O-O-O
"Why did you make me do that?" Eret demanded, prodding Ruffnut in the chest with an accusing finger.
His ship was rapidly putting water between them and the shore, and by extension the bulk of Drago's forces. Their ships were all either unmanned or beached and unmanned, and any effective pursuit would come from the skies if it came at all.
Von had one eye on the air, just in case, but she didn't think it would come to that. Drago's ships might be out of position to give chase, but they were at least reliable. His dragons… That had to be up in the air now, with the King he allied with dead on the beach. If he even intended to send pursuit at all. Ruffnut had pulled them out of the situation before anyone was forced to make decisions they couldn't take back.
Their status as allies of Drago might be in question, but it being in question was better than them being outright declared enemies. Drago probably didn't have the capability to chase them and force the issue right now.
"Because I'm in charge and – hey, you keep that sail down, we're putting distance between us and them or I'm feeding you to the dragon rider!" Ruffnut stomped across the deck, and the sailor who had been subtly pulling the sail up hurriedly let it drop.
Grey was at the front of the ship, leaning against the railing with her eyes on the horizon. Her grey, scaleless skin shuddered and rippled at every little movement of her muscles, and she looked painfully uncomfortable, but not so much as to drive her to seek out warmer confines. Toothless stood with her, a wing out to shelter her from the worst of the wind, his gaze fixed on any sailor who came within ten steps of them. None dared.
Star, by contrast, was up on the ship's cabin, looking back at the shore and the ruined ice nest. The standoffish female had given no explanation for what she was doing; she could be keeping watch for everyone's benefit, or just staring into the middle distance, or sleeping with her eyes open.
Von, having taken up a place next to the cabin, was keeping one eye on the sailors and one on the sky, sprawled out on her side to take weight off her bruised paws. Many little impacts and strains on her limbs added up over the course of one long day. It would have been nice to relax, but she would settle for a watchful repose while Ruffnut got her usurped crew under control.
"You just stole them from under Drago's nose, how can you possibly claim you're working on his orders?" Eret yelled, stalking after Ruffnut. "I'm turning–"
"Nope, not turning around!" Ruffnut spun around and gave Eret a truly sadistic grin. "Forget who I am or what I'm supposed to be doing. You're really going to argue while your ship carries four Night Furies? Think you'd live to regret the decision?"
Eret paled. He glanced at the hatch Maour had disappeared down a few moments ago. "The rider…"
"Personal friend, did I never mention it?" Ruffnut said glibly. "Don't need him to set them on you, anyway. They want off that gods-forsaken island and out of the ice, and you're going to be the nice, likeable, inedible ferryman for them. Do it without whining and I'll do you a huge favor."
"What could possibly be worth defying Drago?" Eret asked tiredly. He kept looking over at his shoulder, back toward the ice nest. "We never even offloaded our latest catch."
"Yeah, here's the favor," Ruffnut said loudly. "Cooperate, and I'll convince these dangerous, bloodthirsty dragons to look past your chosen occupation. I think we could run this ship without you, so don't make us find out."
Eret paled even further, to the point that Von wondered whether he was going to faint. She bared her teeth when he looked her way; she was the only one in a position to look especially menacing at the moment.
"I have injured men below deck and we need supplies," Eret weakly protested.
"All in good time, captain," Ruffnut assured him, patting his shoulder. "For now, just get us out of sight of the angry man and his army."
"You're insane," Eret groused. "Men! We make for open water! Bother a Night Fury and I'll let them have you to appease them!"
"Good choice," Ruffnut said ominously.
O-O-O
Maour picked his way through the chaotic, messy hold. He passed by the small side-chambers that smelled of blood and other, even less appealing human scents. There would be injured sailors… There would be injured soldiers, too. Ruffnut might intend this ship to take them all the way home, but unless she wanted a real mutiny, it was more likely to only take them as far as the first occurrence of human civilization. He was fine with that; what he'd overheard through Von's ears had him confident Ruffnut could hold control at least that long, and then they could bargain their way onto a safer ship for the rest of the trip.
If they needed a ship at all. He didn't know what was up with the two females Toothless had brought along, or Einn and the younger male they'd left in the ice nest. That was a logistical tangle that would need working out soon.
But first he needed to confirm a few things Ruffnut had told him. That there were injured men aboard, for one thing, but also that there were caged dragons… and that the cages were all full.
He stepped into the main cargo hold, avoiding a splinter-lined crater in the wooden floor, and saw the half-dozen cages he'd been told to expect.
The one closest to him was overfull, with a miserable-looking four-winged dragon crammed inside.
'And so the dark human comes to gloat,' the four-winged dragon growled. His head was pressed up against the bars, one baleful eye pointed Maour's way.
"I come to talk, not gloat," Maour retorted, pulling over an empty bucket and flipping it over. It would make a passable stool. "Your alpha is dead."
'I know,' the four-winged dragon said darkly. 'I felt his passing. My human?'
"Also dead, though I would have stopped that if I had been there," Maour admitted. "Did she speak to you? Could she?"
He had multiple reasons to speak to the four-winged dragon, some more pressing than others, but that was the one that was at the front of his mind. He needed to understand. To understand more than Drago did, in the end, when he gutted the rider after a single look.
'Not like you,' the four-winged dragon grumbled angrily. 'She should have stayed. She should have listened. I was content to let our deal ground me to keep her away from the rest of it. She should have been too.'
"Did she care that much about your alpha?" Maour asked.
'More than she cared about staying with me,' the dragon snarled bitterly. Something clanged in the far corner of the cage, and his wings shuffled around a bit. He lifted his head to a slightly more dignified position, revealing a tight metal muzzle. 'Apparently.'
Maour repressed a pang of sympathy, trying not to let it show on his face. "How did she come to be here?"
'How does any human come to be in a nest?' the four-winged dragon shot back. 'She was brought. Our alpha wanted to see if he could control humans…'
"Could he?" Maour leaned forward.
'Not at all,' the dragon answered. 'Speak to, with eye contact and touch and much effort, but no control. But he let her stay when she asked. I was in charge of keeping her alive and out of trouble… We spent years flying together. Is she truly dead?"
"Yes." He would not burden this dragon with the gory details.
'So it ends,' the dragon sighed. 'Two decades of companionship. I am truly alone, now. At least do me the honor of ending it here. You cannot be content to watch our kind suffer, even if you fly with a Usurper.'
"Do you actually know what that title means?" Maour asked.
'No, simply that the Skrill and alpha used it with such disgust. Do you?' That large eye blinked at him.
"I wish I did," he said truthfully. "But if you didn't know… You just sat back and watched what was done to Night Furies in your nest? Never questioning? Never objecting?"
'Why does it matter?' the four-winged dragon asked. 'It happened. It will not happen now, because the ones who did it are dead.'
"It matters," Maour said firmly. "So? What was it to you?"
'Not my place to question,' was the reluctant answer. 'A necessary evil, perhaps, a way to keep the Skrill sane and useful. A punishment to prevent some darker urge on the part of the Night Furies. A way to entertain our alpha. Not my responsibility, not something I care about, whatever I might have said about it in front of others. My life focused on other things, and if my alpha approved, then I needed to accept it. That is all.'
"What a terrible way to live," Maour muttered. "Turning a blind eye because it doesn't affect you."
'And look where it brought my alpha and I,' the four-winged dragon agreed. 'Death and ruin. Or maybe that was inevitable.'
Maour made up his mind. "Not as inevitable as you might think," he said, standing from his makeshift stool. "Promise me you'll leave us in peace, and I'll set you free tonight."
'I am your enemy. You will do no such thing.' The dragon's big eye closed. 'Go away. Let me mourn.'
"Fine." He would ask again later. His decision wouldn't change. Maybe the four-winged dragon wasn't perfect, maybe he wasn't even a good person, but the alternative was too brutal a punishment to subject any but the most vile to. Being sold and bought and killed for parts or kept in a cage for the rest of his life…
Ruffnut might have taken over these particular dragon trappers, Drago might have been a surprisingly good person to sell dragons to so long as they weren't Night Furies, but Maour was under no illusions as to what they did and what it normally meant for the dragons in question. He wasn't going to leave any dragons in their clutches now that they couldn't sell to Drago.
Especially not a dragon who, for whatever reasons, kept the company of a human for so long, so amicably. That was the kind of thing Maour wanted to see more of in the world. If he could tolerate Drago being at large in the world, then he could do the same for this particular dragon.
It wouldn't help him feel any closure on the subject of the mysterious dragon rider… But he didn't necessarily need closure. Some mysteries weren't meant to be solved. He knew enough to know he didn't need to dig any deeper.
He had a living, hopeful, uncomplicated family to get back to, and a brother to hold close for a good long while. They were what mattered.
O-O-O
Grey didn't remember the sea.
She knew of it. Enough to imagine it. Maybe she had seen it as a hatchling or fledgling. Maybe not. Those times were fuzzy in her mind, more so than she thought was normal. Good memories were hard to come by when they all involved so much pain in retrospect.
So, to see it now… She drank in the view, the wind, the sounds of water on ice and other water and wood which she definitely only recognized through second-paw descriptions. It was so much, and she had her back to all of the other new things, the people and places and violence and wondrous sights all mixed up together.
This… The water, the ice, the grey sky… This was tolerable. This was new but not so new it hurt, aside from the stinging the salty air brought to her many cuts. The wing sheltering her from the worst of the wind was new, too, and it did the opposite of hurt.
'Grey,' Kappi – Toothless, she might call him, but "warrior" fit him so much better to her, so she called him that in her mind – said softly. 'You know the difference between ice in the sun and a puddle?'
'No?' she huffed. She had yet to see the sun… Maybe it would happen.
'One doesn't know it's a puddle yet,' he explained.
She thought about it for a while. 'Was that a joke?' she asked.
'An attempt at one,' he said mournfully.
'It…' wasn't funny. Nothing was funny right now. Amazing, unbelievably, numbing and painful and overwhelming… Not funny.
'Not great, I know,' he rumbled.
'I think I'm tired of jokes,' she admitted with a soft whine. 'I want… I don't want to have to look for a bright side anymore. I want things to be good without me trying so hard.' She didn't know where this was coming from, except that it had to come from the unknown in front of her. The wood under her paws. The rocking motion that stirred her stomach and made her feel a little like she was flying even when she stood still. The air chilling her to the bone and wetting her face and making it feel like she could go forever–
She backed away from the wooden bar keeping her from the endless water, right into Kappi's chest. He wrapped his wings around her and situated himself to hold her close.
'You can have that,' he told her, his voice gentle. 'It won't be perfect, nothing ever is, but it won't be hard, either.'
'I don't know where to go, or what to do…' She didn't say that part of things being good would be feeling like she could fend for herself, and that she would never be able to. He knew. Her wings were no secret, no hidden defect. Her weak, vulnerable skin was even more obvious. He had to know that what he promised was impossible.
'Just give it some time,' he suggested. 'Some pain and some discomfort and a lot of anxiety. A bit of struggling, not too much but some.'
'Why?' she asked. Why was he saying these things? She wanted to be assured that it would all be easy and perfect… Or maybe she didn't want that, because it could not possibly be true, but still.
'You've got some growing up to do, and I mean that in the most positive possible way,' he rumbled. 'Part of growing up is that you don't have to stand on your own right away. Let us help you.'
'Us…' she hummed.
That sounded good. She wasn't sure she knew what good was, after so long mired in cold and pain and forced cheer, but she would find out.
O-O-O
Eret was surprisingly easy to talk around, all things considered. Sure, Ruffnut had needed to resort to threats to get him cooperating initially, but a bit of sweet-talking after that had him tentatively agreeing that it was probably best he carry them wherever she wanted to go.
That agreement probably had a lot to do with him freaking out about 'betraying' Drago and being possible dragon food if he angered her, but it was still progress. She'd save the "you helped Drago by stopping him from attacking an ally" argument for the next time he lost his nerve. She would allow no hedging of bets, he was all-in on her side and staying that way.
But Eret was handled for the moment. His sailors followed his lead, and the soldiers from other ships that they had in the hold were all too heavily injured to cause problems. She was pretty sure she had this handled.
Which meant it was time to bask in the glory and admiration she so rightly deserved. "Hey, Von, is Maour still down there?"
'He's coming back up now,' Von reported.
"Good, I want to get us all in a huddle to figure out what's coming next." And to gloat. Mostly to gloat, with a side-order of enough useful planning that nobody could in good conscience duck out before she was done.
Soon enough her will was done; she had Maour, Toothless, Von, and the grey-skinned weird Fury all together right in front of the cabin, within earshot of the moody one that ignored her. That was a challenge for when she got bored managing Eret; the stoic, silent types were always the most fun to annoy.
"Friends, dragons, I have called you here today to hear my tale of trickery and excellence," she began.
Toothless thumped his tail on the deck. 'We have more important things to do than listen to you,' he huffed. 'Are we going to have to throw the sailors overboard and learn to sail this thing ourselves, or not?'
"No, I've got that handled," she retorted. "Don't worry your fun-deprived head about it. Now listen, I-"
"We're going to get off this ship at the first busy port we can find," Maour interrupted. "A few shed scales should be good pay for a less disgruntled captain."
"Yes, that's good, but listen," she tried again.
'What is a port?' the grey one asked. 'And a captain? And how will scales help?' She rubbed one paw against the side of a very obviously scaleless leg. 'I don't have any…'
"Skrill!" Ruffnut yelled. Everyone shut up. "Thank you. Now listen close, you'll want to hear what happened after I valiantly battled the big four-winged dragon into submission..."
O-O-O
Ruffnut had a knack for seeing opportunities where others saw only obstacles. Or so Boom was fond of saying; her dragon friend was great at causing mayhem and planning tricks, but it was the improvisation where Ruffnut shined. The taking of various unimportant things and wielding them to attack problems from entirely unexpected angles.
So, when she had followed the four-winged dragon's tracks back to the scene of the crash and found a nearly-dead Skrill there, she didn't do the obvious thing and put it out of its misery. Not immediately. She saw the chance to do something else entirely, something important.
The Skrill was only barely alive, and fading fast. He had dragged himself a short distance away from the crash site by his wings, but he was dragging the entire back half of his body as dead weight. His underside was coated in old snow and blood, and not a single spark could be seen dancing across his scales.
There was playing dead and there was dying, and Ruffnut doubted anyone could fake this, or would go to the effort when there was nobody around to see it. He was so out of it, trying and failing to pull himself one more struggling winglength forward, that he hadn't even noticed her approach.
Killing him would be easy. Waiting for him to die would be even easier; she had the time.
"You're dying." The physical sound of her voice was drowned out by the wind long before it reached him, but the mental, dragon-ish part of it… That got through.
He stiffened, tried to turn himself, and collapsed entirely in the snow before he could even see her out of the corner of his eye.
She moved around his still body until she was upwind – thankfully his back was still to her, it would have made things complicated if his face was to the wind – and waved the alcohol-soaked pouch about, letting the fumes blow over to him. Thanks to the four-winged dragon making her spill some into the pouch earlier, she didn't even have to uncork the bottle itself.
'Smells like death,' the Skrill drawled. A single, forlorn spark popped up from his back, dying out in a quick flash. 'Not… bad. Not me, I hope.'
"Probably you," Ruffnut whispered. "The Usurpers did you in."
'I will survive,' the Skrill growled. His left wing twitched, then fell still again.
He wasn't going to live past nightfall, let alone long enough to heal from having his back broken along with who knew what else, but Ruffnut didn't tell him that. She let more of the alcohol's addling fumes waft over, then spoke again. "I hold no love for them either," she lied. "I could take revenge for you, too. Or I could let it go… They destroyed you, they might do the same to me."
'Lie to them, get close...' A low, crackling cough worked its way out of his ruined body. His voice had a delirious quality to it, growing stronger as she crept closer and let the wind carry her sabotage to him. 'Shred tails, put eyes out… One quick strike dooms them.'
"Tell me why I should, and I might." She was not nearly so invested in the mystery of the Skrill's hate as Maour or many of the Night Furies she knew. People could hate without reason; it was probably some stupid slight blown out of proportion by the centuries. Or maybe they just hated anything with cute ear nubs. But it was still worth asking about. When else would she get such a perfect opportunity?
'Usurpers,' he groaned. He tried to turn again, but something cracked and he fell back, unable to see her. 'Let me see… you.'
"Tell me why your kind hate theirs," Ruffnut insisted. "Give me reason to care. The truth." She considered throwing the sodden pouch over his face, but that was more likely to outright knock him out than make him feel especially truthful. The fumes had gotten a caged dragon rambling, and they had to be having some effect on him now, but too much and she would get nothing.
'The truth…' he wheezed. 'Your kind… whatever kind… you forget so easily. That this is not where we started.'
Ruffnut shut her mouth like her life depended on it. She never thought she'd get this far, but she'd never hear the end of it if she said something to ruin his talkative mood. It was lucky the Skrill could even talk, with how injured he was, let alone that she'd convinced him to spill secrets to a supposed dragon he couldn't see. Alcohol-aided luck, sure, but luck nonetheless.
'Not our place, none of us,' the dying Skrill continued. 'Above for the humans… Below for the rest. They were… important. They had it all. They were greedy. Took power, took it from its place, led the craven masses up. Betrayed us, usurped the high alphas, invaded… Here.'
The distant sounds of battle echoed across the ice field, underlaid by the howling wind. For a moment, she thought the Skrill had died then and there.
'Usurpers stole power, took so many up,' he said in a low, fading voice. 'So long ago… We exiled them after. Never to return. The masses… forgot. Not their fault, but never to return. Usurpers, though… Usurpers should die. Of the four, the dark... The dark broke the peace. They will never be forgiven by... by the three they killed and tricked and trapped, the three…'
He tried to move his neck one more time, twisting his entire body to the side with a single convulsion. His right wing bent at an unnatural angle, something snapped loudly enough that Ruffnut heard it, and he fell to the ground one final time, so broken he couldn't move at all.
'They ruined everything and our kind dies every day because of it,' he gasped. 'Is that… enough? Of a reason?'
His breathing stuttered, then stopped entirely.
Ruffnut waited for a short while, her hands cold and her nose numb, just to be sure. Then she spoke, loud and clear.
"No, but it was a pretty interesting story anyway. Totally worth listening to."
The dead corpse didn't leap up and eviscerate her for failing to uphold her side of the deal, so she supposed he really was dead. She turned her back on his body and started walking back to Eret. Back to his ship, back to her plan… She had some Night Furies to save.
O-O-O
"Is that exactly what he said?" Maour demanded. "Word for word?"
"All of the important words," Ruffnut confirmed, a smug smile firmly fixed on her face. Toothless honestly couldn't blame her. She had gotten answers – rambling, disjointed answers, but answers nonetheless – from a Skrill. "I made sure to remember them for you all."
'You should write it down,' Von murmured. 'So we don't forget.'
"I have parchment in Von's saddle,' Maour offered. 'Write it down right now. The Eldurs will throw us all off a cliff if we don't get it down as soon as possible." He reached for Von's saddle, and she turned to let him more easily access it.
"Yeah, sure… I'll tell the story again and you can write it down." She leaned back against the cabin's door, staring up at the mast. "Like I said, I had just finished–"
"Give me time to get the parchment out," Maour complained, apparently acquiescing to writing for her. Toothless would have refused on principle, but Maour giving in was more likely to get the task done with much less hassle…
Toothless didn't have to stick around for Ruffnut's encore, though. Only Maour needed to do that. He decided to go check on Star. He could make sure she was still alive up there on the cabin roof, at least. She would snap at him – or maybe being free would curb her usually acidic tongue – but he would at least be sure she was doing okay. He leaped up to haul himself onto the top of the cabin. She was stuck on this ship…
With the rest of them…
He pulled himself the rest of the way, squinting at the empty space where Star had been. 'Star?' he barked, a worm of worry gnawing at his gut. Maybe she had fallen off!
"Man, he was so wrapped up in my story he didn't notice a dragon flying away from the ship!" Ruffnut exclaimed.
A dumbfounded silence reigned.
"What, none of you saw it?" Ruffnut loudly asked. "She up and flew off halfway through. I guess she was the only one not totally captivated by my excellent storytelling skills."
'Star can't fly!' Grey barked.
"Sure she can," Ruffnut retorted. "Flap the wings, push up… Can't you?"
Toothless made sure to "accidentally" smack Ruffnut with his tail on the way down from the cabin's roof. 'Maour, I–'
"On it." Maour tossed his parchment to Von, who deftly caught it on her nose, and leaped up onto Toothless' back. "She's not supposed to be able to fly, right?"
'No.' He pushed off the deck so hard the ship rocked a little. 'She is not.'
He didn't know what this meant. How she could suddenly fly, whether she could all along, how all of her actions and remarks and attitude might be recontextualized if she was never grounded to begin with… He didn't understand.
"She's over there," Maour called out. Toothless instinctively accessed his brother's sight, only to see himself from the deck far below and recall that he was linked with Grey, not Maour. One long moment of vertigo later, he snapped back to his own point of view. They would need to get their links sorted out; he was pretty sure Maour had one with Von at present, but that could wait.
He wheeled around in the sky, turning on stiff, sore wings, and immediately spotted the distant figure in the air, headed out over the ice field.
Catching up to her wasn't a difficult task. He was tired and unused to flying after so long going without, but her gait was awkward and her wings were crooked, which impacted her speed and efficiency even if it wasn't severe enough to actually ground her. He closed the distance between them with ease.
'You keep your secrets close to the chest!' he barked out once he was close enough.
'Go away!' Star shrieked, flapping faster, but to no avail. He cautiously flew up beside her, turning with her when she tried to turn away.
'You can fly,' he said accusingly.
'So can you,' she snarled. 'So what? Leave me be.'
'If you plan on going your own way, I just want to know so we do not worry about sticking around for you to find again,' he offered. He didn't have it in him to be too harsh to her. No amount of caustic rudeness disqualified her for a place on their escape ship, and for all that she lashed out with her tongue he had never seen her harm anyone with anything other than words.
'Show me where,' she demanded.
'Where what?' he huffed, confused.
'Where Sadistic died.' She ducked down, putting a bit of distance between them, and he let her. 'I can't find it.'
'Follow me,' he offered. He knew the place. According to Ruffnut, Sadistic hadn't made it any noticeable distance from the site of his crash-landing. It wasn't far, just on the edge of the channel smashed into the ice field…
"What's her deal?" Maour asked quietly as they flew.
'Rude, spiteful, a bully toward Grey, maybe has a thing for Hefnd or me or neither of us,' Toothless summarized. 'Sadistic took her out of her pit at night without telling anyone, and they both lied to cover it up after. She was a prisoner for much less time than Grey. Beyond that, I don't know.'
He chanced a look back. Star was following, though she was glaring at his tail. Maybe at his false tailfin specifically, or maybe just at him. He would be careful to keep both the tailfin and Maour out of her reach. She wasn't usually physically violent, but he definitely didn't know enough about her to rule anything out.
He settled into a shallow glide on their final approach, landing easily in the snow near the crumpled-up Skrill body. Star, by contrast, hit the ground with a heavy thump. She prowled forward, her claws out, and circled around the body once. Twice. Three times.
Then she walked up to his head, put one paw on it, and licked one of his horns. Followed by a completely unexpected blast of fire to the head, breaking said horn off in its entirety.
Toothless wished he could claim that all was clear to him now, but in truth he was even more confused.
'Stupid, twisted idiot,' Star growled, and he couldn't tell if she was talking about the dead dragon or herself. 'I shouldn't care. I know you didn't.'
Toothless shuffled his paws, feeling uncomfortable.
'And you!' Star snapped, her angry gaze jumping up to fix on Toothless. 'You did this.'
'This?' He kicked in Sadistic's general direction. 'Yes, and I don't regret it.' Though technically it had been his siblings who killed Sadistic, he was the reason they were here in the first place. 'He was a monster.'
'To you, maybe,' she snapped. 'We had an understanding. He didn't hurt me badly, and I wouldn't try to fly away. He let me fly some nights, so long as I stuck close to the ice nest, and he practiced catching me.'
'Meanwhile, he tortured the rest of the prisoners whenever he saw fit,' Toothless shot back. 'And used you to get better at hunting our kind!'
'He was not horrible to me, and that is all I care about,' Star snarled. 'I know very well he would have killed me if he was free to do as he pleased, but he was not and there was no escape, not with the Skrill just chafing for something to do that felt like their duty. Einn proved that.'
'Where was all this empathy when it came to Grey?' Toothless asked.
'She's a miserable sack of waste with a happy exterior and not worth thinking about,' Star snapped. 'I don't answer to you.'
'No, you don't.' And he couldn't be happier to wash his paws of any responsibility for her or her actions. 'You had allies right there, and you chose to make friends with your captor. That's disgusting.'
'Survival is disgusting now?' Star snarled, pawing at the snow. The body of Sadistic still lay between them, a morbid divider Toothless was unwilling to cross. 'I did what I had to. I cozied up to the one with power, not the powerless victims. And it turned out that he was more tolerable than some of my own kind, because at least he wasn't a broken waste of life hiding under a rock for the rest of his life.'
'Speak ill of Grey one more time…' He felt Maour's hand on his neck, possibly intended to be calming, but he ignored it. 'No. I'm done with you. I hope you go on to live a normal life, so normal that you look back and realize just how twisted this all was of you.'
'We're all twisted,' Star ground out, glaring imaginary holes in his head. 'Some more than others. You just keep making friends with the weak. One day someone will rip them from you and you'll realize the only ones worth knowing are the ones strong enough to survive, no matter how horrible they have to be to do it.'
She leaped into the air, her crooked wings beating double-time to keep her up and at the right angle.
Toothless let her go. He had nothing more to say to her. If this was the last he ever saw of her, he would be content.
But if it wasn't… That last little rant could be interpreted as a threat.
'I want everyone to keep a very close eye on Grey until we are home,' he said to Maour. 'Star has always had it out for her.'
"I don't think she's going to do anything," Maour said thoughtfully. "I don't think… We'll be careful, of course, but… yeah." He sighed heavily, leaning back. "I don't know. I really don't. You'd know better than me. But I think she's hurting, not murderous."
He shook his head. 'With the company she apparently preferred to keep, I'm worried there might not be much of a difference.'
O-O-O
Even at night, the shoreline of the broken ice nest crawled with light and activity. Green torches were lit everywhere, some moving and some still. Metal clanked on metal and dragons roamed around, the armored ones existing in an uneasy state of peace with the soldiers.
Nobody knew for sure what was going to happen next. The liaison between the humans and dragons was dead in the water, his bulk blocking the tide and causing strange currents that rocked the smaller ships pulled up behind the ones that had been beached during the battle. Without him, the dragons lacked a leader. A controller, from Drago's point of view. But there was no fresh fighting breaking out; the dragons had lost the one who ensured the humans tolerated them, and they too were afraid of breaking the peace.
It wouldn't last. Not like this. But it would hold for a little while. Both sides needed time to lick their wounds. The humans were temporarily stuck at the ice nest while they fixed and maneuvered their ships, and many of the dragons wouldn't survive flying out to find a safer resting place. Not in the cold and increasingly heavy snow falling from the heavy clouds above.
Maour would have happily left them to figure it out on their own, if it wasn't for one thing. One remaining cause of guilt, of obligation.
There were two flightless Night Furies still on the island, and he could not in good conscience leave either of them to Drago's nonexistent mercy. Einn might have gotten them dragged into this whole mess, but he didn't deserve that, and neither did his son.
Toothless took them low around the back of the ice nest, well out of sight of any watchful eyes on the ships. The nest was a mostly-stable mound of broken ice, having finished collapsing in on itself. He glided in on silent wings, landing where Maour indicated.
Hefnd and Einn had left the crevice Von had found them in, as it was empty. Where they had gone from there, though… Ice didn't take pawprints.
'Where would they go, when everything they knew was collapsing around them?' Toothless hummed as they paced along the length of the crevice. 'They would have no reason to approach the dragons who went about their lives within eyeshot of their suffering. They couldn't go back to our enclosure if they wanted to.' Said enclosure, whatever it might originally have looked like, was just another pile of scattered rubble now.
"I don't know," Maour said. Toothless would know them better than he did. "We could ask some humans… If Drago has them, the news might have filtered down through the ranks."
'You said Drago wouldn't want to break the peace, surely that applies to all the dragons who are sticking around?' Toothless huffed. He took to the air, flying them up and out of the ruined nest. 'Drago doesn't know that Einn and Hefnd probably don't trust any of the other dragons here.'
"He doesn't even know they were captives," Maour clarified. "Maybe not even that they exist, but we can't be sure of that." This would have been a lot easier if he still had his uneasy alliance with Drago. He could have walked right up to the warlord and claimed that the other Night Furies needed to go with him, or else they would go berserk. Drago would probably even have agreed, given his attitude toward Night Furies.
Such a move might still work now, but it wasn't worth risking Drago having a quiver of arrows put through him the moment he showed his face. Not when he didn't even know if Drago had them.
'Hey!' Toothless barked, startling Maour out of his brooding thoughts. 'You, armored one, down here.'
'Night Fury with rider!' a dusty brown Nadder with a dented breastplate flew down to them, his wings flapping with a restraint that spoke of deep tiredness. 'How goes it? Human still treating you well?'
'Of course, why wouldn't he?' Toothless asked, feigning ignorance.
'Lucky,' the Nadder sighed. 'In hindsight, it was a big mistake to let the alpha deal with the humans for us… Now we don't know whether they are going to stick together, or go hunting another bad nest, or turn on us the moment they feel they can. It's a bad time for those of us who want to stick around.'
'Some of you want to stay with Drago?' Toothless asked with a curious warble. 'Why?' He had of course seen the ones shadowing Drago from above, but Maour understood his continued confusion. They had never given any reason as to why and refused to talk, while this Nadder seemed perfectly willing to explain.
'We did good work here, even if it was us against our own kin in some cases,' the Nadder explained, diving down to fly below them. 'But if there is one nest like this, there could be more.'
Maour knew from experience that there had definitely been at least one more. One could be unique, two a fluke, but three if one counted the alpha who led the attack on this nest… There had to be more out there in the world. This was not a single, isolated issue.
'There are almost certainly more,' Toothless agreed, likely thinking along the same lines as Maour.
'Yes, and if the humans want to keep hunting those nests, then we would like to fly with them, same as before,' the Nadder explained. 'Maybe with more respect, but mostly the same, I should say. But none of us can talk to their alpha and explain what we are thinking, and there has been so much bloodshed… Some of us are sure they'll welcome us with open wings, and they're even convincing recruits… it's a big fat mess of uncertainty.'
'Recruits from this nest?' Toothless guessed.
'Yes, even two of your kind.'
Toothless craned his neck to look down at the Nadder. 'Really?' It seemed they had just found Einn and Hefnd.
O-O-O
The armored dragons who wanted to stay with Drago's forces had made a small makeshift nest down by the base of the icy debris, claiming the nooks and crannies created by the larger structures that were less likely to collapse. It was a defensible position, mostly out of sight, within easy flying distance of the human encampments further down the shoreline.
Toothless walked around a corner, following his Nadder guide, and saw both of the Furies he sought under a precarious overhang next to several dead bodies.
Hefnd and Einn were working together to pry a conical helmet off of a dead Zippleback. Neither of them had figured out the chin strap holding it on, probably because it had gotten wedged out of sight between two overlapping scales, so they were trying to pull it off by force. An ill-fitting back plate lay loose on Hefend's back, his wings up to keep it in place, and Einn was sporting a neck guard from a much skinnier dragon around his left front leg.
Toothless buried the urge to laugh himself silly at the ridiculous sight. He could laugh later. Once he understood what they thought they were doing. 'Einn. Hefnd.'
Both Furies let go of the helmet like fledglings having been caught stealing a forbidden fish. Hefnd whirled, and his backplate slid right off and thumped to the ground in front of Einn, who turned much more slowly.
'Kappi,' Hefnd growled. 'Not dead yet?'
'Surprisingly, nobody from our little patch of misery is dead,' Toothless huffed. 'Except the Skrill.'
'Good riddance. And the pretender on your back…' Hefnd bared his teeth. 'Or maybe you are the pretender, since it came all the way here to save you.'
'Humans can be impressively tenacious,' Toothless remarked. 'What's with the armor?' He waved a wing at their sorry state. 'It doesn't go on that way, you know.'
'What else are we going to do?' Hefnd snarled. 'Swim away from here? Fly?'
"We have a way to get you to wherever you want, if you're willing to put up with us for a little while," Maour spoke up. "Standing offer. Drago is not good to your kind, specifically. Joining him might be a big mistake."
Einn nudged Hefnd with the tip of his wing, but Hefnd shoved him right back with more force than strictly necessary. 'No. I'm done with all of you and this. I want to kill alphas, and these humans want the same. I'm going with them.'
Toothless thought about that. About Einn, and how he was trying to help Hefnd put armor on. 'Does your father want that?'
'He can go with you if he wishes,' Hefnd growled. 'I don't need him. Haven't for a long time.'
'I'm not asking what he wants to do,' Toothless shot back, dismayed but unsurprised by the younger male's attitude. Hefnd had a strained relationship with his father, and suddenly breaking free of their shared torment didn't seem to have magically solved any of their issues. 'I'm asking what you want for him. Does this seem like a good future for him?'
'It's a good one for me,' Hefnd shot back.
'But not him.' Toothless could see angry, combative Hefnd doing well in a larger group of dragons seeking righteous war. There were far worse things he could turn his anger towards. But not Einn. Not the passive, tired dragon he knew.
'He'll come or go as he wishes,' Hefnd dismissed. 'I am not holding him to me. If you can take him to some paradise…'
Toothless had said nothing about a paradise, but he held his tongue. Hefnd turned to look back at his father.
Einn grabbed the backplate with his teeth and offered it to Hefnd. He still wore that one ill-fitting neck brace around one leg.
'If you've got somewhere for him to rest,' Hefnd said quietly, the heat gone from his voice, 'I think that would be best.'
Einn wilted, his ears falling as he let the backplate fall from his mouth.
'Not because I want you gone,' Hefnd continued, speaking directly to his father. 'Because where I'm going you shouldn't have to follow. Not out of guilt, or thinking you can make up for… everything. I would rather you just go somewhere nice and be as happy as you can manage. I won't go with you, but I would like to know you are there.'
Einn let out a shaky sigh and nodded. He pressed his nose against Hefnd's chest, then kicked the leg armor off and walked over to Toothless.
Toothless made eye contact with the despondent dragon. 'We'll show you where to hide until we can bring the ship back around to pick you up.' Ruffnut would enjoy convincing Eret to sail back into danger yet again, he was sure.
"And as for you," Maour continued, hopping off Toothless' back. "I can show you how it's supposed to go on. And a few other important things."
'Maour?' Toothless had thought they were going to leave Hefnd to it.
"We can't just leave things like this," Maour answered.
Toothless got the impression his brother was talking about more than Hefnd's decision.
O-O-O
Some time later, Maour found his way behind a modest tent, one that had just a few too many guards to belong to anyone but Drago. The sun was supposed to be rising, but the near-blizzard beating down on the entire island gave no opportunity for its warming rays to reach the world below.
He was tired and cold, and his boots were soaked through. He wanted to leave, to flee to warmer waters with his siblings and their commandeered ship.
But, as he had said to his brother before laying out his thoughts on the matter, they couldn't leave things like this. Not when it was all so close to working out, but so very, very fragile. To leave would be to allow this new, mostly positive arrangement between men and dragons to die. Or perhaps even to allow Drago to revert to his old ways for one reason or another. To trust to chance to make the world better.
This wasn't his fight, maybe it wasn't even his business, but he was here and he wanted a better world. He could do something, so he would.
Two dark dragons waited behind him as he cut a slit in the back of Drago's tent. The guards who were supposed to be watching the back had both gone off to warm their hands, lest they lose them. Only for a moment, but this wouldn't take long.
Drago might be paranoid of Night Furies, but it was impossible to instill the same level of fear in men who had never lived through what he had. They were not expecting danger to come slinking in the night, they expected it to arrive on wings and flaming bright, like it always had in the past.
Drago was seated at a flimsy desk, his back to Maour. Two green lamps lit the tent with their eerie glow.
"I should have known the one to fly with them would be as them, impossible to have at my side without having at my back," Drago said tiredly, his back still to the tear in his tent. "Where did I go wrong? Where did I make you feel trapped, that you had to flee?"
"You misunderstand," Maour said firmly, his voice cold. "We are not here to kill you. Though perhaps you deserve it. The dragon rider…"
"I looked into her eyes at long last," Drago said as he pushed his wooden chair back. It scraped against the rocky ground. He turned, and his sharp grey eyes all but burned with intensity as he stood and faced Maour. "I looked, and I saw nothing. Nothing but a feral, hateful beast. I had hoped for more. Someone who believed in something."
"Yeah. Me too." He would be lying if he claimed he wasn't disappointed, in the end. The specter of another dragon rider had turned out to be impressive shadows cast on a wall by the less than impressive reality. Whatever, whoever the dragon rider had been, they made no difference in the world beyond befriending a single dragon and inspiring fear in already fearful men.
One of the two Furies behind Maour growled. He didn't know which, but whoever it was reminded him why he was here. "You lost your ally. The King."
"I had hoped he would survive this day," Drago admitted, something in the hard lines of his face softening minutely. He looked older, for a moment. "To fight by my side for so long… To give me the allegiance of his followers. That was not a thing I took for granted. Even if he left me here, to rule as a new King, I would have been content."
"What were you going to do next?" Maour asked.
"Seek out rumors of coordinated dragon strikes elsewhere, and begin again where I was most needed," Drago said, his fists tightening at his sides. "Until we are overcome or until I die. This was but one nest. But now, without dragons… It will be so much more difficult."
"You are not without dragons." He felt a little better about the knowledge he was about to impart, hearing that. Not everything, not even the most important things, but enough. Enough to see Drago permanently aimed in the right directions, until he lost or died of age, like he had said. "Some, maybe even the majority, want the same thing. To keep going, to find another tyrant and oppose them."
"Without one to corral and direct them…" Drago objected. "You cannot possibly know what even one of the horde wants, let alone all of them."
"I can ask." He swept his arms back, and a Night Fury walked up to either side of him, sticking their heads into the tent. "And they can answer. That is my secret. I can hear and be heard."
"Madness," Drago growled, sounding so much like a dragon himself.
"Some of those here want to follow you." Toothless stepped back and Hefnd came into the tent, displaying the modified Zippleback chestplate Maour had helped him put on. "Not to serve and mindlessly obey. Not to die in your stead. To fight alongside you."
Hefnd growled, showing a hint of teeth, his ears partially down. His orange-eyed glare must have rivaled Drago's own, for Drago blinked first.
"This truly is madness," Drago repeated, more vehemently. His right hand subtly slid backward, seeking his polearm, but it was out of reach and he must dare not move more openly for fear of inviting death too fast to be stopped.
"Madness you need, if you are to continue fighting for freedom elsewhere," Maour said firmly. "Drago Bludvist, you have committed atrocities against my kin. You have also fought tirelessly to free them. I cannot say whether the two cancel out, and if I could I would say they do not… But someone is willing to extend the barest minimum of trust that you will continue to make up for your past choices, if given the means. Someone wants to fight alongside you. Hold out your hand."
They held there for a long moment, nobody moving. The guards… Toothless must have dealt with them, or they were really slacking on their duty. Nothing changed, nobody intervened or ruined the moment. It was very much like just before Ruffnut crashed into their earlier standoff, but with the boot on the other foot. Drago had nowhere to go and no way to understand his opponents, what they were thinking or what they wanted.
Perhaps it was practicality that had him slowly reaching out with his right hand. He had no choice in the matter, none that led anywhere but death. Or perhaps he wanted to believe, to understand. To grasp that which had long been hidden from him.
Hefnd leaned forward, making contact with Drago's rough, old hand. Their gazes locked.
Drago and Hefnd both collapsed, the former falling on the latter as they fell to the ground.
Maour waited, his chest tight and his heart racing, until they both stirred. Toothless was right behind him, should things go wrong. This was not right, what he had facilitated, Drago in no way deserved a connection with a Night Fury… But it wasn't about what he deserved, it was about what would fix the cracking bonds holding him and his army to the right path. What would give all of this a chance to move in a positive direction, instead of falling back into the same old conflicts.
'You are heavy, for a human,' Hefnd grumbled as he shoved Drago up. Drago stumbled back, still obviously dizzy, and leaned heavily against his desk, which creaked warningly at his weight. 'Do you hear me?'
"Yes," Drago said weakly, staring in disbelief at Maour's unmoving lips for some alternate explanation for what he was hearing. "I… This is not possible."
'Anything is possible when idiots decide they can't leave well enough alone,' Hefnd growled. 'I just wanted to help kill alphas, but they said this was the only way that would work.'
"You… will not fly away?" Drago asked, sounding more vulnerable than Maour had ever heard. "Turn on me?"
'I will do as I choose, but listen to me and treat me as an equal and you will have nothing to fear,' Hefnd said stiffly. 'If you cannot do that, say now. I will not be trapped again.'
"I will not make that mistake again," Drago promised. "Never that."
'That is a start.'
Maour backed out of the tent, content to leave them to it. Well, not content, he was itching to stay right there and supervise for the next six months, but he had other obligations. Hefnd was by no means a good diplomatic choice, and Drago was a horrible person in many ways. They might drive each other to murderous rage, or any number of other undesirable outcomes. He didn't expect them to like each other, even in the best-case scenario.
But he had given them a chance. Drago would talk to Hefnd, Hefnd would talk back. They both had something the other wanted, and in neither case was it something that could be taken by force. In a few months, Drago would begin to hear other dragons speaking, and by then…
By then, who knew where they would be. Somewhere other than here. Drago had all the chances in the world, maybe more than he deserved. It was up to him and Hefnd to make the most of this last one.
Maour hauled himself up onto Toothless' back one last time, and they were off, leaving the uncertain future behind amidst the ruins of an icy prison.
O-O-O
Author's Note: I can confirm, in meta terms, that Sadistic is telling the truth as he knows it. There should be just enough here to let readers piece together a mostly full picture without any further clarification. Obviously there's space to further explore the idea, but at the same time I think this is enough of an answer to go on if no further exploration is done.
As for Valka, now that we're totally done mentioning her in-story… I decided early on in the rewriting and by extension re-plotting of this story that where it originally went with her character was way too predictable and wasn't actually at all interesting, especially as the role of 'Hiccup/Maour's mother' is already filled in this AU. (Anyone who would like more detail on that or any aspect of how the first draft was meant to go is free to PM me about it, I'm entirely willing to give a synopsis.) This was about the same time I revised Drago to his current, more nuanced form, so I decided to balance the two by inverting their canon roles. Drago gained depth and has questionable past decisions to ponder, whereas Valka's canon depth and questionable past decisions never came up. Drago's personal story is not over, whereas Valka's is. One was an enemy that could not be reasoned with and one had their own, mostly aligned goals with subtle but important motivational differences that were challenged and possibly altered by the end of the story… but switched around from canon.
I expect that this will not / did not please some readers, but in all fairness it is only the canon story that places importance on her identity. This story did not at any point do so, and there was a reason for that. I chose to entirely avoid the tired cliche of her unmasking and all of the inevitable, mostly plot-irrelevant fallout that entailed. She served as a great 'Darth Vader' type enforcer in the plot and worked as a smokescreen to obscure some important setup (looking at you Sadistic, nobody guessed the ultimate purpose of your timeline in chapters 26-27 in part because Valka stole the focus every scene you were in), while also giving Drago a great excuse to want one exceptional dragon rider on his side even if they came with a Night Fury. I quite like how her character was handled, and that's the deciding opinion.
One more proper chapter to go!