TW: Dead bodies

When they took off again the next morning, Toothless and the Light Fury were far more comfortable with each other, more vocal as they climbed into the sky, more playful around the clouds. It was nice to have a flying companion who resembled him in shape, even if her scales were the opposite color. The sky was clearer today and Toothless could follow her white body more easily, but they still flew closer to side-by-side rather than following one after the other, giving the titan-trees a wide berth and feeling very small in comparison. The two dragons chattered back and forth and although he felt a little left out, Hiccup smiled. He had learned Toothless's language, almost, and he was used to other dragons, so he just had to be around her enough, and then it would be easier.

He checked behind them. Still nothing. No Grimmel, no Deathgrippers, no nothing. How could he be sure they were following him? What if he had left Berk defenseless without the Alpha? What if Grimmel was going to Berk instead of after him?

—

"Even if Grimmel is coming for us instead of Hiccup, his dragons are drugged," Astrid said from atop the great council table in the Great Hall. Glancing behind her, she caught encouraging thumbs-ups from the twins, a nod from Valka, and undivided attention from Fishlegs, Eret, and a recovering Snotlout. She continued.

"Seven years ago, before Berk became what it is now, we couldn't find the Nest island. Six years ago, when we did attack it, we had to use Toothless to guide us there. Only a dragon can find the Nest, and Grimmel's are hindered. He doesn't trust them enough to just be dragons, so he keeps them under his command. He uses their own venom to keep them complacent. Even if Grimmel is coming for us, with his drugged dragons, and even if they can still somehow find their way to the Nest, that is where we will have the best advantage."

She took a moment to breathe and let her words land on the village. Some of the dragons crooned and lowed curiously. "Berkians. It is no longer a question of whether the Warlords will come for us, but when. They are coming for us. We don't know when Hiccup will come back. We don't know whether Grimmel is chasing him. But our best shot is to start building defenses on the Dragons' Nest island. At the very least, we can have a place to put our most vulnerable citizens and dragons."

She looked around, met by concerned faces both human and dragon. "All in favor?" she yelled. Hands went up. She waited a few seconds and more hands went up. Valka and Eret looked around, counting.

"That's majority," Valka said in a low voice, looking up at Astrid.

"Then it's settled," Astrid said. "Majority vote; we go to the Dragons' Nest. Our builders, gather the things you need for essential buildings; houses, dragon towers, defensive mechanisms. As much as you need, whatever dragons you need, whatever food you need. We start immediately." She stopped. Nobody moved, and she cursed under her breath. How do you end a meeting? Valka jumped up on the table with her.

"Well? What are you waiting for?" she shouted in her thick accent, and slammed the end of her staff down on the tabletop. "Go!"

Cloudjumper bellowed to back her up, and the Vikings jumped to action. After years of peace on Berk interrupted only by Drago Bludvist for one day, they must have gotten used to not being attacked. Well, tough, Astrid thought. It's happening again. We have to prepare.

"Good job," Valka said to her, lowering her voice. "It was a good speech."

"Yeah, you're better than Hiccup ever was," Tuffnut said.

"Astrid for chief," Snotlout chanted, joined by Fishlegs. "Astrid for chief!" It wasn't a very catchy chant, rhythmically.

"We'll take that up with him when he gets back," Astrid said, getting down from her position with Stormfly's help.

"If he ever gets back," Ruffnut scoffed, starting to head out.

Valka cuffed her sharply on the back of the head, and Astrid snapped the way she used to when she was a teen. Harshly. Angrily. "He's coming back!" They all stared at her. "He's coming back."

—

When Toothless's feet touched the ground again, Hiccup was asleep. They had been flying for the whole day, and finally, as the sun disappeared, they were here. An island shrouded in mist and smog, clearly having once been inhabited by humans. Cages were stacked on top of each other on the outside of the round structure they'd flown around. Cranes and outposts were sticking out of a hollow circular cliff, spikes of rock with caves and tunnels peeking out of the stone. Mechanisms that had been abandoned were coming apart. It was a horrible, evil, metal place, and would certainly not have been happier if it had been inhabited.

The Light Fury guided them to the beach and took a step forward, her feet sinking and crunching into the black pebbles beneath them. She moved carefully.

As he landed and stared around at the dismal scene, Toothless shook himself uncomfortably and Hiccup woke up as he slid off his dragon's back. "Woah, woah—!"

The Light Fury snapped her teeth at him to be quiet. "Sorry," he whispered, picking himself up, and straightening up and rubbing his eyes as he looked ahead of them. "Woah." A massive banner with Grimmel's symbol on it hung from the massive colosseum-like structure in front of him. The Light Fury began them leading them towards it, and the building loomed even higher over them as they got closer.

\

Astrid descended a set of thin stone stairs in a spiral down, carrying a torch and followed by Eret and Snotlout, each carrying one of their own. The color of above-ground Berk had long-since died away, replaced by gray and black. The prison was well-kept but not well-populated, and certainly not colorful, nor decorated. There was only one window down here, in the cell of the one man kept in this place.

As she stepped down the last stair, light from the torch cast all around into the cells, lighting up a man who almost blended into the stone of the jailhouse. He shifted as though his whole body creaked, and Snotlout and Eret crowded around Astrid defensively as she glared daggers at the man. He leaned forward into the stream of light coming from the barred window and allowed his face to be illuminated.

Drago Bludvist spoke in a deep, gravelly voice and an accent.

"Well, if that isn't the most color I've seen for the year I've been down here. I nearly mistook you for dragons."

\

Eventually, the Light Fury slowed to a stop and paced agitatedly, staring up at the symbol. Toothless looked back and forth at her and then the banner. Finally, he inhaled with a shriek and spat a fireball up to it. It hit the heavy fabric and exploded, causing the sheet to billow loudly.

"Oh, so you can make noise," Hiccup whispered, and Toothless smirked at him with a wrinkled nose.

Stray strands of fabric at the edge of the banner had caught on fire and the Light Fury perked up to watch as it slowly ignited, insisting on standing still until the whole thing was burning. Finally, when the symbol was all gone, she moved again, leading Hiccup and Toothless into a dark tunnel. The black beach stones disappeared from under their feet replaced by packed earth.

They disappeared into the tunnel, swallowed up by its shadows.

\

Astrid, not one to be intimidated by enemies from the past, pushed Eret and Snotlout gently aside and stepped forward. "It's dragon-scale armor," she said. "You ought to be familiar with its benefits."

"It's nice to know my captors benefit from my ideas," Drago growled, not moving as Astrid came closer. He pulled his dragonskin cloak around him as though hiding that he had grown thinner.

"I'll bet," she said.

"We'd like to benefit from more of your ideas, if you don't mind," Eret said, trying to showboat the way he used to. Drago's lip curled and he almost snarled at him, and Eret took a step back. Astrid was unaffected. She had to be.

"Is that true?" Drago asked, his eyes returning to Astrid. "What did you come down here for?"

Astrid pulled a bench from the wall nearby and sat on it, leaning forward. "I want you to tell me about Grimmel the Grisly."

\

Once the outside light coming from behind them and the entrance in front of them dimmed, Hiccup lit up his sword as a light and held it up. He gasped, and Toothless stopped behind him, looking around at the tunnel's walls. Lit by the firelight on the walls quivered painting after painting of the Night Furies.

Over them, on the sides, around the extinguished torches, pasted everywhere.

Some were flying, some were caged. They were in various stages of life, with various eye colors. Some of them had grayscale patterns on their scales. And they weren't drawn the way Vikings drew their dragons; it was a more southern style, more like what Hiccup might have done if he practiced more. Half sketch, half ink paint.

Admiring them, Hiccup stumbled through a pile of something and he swung his sword lower to see what it was, kneeling to pick something one of them off the ground.

"Toothless," he gasped, and held up a black scale for Toothless to see. The Light Fury looked back at them, and Hiccup looked at her incredulously. "The Night Furies were here."

Toothless suddenly bounded forward, past the white dragon and Hiccup, and the Light Fury cried after him and ran to follow. Hiccup ran forward and after a few seconds, he emerged into the dimming daylight after Toothless and the Light Fury.

But something was wrong. Toothless stood still, head in the air, looking around, the sensory frills around his head trembling.

\

"Grimmel the Grisly," Drago mused. "He's found you, has he?" From the looks on their faces, he could tell he was right. "He must have only found you once. Otherwise you wouldn't be here."

"He's preoccupied," Astrid said.

"It's only a matter of time," Drago said slowly, scratching his face. "Your Chief showing off his Night Fury all the time, it's a wonder you didn't attract his attention sooner. But I'll bet that's who he's after now." He glanced around at all of them again. "Ohoho. He already is. Well then. There'll be no stopping him."

"So then there's no point in not telling us, then, is there?" Astrid baited him. "Come on, now, I thought you were one for intimidation."

"If you're not already intimidated, then you're more fools than I took you for. It's not just any man who can erase an entire species."

\

Hiccup craned his head up and looked around at a circle whose walls were nothing but bars for cages, and behind the bars…nothing. He turned around, scanning the walls of the whole arena, expecting them to come crawling down from the rocks.

"Where are they?" He asked softly, just before the Light Fury shrieked at him, a fireball brewing in her mouth. He froze and looked at her in alarm. She crouched down, snarling, but Toothless was just staring at him. He came forward and sniffed behind Hiccup's feet, whimpering.

Hiccup turned as carefully as he could on the spot and looked down to find bones. He reached out for Toothless instinctively as his eyes swept the grisly scene.

What he had taken for rocks and metal shards rusted from the sides of the arena-like crown of rocks...were bones, skulls, and black Night Fury scales of different sizes. They were scattered everywhere in piles, practically coating the floor. Built into the rock and tunnels above them were cages with more bodies. Everything was unbearably still. Hiccup took a step away from it all, a chill running down his spine.

"They're…"

Toothless sniffed around, carefully treading so as not to disrupt the bones, and found himself staring into eye sockets. He let out a low, heart-broken wail.

"They're all dead."

\

"What?" Snotlout asked, eyes widening.

"He began years ago, and did it systematically. Each and every Night Fury in the world, he tracked, he baited, and he killed. Except for yours, your Chief's, your Alpha. It was a game for him. By the end it was easy, and he could do it without thinking. You've never seen someone perfect the art of killing like he did. You've never seen the desolation."

\

Hiccup was having trouble processing it all. Tears pushed into his eyes. "How could anyone do this?"

His eye was drawn to a sturdy-looking wooden platform up on the second level of cages. He nearly called to Toothless to get him up there, but his dragon was more heartbroken than he'd ever seen him, crying out every few seconds in grief for his species, picking his way through hordes of bodies all decomposed beyond recognition. So instead, Hiccup reached out to the Light Fury and pointed up to the platform.

She stared at him angrily, and then suspiciously, but ultimately crouched so that he could get on. Then, without even unfurling her wings, she bounded gracefully towards the platform and jumped off the wall (nearly dislodging Hiccup from her shoulders) to get them up onto the wooden structure. There she deposited Hiccup and returned to the ground promptly.

Up here, Grimmel's symbol was everywhere. On the walls there were maps with it in the corners, on the spines of the notebooks stacked on the desks and floor, on the old armor hanging on the wall. There were old sketches of weapons, the way Hiccup had once drawn, and old prototypes of hand-held crossbows. There was even a box of spare tranquilizer darts that he must have left behind, not having any more use for them.

He turned and looked out over the gut-wrenching horror that the Night Furies had died in, one on top of the other, draped over ledges they'd used to try to claw their way out of the natural rock prison. Grimmel must have stood right here and watched them die.

He was going to throw up.

He turned away, covering his mouth to stifle a sob.

Behind him, Toothless's cry echoed up the walls.

\

"I helped him, at first. With my Alpha, we could bring any Night Fury to us, experiment on it, and kill it with ease. But as I watched the Night Furies struggle to escape his island, and nearly make it out, I began to wonder… why weren't we using them? So much raw power… they should have made an incredible army."

"Every Night Fury… " Astrid murmured. She looked horrified.

"So I left," Drago continued. "I left, thinking he would never be able to continue his work without my Alpha, and he would have to come back to me eventually. I wanted him to be part of my army. But he did continue his work. And that, to me, was the most horrifying."

\

Hiccup walked up to stare at maps that looked like the ones he had made—except on this one were dots scattered around on each land and an irregular shape drawn around all of them and shaded in. When he looked at the legend, he saw 1 dot = Night Fury Sighting. The shape read Night Fury Territory. Immediately Hiccup looked to Berk, a lonely little island which was right on the edge of the territory.

"It's why he never found Toothless," Hiccup murmured, half grateful, and looked back out to where his dragon friend stood frozen with his head bowed. Then, almost looking back to the map, a notebook caught his eye.

Night Furies Killed. He picked it up and opened it and his blood chilled. Page after page filled with tally marks. Hiccup leafed through it frantically, trying to find a blank sheet, and finally threw it back down onto the desk it in disgust.

Another battered notebook, discarded on the floor at the base of a table, read, Methodology.

"Due to Night Furies' advanced speed," Hiccup read aloud to himself, heart in his throat, "Usual hunting methods cannot be used if they are ever to be eradicated. We cannot wait for them to attack one by one in dragon raids, we cannot lure them since they do not steal food, and we cannot chase them on foot or by boat due to their superior speed."

He flipped a few pages and an inserted piece of paper fell out. Catching it awkwardly before it could twirl to the ground, Hiccup found himself looking at Grimmel's drawing rendition of a Deathgripper.

"Deathgrippers have been known to kill other species of dragons by surrounding, stinging, and waiting to lure other dragons to the body. Venom to be inspected."

He flipped the page again—"Deathgripper captured" —and found designs for an experiment on the venom. He flipped through more and more pages of these, watching the dates progress. He examined the stings; how after three strikes of the Deathgrippers' tail would make a body toxic. Disgusted by the descriptions of the Deathgrippers' reaction to the drugs, watching Grimmel describe the hints that the dragon's body was in decline from it, he flipped through more pages.

Back in the graveyard, Toothless let out a wail.

Glancing to his friend and back at the page, Hiccup began to read aloud again, his pulse quickening.

"The observation that Night Furies mate for life has provided an unexpected weakness for them, and strength for those of us committed to peace for mankind. With Deathgrippers under my control, Night Furies' speed is no longer the problem it once was, and the amount of Night Furies that we must track down has been halved. If we can find one mate of every pair of Night Furies and kill it, stinging it to the point of toxicity, the other one will come to the body and poison itself." Hiccup's voice had been rising, and as he read it, he threw the notebook back onto the table.

\

"He was obsessed," Drago growled, his head turning as he remembered it. "He found them one after another. He bent more dragons to his will without my Alpha, and without your Berkian methods, and he used them against the Night Furies. He didn't sleep, he didn't eat. I'm not even sure how he found them. I don't know how he knew where they were, which villages had seen a Fury. The Night Fury was never born who could outmatch him—your Chief's only survived because you found him before Grimmel did."

Astrid looked in horror to Snotlout, who returned her glance. If Grimmel had found Toothless when they were fifteen, before Hiccup had changed their minds… so much would have been different. She couldn't help but cover her mouth as she remembered what Hiccup had said, years ago, about seeing his own fear reflected in Toothless's eyes, and imagined that same young Toothless shot down by someone who would kill him without mercy. Some of the Night Furies must have been so young.

\

From outside came the inhaling, high pitched shriek that meant Toothless was charging up an attack.

"Toothless?" Hiccup frowned and rushed to the entrance—

A powerful blast exploded and threw him backwards.

"TOOTHLESS," Hiccup yelled, coughing and joking on ash and dust, pushing himself to his feet. Something fell on him and the notebooks fell past his face, open onto more pages. He pushed them away and staggered upright, greeted by something that had until now remained hidden. Armored plates that had once been part of a Deathgripper's natural scales fell from where they had been stored and clattered loudly to the ground in front of him. Massive, red and black spikes, rough to the touch, which had not protected even it from Grimmel.

Hiccup threw up.

The Light Fury landed behind him quickly and called him frantically towards his dragon friend. Hiccup wiped his face and stumbled towards him. Another shrieking was powering up. "Toothless, STOP!"

He staggered into the light in time to watch Toothless lift off the ground, slamming into the wall as the power of his own fireboats threw his body backwards. Above them, thunder clapped loudly as one of the cages was dislodged from the rock face. Clouds swirled in a spiral around Toothless's grief and lightning began crackling suddenly down towards him.

The Light Fury screamed to Hiccup, shoving him with her wing, and he jumped down, scrambling towards the tunnel as Toothless shrieked at another cage. She followed close behind. Rocks began to crumble under the Alpha's power as the only un-drugged Night Fury ever to land there tore the island to shreds. The Light Fury shielded Hiccup from some of the rubble as they ran to the mouth of the tunnel they'd gone through to get there. Hiccup turned around for another try.

"TOOTHLESS!"

But he wasn't listening. He could barely see from the unbelievable rage, shooting fireballs at every man-made structure he could find, and he sent rocks raining down on his friend and the Light Fury, who tackled Hiccup back just in time to avoid him being crushed. A massive rock slammed into the ground and sent dust into their eyes as the light was closed off.

\

"So now," Drago continued slowly, coming to the end of his speech, "Your best hope is to pray to whichever god you think can defeat him, because he will not stop until the last Night Fury is dead. His hunger will never be satisfied until then. He will take every opportunity your Chief gives him to change, and use it to stab him in the back. That's why he'll win against you. There is no softness left in his heart. He wears a shell of cruelty over a void of greed. That's why he can do nothing else but kill; it's the only thing that lets him feel as though he is alive at all."

\

The mangled metal remains of a sturdy portcullis crunched down moments later and Hiccup and the Light Fury retreated further away.

Wooden beams popped and groaned dangerously and Hiccup backpedaled before they could collapse, watching them closely as best he could in the dark.

She flapped her wings once or twice and their undersides began to glow softly, bathing her and the human in turquoise light. She and Hiccup made eye contact and then looked back towards where Toothless had been.

Outside, he was howling with pain that hadn't been present since he had lost his tail, raging against the stones and the sky and the bones and the symbol that swam around in his vision. The sky cried with him, dark black clouds whirling thousands of feet into the atmosphere and letting out deafening claps of thunder that shook every one of Grimmel's old traps, none more painful than the Night Fury's screams. Toothless glowed blue and lifted himself into the air, screaming even louder when he couldn't keep his balance. What sort of pathetic Alpha was he, to have let his own species be killed like this? He shot fire at everything he could see, plunging the world into a roiling, jagged clump of scorched rock and melted metal—and with every shot that landed he wondered why he couldn't have been here sooner.

He was destroying this place far too late.

Electricity began to gather around him and he nearly didn't notice. It jumped between his scales, building up its own intensity as his muscles pushed him higher up the rock faces until he was as high as he could go. Powerful winds dragged at him, clutching at his wings to sweep him away. Lightning flashed in the sky and Toothless glared at it like it was its fault, and dared it to strike him.

He let out another fearsome shriek and rain started pouring. Toothless launched himself towards the clouds, flapping with desperate rage to propel himself upward.

A flash spiked down at him and joined his own electricity, and then another caught hold of him, and then another until he was gathering all the lightning the world had to offer and storing it. It lifted him up as though he didn't even need to use his wings.

But he did.

He couldn't fly for much longer; another second at most, and Toothless inhaled all his hatred against the world, against Grimmel, against Hiccup, against his own tail, against Berk, against the dragons he was supposed to protect, and—

—

Grimmel and his Deathgrippers felt the shockwave from where they were, a day's flight behind. They could see the clouds even from there, crackling with lightning, and Grimmel wheeled Darling around to direct her towards it.

"There you are," he said.

A smile grew eerily along his face, wider than it should have been.