Invisible Moon-guider's eyes snapped open when she heard it and she spun herself around in mid-air, wings still clasped to her body. The color flashed back into her body from shock as another, a second white dragon came shooting like lightning from the clouds, as straight as an arrow towards her at top speed.
And Albino was faster than Toothless.
Heart swelling, the Light Fury called out to her and received a roar in reply as the second Night Fury raced against gravity to save her friend. Falling with her back horizontal now, Moon-guider tossed her head, eyes smiling impossibly.
Albino was moving so fast that hitting Moon-guider to catch her actually pushed her down even faster, until she wrapped her claws around the other dragon and her wings snapped open against the wind resistance. Her claws lost grip in one place and just managed to snag onto one of the bola's cords to keep hold of the Light Fury.
She turned her head under her to make eye contact with Moon-guider and smiled triumphantly.
Moon roared back. You came! You're here!
Toothless shouted to them, finally able to catch the air with her wings and glide to the top of the mountain, and Albino, carrying Moon-guider, swooped around and up, over his head as he put Hiccup as gently as he could on the rock. Finally she managed to slow them enough so that the Light Fury land on the mountain gently. The storm swirled furious blues and turquoises above them, letting lightning lance down into the fogs surrounding the Nest island. The crown-like ring of the peak around the once-lair of the Green Death was flat enough, and carried sounds of the Vikings taking safety in the blooming sanctuary inside the mountain's cavern.
—
As they fell, one by one, the Deathgrippers' eyes began to open.
—
Toothless smiled at her, eyes bright, and she smiled back, wriggling her haunches and her tail before setting to work freeing Moon from the bola's hold on her. Toothless turned back to Hiccup, who still lay unmoving on the rock. Toothless chattered at him hopefully and sniffed at his face. Nothing. Toothless recoiled, frantically searching his body for a sign of movement. Nothing. As though mocking him, the sky sent a spear of lightning down towards them, shattering rocks to Hiccup's left and sending them raining down into the cavern.
The many-times-freed Moon-guider and Albino joined the Alpha's side, looking down at him. Moon pressed her nose into his palm for a moment. A few rain droplets fell uncertainly, as though not sure they were welcome, tapping gently on the skin of Hiccup's face. Albino looked at Toothless, confused, and he did not meet her eyes.
Abruptly, Cloudjumper's massive form burst up from the mountain slope, followed by Stormfly, and their human women jumped from the dragons' backs and rushed, sliding to their knees by Hiccup's side. Valka leaned over him, pressing her ear to her son's chest, her eyes frantic. Rocks they had dislodged tumbled down into the mountain. Astrid pressed a hand over her mouth as though trying to suffocate herself, and the broken pieces of his engagement spoon felt like knives in her side.
One hand reached out to Astrid, and she grasped it eagerly as Valka stuttered "Oh, oh, he's alive! It's faint, but he's alive!"
Out of relief of the fear for him, Astrid released his mother's hand immediately, and punched Hiccup's shoulder, and nearly burst into tears. The force of it jerked his eyes open and he breathed, "Ow—Astrid…"
"Hey, goofball," she said gently, leaning over his head upside down.
"You'll never believe it," he said. "Toothless can...do lightning stuff... Also there's another Night Fury."
"Yeah," she beamed, tears streaming down her cheeks, barely listening. "I noticed."
"Hey, though," he said. "One piece, like I said." He lifted his legs up to display his intact-ness. "Or—two pieces."
Astrid and Valka smiled through their tears and lifted him up to hug him.
The dragons' heads pricked up as they heard a chorus of rattling screeches, and the swarm of four Deathgrippers landed heavily on the mountain's peak, lumbering their way towards them. They were battered. The first's armored scale head-plate had cracked from the electric shock the Night Fury had let off, blackening its maddened eyes. The second's scales were flaking on its legs, nearly coming away from its body, and the tissue around one retractable tusk was so damaged that it could not retract it. The third's metal collar for its sedatives was blackened on the chest, where it had been pressed to the source of the lightning. The fourth's wings were torn and tattered Toothless leaned defensively over Hiccup's legs, snarling at them, and Hiccup even put a hand on the Night Fury's shoulder to pick himself up so that they could stand their ground, but before he could do anything else, Albino burst past both of them and let out a furious roar.
She spread her wings protectively, planting her feet on the ground and digging in her claws as though to say, You will not move me. The glare that she sent at the Deathgrippers, shrieking, could have melted steel. Her back and her spines and her eyes began to glow with her rage—but it wasn't like Toothless's glow. It wasn't blue at all.
Albino's was the colors of the whole sunset, golden orange and pink further under her scales. With no pigment to stop it, nearly her whole body seemed to illuminate. Her spines resembled the glowing crystals in the Hidden World.
A challenge.
The Deathgrippers screamed back at her. They were not backing down. She reared up, her mouth glowing with power, and summoned the lightning from the clouds as though from her soul, putting her whole body into the fire she shot at the one whose head-plate had blackened lightning over its eyes. It had enough time to leap backwards, eyes wide, before the fireball connected and exploded on its collar, shattering the injectors. Her scales still aflame, Albino threw herself into the midst of the Deathgrippers, roaring.
I AM A NIGHT FURY.
The first panicked and leapt away, and the second rose up to lock into a battle with her, slamming its flaking legs into her chest as she lunged. She batted its first two hits aside, but ultimately fell backwards with the force of the collision, twisting to aim another firebolt. But the third and fourth were on top of her in a moment. As the third hissed and lunged at them, stabbing downward with its insect-like legs, Albino rolled to the side, and was forced backwards as the fourth slammed its boney knuckles down just in front of her. The first regained some confidence and spat acid at her, just near enough in front of her claws to force her backwards again, and she jumped into the free air over the ledge into the mountain's green inside, letting out a yelp. Blinded by their pursuit of the Night Fury scent, the last three Deathgrippers launched after her and as she let herself drop, four dragons disappeared from Toothless's sight.
The first was still above the mountain.
Valka ran to rip its injectors from its collar, and with Cloudjumper there, both barreled into it and unbalanced it, pinning it down by the jaw as it screeched at them. Astrid, Toothless, and Stormfly looked over the side of the mountain into its interior wide eyed with panic.
But Albino was a good flyer. And the inside of a cavern was her specialty. The intense snarl on her face was almost a smile as she swept down with the Deathgrippers in pursuit, her belly nearly catching the jagged edges of the inside of the cavern ceilings, letting them catch up almost enough. She was almost upside down before she found the perfect place.
And then she closed her wings to let herself drop the tiniest bit, and threw them open again, her whole body angled to stop her on a dime and throw her down and to one side, and the first Deathgripper on her tail, whose scales were flaking away even as it slathered to catch up to her, slammed into the wall of the cave where he had aimed to pin her, and dropped. The second two were luckier and swerved to change direction in time to avoid the concussive fate of their first friend.
Glancing back up at them as she flew, and seeing only one of them unconscious, the white Night Fury shook her head and circled back up again. She grabbed the unconscious Deathgripper and threw it towards a cushioned landing place so that it threw up dirt and moss. As it slammed into the, Gobber was just entering the cavern from the tunnel he and the Berkians had been going through. It crunched to the ground in front of him and he let out a high-pitched scream.
"Go back!" he called to the rest of the Vikings. "Go back! Get the dragons out of the mountain!"
And then he caught sight of the dragon chase above him. "Beard of Thor, is that—?"
Albino streaked along the opposite wall of the cave, darting above and below the outcroppings dragons had once made their beds on and the one where Hiccup had first proposed to Astrid, her wingtips just brushing the grass and moss, the speedy Deathgrippers just behind her, until she spotted what she was looking for. A hole, between the cave wall and an outcrop, probably just big enough and just the right shape for her to squeeze through, if she closed her wings and aimed herself, and angled herself perfectly.
She pumped her wings and sped up. The two Deathgrippers, behind her, shouldered each other out of the way to get to her and reached their necks out to snap at her tail. The tusks of the one who couldn't retract them anymore caught her tail fins just barely, in an attempt to knock her off of her flight path, which would have worked had the tail fins in question not snapped abruptly closed.
The Deathgrippers' eyes darted up towards the rest of Albino just as she brought her wings as close to her body as they would go and spun herself to one side.
She slipped through the hole instants before the Deathgrippers slammed into the rock wall with such force that it might have cracked. One's head followed through the hole and got stuck in the rock, its tusks thrashing and scraping at the wall as it tried to pull its head back out. The last one, whose wings were torn, only barely raised its limbs to catch herself on the rock, clambering around it speedily and using its legs to push it away from the outcrop and stab down at Albino again, aiming to punch a hole through her wing, which was unfurling again.
Albino had collided awkwardly with the rock wall on the other side, and used her own legs to jump away from it, spreading her wings just as the Deathgripper leapt at her, and her periphery caught sight of the dragon moments before it hit her. She jerked her wing up and to the side and caught the Deathgripper's legs in her own claws. Both fell towards the ground, past Gobber as he stared at them, and into the pit where the Green Death had resided. Albino dodged stabs from it as they spun, further and further from the light of the sky. After some time, the greenery from the upper layers of the recovering mountain disappeared, and Albino was the only light. The Deathgripper thrashed and stabbed at her with its poisonous tail, and, dodging her neck to the side, Albino caught the spine horizontally in between her unsheathed teeth.
The Deathgripper shrieked as she bit down, the tip of the spine breaking off on one side and her teeth separating the barb from the tail on the other.
Finally, moments before they hit the ground, she righted herself and pushed the Deathgripper down, ripping the poison spine away, and hovered over it as it landed heavily on the very bottom of the cave. Her tongue went numb as a drop of the venom landed on it.
She shook her head and huffed, pushing back up as Grimmel's dragon launched up again, single-minded in its aim to catch her. She checked behind her as they raced to the top.
She led the last Deathgripper up again, directly up, and all the way out of the mountain. It shrieked angrily at her, but as they passed over its top, caught sight of Toothless, still defensively hovering over Hiccup's prone body and Astrid. As they locked eyes, Toothless roared at the Deathgripper.
It swerved away from Albino and landed in front of the other Night Fury.
Moon-guider, from where she was pinning down the tail of the first Deathgripper, that had by this time paralyzed Cloudjumper, shrieked urgently. This new one was in between Toothless and her, and if she let this one go it might get Valka.
Toothless stamped his feet over Hiccup and snarled.
But there was no need.
In front of him, inches from the Deathgripper with torn wings and no tail, Albino landed powerfully, without even slowing down, and began to glow yet again. She shot a blast of fire into its face with no hesitation, and then another.
It stumbled back and she forced it away from Toothless and Hiccup. She let out a deafening roar with all her might as it retreated towards Moon and Valka. Moon leapt from the collar-less Deathgripper she was holding down and grabbed Valka, whisking her away and landing with the rest of the group again, behind the furious Night Fury.
Albino shot bolt after bolt of fire at the last remaining Deathgripper, forcing it back and tearing through its collar's hinges with the forces of her explosions until finally the whole thing fell to the ground and the dragon was freed.
Breathing heavily, Albino let out a series of final roars to frighten the two Deathgrippers away and watched them shake their heads and scamper over each other like beetles to get away from her. Then, once she was sure they would have no more trouble, she turned back to her friends only to find reason to hide behind her own wings again.
As Valka and Astrid breathed heavily and got to their feet, Hiccup, Toothless, and Moon-guider were staring at her, shocked.
Sheepishly, Albino ducked her head and blushed, ears flattening. Toothless looked at Moon, and Moon looked at him, and then the Night Fury met Hiccup's eyes and Moon looked at Albino. They all looked back at her. Stunned silence. Albino chattered some kind of excuse, and then tilted her head shyly, her ear frills pricking back up, hoping for approval.
Hiccup let out a loud whoop and cheered for her, pumping his fists into the sky. Astrid did the same. Albino seemed not to understand what it meant, so she looked to Toothless.
He looked as though hearts were forming in his eyes and he crooned awe. That was amazing.
Her head lifted, although still uncertain. She glanced at Moon-guider. I thought it was… and then all of you stared at me.
That's a good thing.
She came back towards Toothless and bumped her nose against his, licking him. Moon called her attention and glanced up to the swirling storm cell above them.
Albino's eyes followed the Light Fury's and her glow, which had faded some, relit. She held Toothless's eyes, breathing heavily, and nodded up. This isn't over yet.
"Grimmel's still up there," Hiccup said aloud, his hand on Toothless's bare back. But he frowned before he could climb on. And he looked at Toothless's tail, which now worked without his help. He had been the one to fall before, when Grimmel was moments away from them. If he couldn't hold on, then all he would be doing was holding Toothless back.
Albino leapt into the sky and waited for them. Toothless turned back around to check with Hiccup—Why aren't you coming?—who held out his hand. The Night Fury butted his nose into Hiccup's hand curiously. Hiccup held his friend's face and put their foreheads together.
"Don't worry about me. It's your right to finish this, bud." He took his hands away and got to his feet with Astrid supporting him. "Don't hold back."
Toothless nodded and huffed, his back beginning to glow blue. He released a scream meant to reach the ears of all dragons, to tell them that the Night Furies would survive. The flock of Berk roared joy after him.
And he leapt into the air to join Albino, and they flew up, up towards the ominous, glowing clouds, up towards Grimmel and Darling, up towards lightning that they could make their own. The last two Night Furies in the world, together.