servants. What she did not know was that the dragon in question was not dead. Not yet. And thus, in her arrogance, the queen voluntarily forgot about a potential future enemy. One with a very personal reason to hate her, beyond his own enslavement. However unlikely that possibility might have been. And as she had completely cut her control to avoid his death, she had no idea what came next.
She did not see through his eyes as he was found by the one who shot him down. As the human looked down, raised his knife, and then after a few moments drooped in despair. And as the human freed her once-thrall.
She was unable to use him to kill the boy in question, as she would have done if she had been aware of any of this. And so when he spared the boy for some unidentifiable reason, there was no one around to correct him, to force him to act.
She did not know what came after that, for she was unaware there was an after for that dragon. But the dragon was aware there was an after. He was confused, disoriented. He had taken a blow to the head, and certain parts of his memory were cloudy, unclear. Faces, names. He was injured, grounded. But he was free. The Queen had removed herself entirely. And so, the lonely and frightened dragon was free to act for himself. Free to make his own choices. And tired of violence, he chose to interact, instead of attack. That is where this story begins.