A/N: While writing this chapter, I was listening to the song "Our Heroes Return" by Audiomachine, and for those of the lovely readers of this fic who appreciated the soundtrack in the movies, I think listening to it as you read this will help you picture the chapter at times. It's on YouTube if you want to find it!
Grimmel was not a man to listen to dragons. Even his own ones were only good for obedience, given the right drug dosage.
Ordering them into the fog with Ruffnut's implication that only a dragon could find its way through, he did not consider that the only thing in his dragons' tortured minds was him. And he was a human.
He had them fly above the rock spires and arches into an eerily still gray fog, and when they were encased by it, he lost his bearings.
Below his feet, Toothless hung where he was, his nose only barely clearing their tops. It wasn't long before he and Darling began to feel the pull of the Nest. He was restrained, but his eyes flew open and his sensors pressed against the metal muzzle, rattling. He glanced up at Darling.
She, flying after them along with the other Deathgripper, began to draw towards the Nest instinctively, but Grimmel kept them steered forward. She rattled, anxiously trying to maintain her obedience.
"Where is it?" he growled, and banged a spear onto the side of the airship. "Take me to the nest, you wretched beasts!" His dragons could not, did not, understand.
Shapes materialized in the fog.
His eyes narrowed at them as they moved and shifted, turning about and looking all around him.
Something dark and huge loomed up as if moving and Grimmel ordered his dragons towards it only to fly past a particularly tall stone outcrop. They slowed as they passed by it into a sea of more fog.
It was silent except for his breathing and that of the dragons. Below them, a large wave crashed against it and the noise of the sea spray against rock was jarring and almost frightening to even the dragons.
More and more moments of silence.
Something in the distance seemed to roar, but it could have been the imagination. Years ago, when Berk had tried to fight their way through the fog there had been hordes of dragons from every direction. But now…
An explosion burst somewhere far to his left and echoed. "There!" Grimmel whistled and his dragons roared and hauled him in that direction. Toothless swung with the abruptness of the airship's turn and lowed in alarm, trying to warn whoever was there. Whichever of his flock was there, undefended. He could see nothing. Somewhere impossibly far away, the sun was setting, illuminating the thick fog behind them as if airbrushed a bit lighter. But the path ahead remained just gray.
Silence returned. There were no more explosions, merely the beating of the man's heart in his ears.
"Where are you?" Grimmel murmured quietly, his narrowed eyes darting back and forth and finding nothing to land on.
Nothing.
Toothless's lip curled, showing his teeth suspiciously as he waited for whatever it was to happen.
Nothing.
Darling pulled towards the Nest again and Toothless's jaw clipped the mast of a Berkian ship that had been left there, stranded and destroyed on one of the rocky outcrops. It rattled ominously, but as the airship kept going, the sound of its chains faded again into the thick of the fog.
Nothing.
Grimmel whistled a low tone and the Deathgrippers stopped moving. The airship hung, still, in the air.
Nothing.
Finally.
Directly in front of them, Moon-guider melted into visibility, her wings glowing their soft, ghostly blue as they pumped the air silently. The fog curled around her movement.
Grimmel clicked his tongue when he met her eyes. She didn't move from her spot, just glared at him, with seemingly the only color in the whole world by her sides. Toothless's eyes widened at her and an anxious moan escaped from his throat. What was she doing here? How had she escaped? Go away, run!
"You," Grimmel said, his quiet voice piercing through an empty space that seemed to go on forever. Her lip and nose curled in a snarl, revealing some of her teeth. Anyone who felt her heartbeat would have been able to tell it was racing. Grimmel moved slowly, reaching to his right to collect his crossbow and load it. "Let's see if we can't convince you to bring us to the dragon island."
As he touched it, she roared, and flapped further away. He stopped moving and her eyes flicked briefly downward. She had to keep stalling.
Toothless's head was a few feet above a rock spire, onto the top of which Hiccup was climbing as silently as possible, the new tail tucked under his arm. He was wearing prototype Night Fury flying armor he had had in his house, but hadn't had a second helmet, and hadn't wasted time to go retrieve it from wherever the Warlords were keeping it. Toothless had been spinning gently since they flew into the fog, and now he rotated just enough to catch sight of Hiccup and snap his head up to look at him as though seeing a ghost.
Hiccup went to him as soon as he had his balance, taking the dragon's head in his hands, eyes scanning the muzzle. Toothless's pupils dilated seeing him and he smiled tearfully. Hiccup held a finger to his lips and glanced up at Grimmel, whose one hand was on the crossbow, the tranquilizer dart in his other. Any sound might alert him to Hiccup's presence, and he already needed to climb up nearer to him to affix the prosthetic onto Toothless's tail, which hung out, one-sided, from the trap.
He looked back down at Toothless and wiped his own eyes, putting his forehead to Toothless's as best he could with the metal in the way. Then he reached up and caught hold of one of the straps of the contraption keeping Toothless confined, pulling himself up. He glanced at Grimmel, who was aiming his crossbow now at Moon-guider, loaded with a tranquilizer dart. The light faded from her wings and she glanced at Hiccup for his signal.
Please let me fly now.
"Stay still, stay still," Grimmel murmured in a singsong under his breath. "That's a good Fury."
Hiccup, secure with his grip on the trap and unnoticed by his dragon's captors, nodded to the Light Fury.
Finally, she let out the roar that had been building in her chest and screamed at Grimmel, pumping her wings hard to propel herself directly towards him and shooting a blast of fire between she and the airship. He shielded his eyes and shot the bolt, but she just dodged, careening away from the blast and staying visible. Grimmel whistled loudly and his Deathgrippers followed her with shrieks of their own. Toothless and Hiccup swung as the airship wheeled around to follow her.
As Hiccup climbed towards Toothless's tail, Moon-guider soared through the fog quickly and as erratically as possible so she wouldn't be too easily a target. Her sensor frills vibrated and pulled her towards the island and she shook her head to clear her head. Steer him away from the other humans.
She dove down under some rocks, glancing back at Grimmel and ducking just in time to avoid another of his darts. The Deathgrippers carrying the airship nearly followed her down—Hiccup barely held himself back from a cry of surprise as the airship dipped—but their master whistled again and they stayed above. Toothless craned his head up to keep an eye on his friend.
Darling and the other free-flyer pushed forward and gained on Moon-guider, swiping the air with their forelegs. Darling was the faster of the two.
The Light Fury glanced to her side as she swept to the right of a craggy spire and spotted the Deathgripper through the columns and arches of rock, gaining on her. Her pupils dilated a little, her eyes heartbroken, and she called out to her. Why are you doing this?
Darling roared without meaning and turned on a dime to get through a gap closer to Moon-guider. Her tusks extended and the Light Fury, panicked, caught herself on a low outcrop she hadn't seen and only barely made it to the opposite side before Darling slammed into where she had been, trying to turn again. Frills rattling and pupils thin again, Moon used her legs to propel herself in the opposite direction and flew up over the rocks, the Deathgripper still on her tail.
The other had not followed them down, and once she was in the plain fog again it caught her wing, spinning her. She let out a screech and Toothless, watching, called out in alarm. WATCH OUT!
As she spun in the air, flapping to catch herself, there was only one way to fly fast enough for her to stand a chance of getting away again, and that was up and diagonally, to her right from where the airship approached. She wasted no time on thinking. The other Deathgrippers were clumsy and held back by Grimmel, but the one that had been recuperated at the Hidden World… She would be the one to catch her.
"After her!" Grimmel yelled, leaping catlike up to where a large crossbow-adjacent weapon was mounted to shoot nets and aiming it carefully.
Hiccup looked up as the airship lifted after Moon-guider, chasing after her and Darling. The Light Fury wasn't even as fast as Toothless had been while Hiccup was interrupting the Night Fury's streamlined figure, and Darling seemed to have gotten faster and more capable without the drug.
Only Albino was faster than Toothless.
Hiccup could have sworn at himself. He should have waited to free Darling. He returned his focus to attaching the tail to Toothless. There were only a few straps more, and to make sure it was functional, lining it up with the other side.
A Deathgripper—not Darling—zipped past him without spotting him and sent him and Toothless spinning on the chain's axis. He had to pause to maintain his own balance and grip.
And then…
There!
Hiccup tapped Toothless and the dragon looked back up at him, flicked the tail open and closed, waggling his own half as a test. It worked. Now they just had to free Toothless. Keeping a hand on the restraint connecting them to the airship, he lowered himself back down and unbuckled a clasp on the metal collar around Toothless's neck, and then the wide leather strap confining his wings.
The Night Fury helped by shaking his shoulders, pushing his wings out of the trap as Hiccup loosened it more and more.
The chain to the airship was connected on a vertical-running piece of hinged metal connecting the restraint on the tail and the strap below Toothless's back legs. Hiccup undid the tail's restraint first, to avoid the possibility of hanging his dragon's full weight by the prosthetic and ruining it.
And then Moon-guider burst out of the mist into view of the Nest island and her eyes widened. The mountain loomed up into the sky and the eyes of Berkians on their dragons all went to her.
She had led him right to them.