A/N:
Thanks for joining me, and thank you Viggo Grimborne for betaing! I also owe a big thanks to those who took the time to drop a line. The responses I get do change the story for the better!

And sorry about the late post, I was shooting for Saturdays, even this one. Hiccup wishes you a happy Snoggletog, and Tord wishes you a merry Christmas… At least I think that may be era-appropriate. Some sources suggest that the holiday existed in this time period, but others disagree; fair enough since it was sort of a gradual cultural appropriation. Either way, Toothless wishes you a somber Festivus for the rest of us, and encourages you to abandon your consumerism frenzy in favor of just eating fish and soaking up the sun like a sensible dragon. He proudly reports that he was hardly scathed by the airing of grievances, and he won the Feats of Strength, but Firebrand insisted that he cheated when he used the Festivus aluminum pole to his advantage.

Deadly-Bagel, yeah, poor Grimmel, thrust haphazardly into a paper-thin, crumpled plot so that we couldn't enjoy him all that much. Hmm, I'm noticing a trend in the HTTYD movies; the Red Death is just an evil dragon-controlling monster with no motivation or backstory, Drago had the barest hint of an attempt at some backstory ("one of them bit off my arm waaa!"), and Grimmel sported a little more lore ("I killed a dragon and spent my life hunting them, like all the other dragon hunters but better."). And you're totally on the right track about how the Deathgripper venom works in my universe, possibilities abound.
Oh, and you can blame Gobber for my tendency to include such gritty details. And Astrid. You know how parents of little children can be. ;)

Dragonrider's Fury, about Tord riding on Firebrand's back from the get-go… OMG you're absolutely right! Letting Tord dangle from his claws wouldn't last long as it would surely be tiring, but he would totally do that just to make a point. Lemme sneak that into Ch 3.


Played

Ragnar idly gnawed on a turkey leg – the cheapest and most delicious he'd ever had – as he eyed the little boy across the table. "Let me get this straight," he slowly drawled out after a swig of ale. "You want to play Hnefatafl with me… for coin?"

The boy – he said his name was Nuffink – looked into the eyes of his pet Terrible Terror that was curled up on the table next to him, and then nodded. "Uh-huh. Yessir, Mr. Rag–" the dragon hissed. "Sorry, Mr. Gerald sir."

"Who told you my name?" Ragnar quietly hissed, eying the boy dubiously. Granted, he suspected that introducing himself to a stranger using his real name wouldn't be any different than his guise as the fame of "Ragnar the Ravager" hadn't spread up here, but better safe than sorry.

"The dragons," the boy said as he clumsily set up the pawns on the board. He only looked to be three or four, something like that. His way of speaking was very strange, as if some of the words felt awkward in his mouth. As a result, he talked a little slower than what sounded natural, but it was still impressive for a child so young.

"Nose is helping me, by the way. Ya know, tell me how to say a word. Pro-no… ci-a-tion…" The dragon looked up at him and trilled, and Nuffink slapped the table with his little hand. "Why is that word so long?!"

Gerald attacked his turkey leg with gusto to hide his fuming. First Tofa, and now Nuffink – a goddamned child!

– could practically read his thoughts. He would get to the bottom of this clever trick of theirs before long.

Regardless, he figured he might as well go along since the boy went to all the trouble to drag over the box containing the wooden board and pawns. "And why do you want to play against me? Do you even know how to play?"

The boy reached into his pocket and laid a copper coin on the table. "You in?" he asked, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

Ragnar eyed the setup. It was a fairly high quality board with clean lines etched into its surface. The pawns were all polished smooth, and to the boy's credit, they were set up properly, king in the center, boxed in by his guards and surrounded by his enemies. There was little else to do during long voyages on the open sea, so it was commonplace for the crew to play such games and bet their boots, helmet, and everything in between.

"Would your parents want you to be gambling with a stranger? You're, what, four?"

"I'm five!" he said as he crossed his arms over his chest. "You in?"

Ragnar rummaged through his coin purse and produced a copper coin. It was a tiny gamble, hardly enough to buy a mug of cheap wine or a small boule of bread back home. On Berk, though, to his complete befuddlement, it was enough to procure a turkey leg, a bowl of roasted vegetables, a large boule of bread with a generous chunk of butter jammed into a slit, and a large mug of mead with a free refill. He could gorge himself sick and still have plenty to gnaw on tomorrow until supper – or "natmal" as they called it here. With the bits of coin he had, including silver and gold, he was set up to be just fine for the foreseeable future until he figured out where to go from here.

"I suppose I can teach you a lesson." He flicked all the beads on a track next to the board to one side. It was rare for him to lose at this game.

"Yipee!" Nuffink shouted as he pumped a fist in the air. He then went back to stroking the little dragon and sniggered at nothing in particular. "Choose your side."

Ragnar would have been content to let the young, naive fool pick, but he nodded and gestured to the boy to go ahead with the defenders. The boy slid a pawn over, a standard first move to expose the king so he could start to move towards one of the corners. To his credit, it was a valid move, and he even remembered to flick one of the beads to the other side of his track to count his turn.

"Hmmm, interesting, very interesting," Ragnar hummed as he moved an attacker pawn. He didn't know how to handle children, so he decided to fall back on normal tactics for playing with a stranger: pretend to be caught off-guard and pander to their pride. He also liked being the attacker first, where he had more opportunity to feel out his opponent, their risk tolerance and overall competency.

Nuffink moved the king over. Ha, a classic blunder! He basically waved a flag to indicate which half of the board he was going for, meaning that Ragnar could focus his efforts more effectively. Also, playing too aggressively would only tie Nuffink's hands as now he would have to be more concerned about losing his king and the entire game as a result.

Ragnar moved a pawn in, just to test the waters. The boy would be tempted to capture it by–

Nuffink moved a pawn up to secure a capture. "First blood to me!" he cheered as he plucked the flanked pawn off the board.

"Oof, not off to a good start," Ragnar said, taking a big bite of bread to hide his chuckle. As the attacker, he had an abundance of time to antagonize, and plenty of pawns to throw away in such an endeavor. He moved another pawn in to threaten one of the boy's, and while it wasn't in a position to be captured, it did tempt him to move his king up…

Ha, he took the bait! Ragnar almost felt bad for taking advantage of the child's foolishness. Almost! "Looks like you got me on the ropes," he said as he slid a pawn down, ready to put the king in an unwinnable situation only four moves in–

Nuffink moved a pawn over with a giddy laugh. "And second blood, and third!"

"How– wait a moment! How did you do that?"

The boy retracted his move slowly, and made it again, and Ragnar facepalmed. The boy got lucky, that was all! As he took a long draft of his ale, Ragnar decided that Mr. Nice Guy had left the Great Hall. He made a few more safe moves, and he saw a certain path to capture the king.

Seven turns later, the king was safe in the corner. Had it been taken, the game would have been over then and there, but Ragnar still had a good shot at winning. Besides, the defenders always had the natural advantage, which was why the next round would switch their roles. Nuffink took fourteen turns and lost eight pawns. All Ragnar had to do was to get the king to a corner in fewer turns, or if he tied, with fewer pawns lost.

Fourteen infuriating turns later, he counted nine pawns he had lost. "How!" he demanded.

Nuffink shrugged. "Beginners luck?" He smiled at the flat stare such a comment elicited. "I think you'd not believe me if I said."

Ragnar cast a suspicious look behind him and all around. No sign of anyone feeding the boy suggestions with gestures, or of anyone at all paying attention to them let alone with a good view of the game board. The boy loudly slapped the table, and Ragnar snapped his attention back to see two silver coins laying there.

"Again?" Nuffink asked with a smile.

"Where's a 5-year-old come up with a silver coin, let alone two?" Ragnar asked dubiously. "Swipe them from your father's purse?"

"I'd never!" Nuffink insisted. "It's Nose's coin. I'm playing for him since he lacks opposable thumbs, and I get to practice my thought-sharing. And he's letting me keep those two copper!"

"And who is… Nose?" The boy gave a significant pat to the Terrible Terror, which suddenly lifted its head and opened its eyes to look at Ragnar. "Riiight," Ragnar drawled out with rolled eyes. "It's the Terror's coin, sure."

He fished two silvers from his purse and laid them down. Credit where due, the boy had a lot more skill than Ragnar had assumed, but complacency was a mistake he would not repeat.

"Nose just wants a gold coin. They're shinier than silver since they don't tarnish, and he's a sucker for shiny things, of course. He caught a glimpse from above as you were digging through your coin purse to pay for your natmal."

"Alright, alright, it's the dragon's coin." Ragnar gave a wink at Nuffink, who pouted his lips. "Just don't expect me to go so easy on you this time."

"Yessir," Nuffink said cheerily. "Is it okay if Nose blindfolds me?" Said dragon crawled up to cling to the boy's shoulders, head snaked up to peer over his, and wings draped over his face.

Ragnar scratched his head. "How're you supposed to play if you can't see a bloody thing?"

"Same as when Nose told me what moves to make before," Nuffink casually said, his voice muffled a little by the wing membrane. "He saw through my eyes last game. Now I see through his."

These silly dragon folk must all be legitimately insane, Ragnar thought to himself. "Riiiight. How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Three," was Nuffink's immediate – and lucky – response. "Now one. Seven." Ragnar snorted in disbelief. "Now Nine." Ragnar quickly glanced around. "I already said I'm seeing through Nose!" He reached up to pat the dragon's head. The dragon stared at Ragnar and curled its neck to rotate its head upside-down. "WOAH! That is so cool!" Nuffink gasped.

Ragnar sighed and emptied his mug. Credit where due, it was an amazing trick, however the boy did it. Someone of lesser intelligence might actually be fooled by it. "Let me get some more ale, or I won't be able to tolerate your strangeness, kid."

The next game went absolutely fantastic… For Nuffink… Again. The little brat beat him by two turns! Ragnar could only stare in shock as the kid scooped the four silver coins to his side of the table.

"How…" was all Ragnar could say. The boy was five years old for God's sake!

"Well, ya see," Nuffink started to slowly say, "Dragons can't imagine as we can. So, we always thought they wouldn't do well in board games. However, Nose says he watched a lot, saw patterns, strategies. He says he can see how things could go five turns in advance, hundreds of different outcomes, and weigh the risk and reward of each. So, Nose just–"

The Terror suddenly whipped its head around, causing Nuffink to jump unsteadily and fall off the bench and his Terror to flutter off of his shoulders. "Woah, that was so weird," he said, seemingly unaware that he had fallen.

The boy left his pet dragon behind and got up to scamper over to the scene that had caused the commotion, the four adolescent Night Furies entering the Great Hall. Ragnar had had an absolutely terrifying encounter with one of them, larger and surely older, and he found himself unconsciously sliding along the bench farther away from them as he wolfed down the remainder of his food – with his free hand that wasn't palming his knife.

"Don't worry, they'll keep a distance," Hauk shouted over to Ragnar. "Can't have you soiling yourself… again."

Ragnar scowled, only to get such in return. First Tofa, then Nuffink, and now Hauk! How did he know about that day when Ragnar absolutely lost his nerves, when the Night Fury knocked him down and–

No, no, he realized he was jumping at shadows, the kind that weren't actually silent and sadistic dragons. Hauk was just assuming, and confirming anything would just be playing into his hands.

Suddenly, he was struck dumb by the strangest sight. Nuffink was giddily prancing among the Night Furys, pushing one over onto its back, tugging another into position to lay on top of the first crosswise, and poking and prodding at them, the dragons willing and pliable under his hands.

"Hey, Fishlegs, look!" the boy shouted over at a large Viking, the one Ragnar recognized as Hauk's blonde partner in fighting the Night Furies earlier.

The broad man, who was fixing himself a heaping plate of food, turned towards the pile of Night Furies, eyes round, one hand pointing while the other covered his mouth. Ragnar suspected that, if the sight of black scales hadn't dominated his nightmares for the past week, it probably would have been an adorable sight, with the Night Furies sprawled out in a heap, wide-eyed and and gently pawing at each other, one gnawing on the ear lobes of another, which gave a pathetic little croon as it squirmed around. Several nearby Vikings chuckled and gave out an "Awwww."

Fishlegs could only stare, his mouth flopping like a fish on a rock. In an octave one would not normally associate with speech, he squeaked out, "That's so ador–"

He gasped as one Night Fury gave a long lick along the base of another's neck and started nibbling on its paw. "I think I just peed a lit–" and then he fainted.

"Told ya!" Nuffink crowed. "If you listened to Tofa and played up the puppy eyes, you four woulda won that spar. Well, maybe."

Claws scraping on wood drew Ragnar's attention back to the Terrible Terror sitting across from him at his table, the one the boy had called "Nose". The dragon used its tail to slide four silver coins to the center of the table, and the way those beady eyes looked up at Ragnar would have sent his skin crawling if he didn't remind himself that it was just a stupid cat-sized dragon.

Two games and mugs of ale later – both of which were worse with each iteration – Ragnar stumbled out into the brisk air, feeling tipsy, confused, and a little lighter without so many coins in his purse.

There was a silver lining, though, in the very literal sense.

"Stupid dragon," he mumbled as he almost lost his footing on one of the many stone steps. "Traded the sixteen silver coins it won for a single gold that was worth only ten." It had taken a moment for Ragnar to figure out why the Terror was slapping the silvers with its tail while staring greedily at his coin purse. "Showed that mangy devil who's got the brains!"

##########


##########

Toothless craned his head around to look at the rider on his back, who had a pensive look on his face, and rolled his eyes.

"I mean, if it's too personal, if you don't want to tell…" he drifted off at a flat stare from his dragon, something he had perfected even while flying.

{Of course I don't mind sharing with you, my dear Firefly. I know you've wanted to know ever since you saw it, but land-strider alpha things have kept you very busy. I was only waiting for you to ask.}

Between fighting off the foreign land-striders, performing their rituals for their dead, and trying to catch enough sleep to avoid falling over, there was no time to relax and share much of anything. There had been time on the flight out to confront the fleeing enemy, but that was all spent fretting over every little detail of how that would go.

His rider, his dear, precious Firefly, let out a relieved sigh and looked back at his dragon's tail again. "Yes, please, what can you tell me? How did it happen? Did it involve Frost?"

Toothless snorted at the name the land-striders had come up with for the white dragon, or "Light Fury" as they called her kind. They named her that because she was snow-white, and because she seemed to enjoy the cold, but they didn't realize just how prophetic such a name was when it came to her personality. Or maybe they did know; they could sometimes drop jaws with their imagination.

Toothless took a blink of the eye to organize his thoughts. He knew that, for how amazing a land-strider's mind could be with their ability to see what they never saw, hear what they never heard, and know what they never learned, their minds worked slower. It was necessary for a dragon to pace himself in projecting his thoughts for a land-strider to hear.

Firefly already knew about Toothless' first encounter with Frost, as he was there, watching from seclusion, so Toothless briefly flicked images from that encounter to his rider as something familiar to move on from. Frost had flown in on a dark night, and Toothless followed her a ways into the forest. However, Firefly and his mate had shadowed them, drawn by curiosity, and Frost fled, both fearful of the land-striders and angry at Toothless for living among them.

The next night, she came again, and when Toothless slipped out, his rider had the sense to stay put. Toothless was ready for anything this time, as he had a special artificial fin on his tail.

His left tailfin had been torn off long ago, and Firefly made various clever replacements. One of them was very clever indeed, where the left artificial fin mimicked the angle of the right one. That was fine for flying up and down, but it made turning especially awkward. The best design for flying solo turned out to be the simplest one, which would lock itself open in a neutral position with a flick of the tail. It was enough to fly, but it did limit his gracefulness and agility in the air.

Frost led him deep into the forest again. When they arrived at a clearing, she turned to him, lifted her wings, and pranced around in a circle to show off her body, an extremely satisfying experience. She was slender but strong, curves and angles in all the right places, sharp teeth, bright-pink gums, long tail. She was just… perfect!

Toothless did likewise. Then, without warning, she pounced on him. He clawed her off, and they chased and fought each other. She was quick, but Toothless was strong and almost as fast.

The land-striders always had enemies to fight or fun games to play, like the one that involved tormenting sheep by fighting for possession of them while flying around the island. Well, the first game with sheep was also the last as it seemed that easily spooked, grazing cattle were not well-adapted to being flung around and posessively gripped with claws at fast speeds and high altitudes. Wooden barrels – sometimes empty or filled with rocks – made a much more durable and less exciting substitute, but that only meant that the dragons and riders could play more often and compete even more aggressively.

Needless to say, compared to the typical "wild" dragon who would be less active on most days, Toothless easily had the prowess to impress Frost.

She spread her wings and took off, and Toothless gave chase, but with his artificial tailfin, he could not match her agility in flight. She led him on a long chase, far from the light clouds over his nest and through a storm. They ended up above a cluster of very small islands with cold rain falling heavily and lighting occasionally jumping between the clouds.

His instincts told him it was time to make his move, to claim his prize, but the limited mobility from his tailfin simply made him an inferior flier compared to her. In her eyes, he was a crippled dragon, even if he could mostly overcome his condition, and her taunts and swipes at his tail didn't help at all… Except for when he lured her into a false sense of security. A single claw that he managed to snag into her tail was all it took to pull her in and secure a good grip.

High above the clouds, he clawed his way to her back and wrapped his legs against her folded wings and held fast against her thrashing. For an instant, he thought about how vile this would seem if they were both land-striders, him physically dominating her… and then he sunk his teeth into her neck – no deeper than what would cause a pleasant, invigorating sort of mild pain. She seemed to be pleased as she did not flee when he released her to spread her wings again.

The two dragons pumped their wings hard to ascend, higher and higher, eyeing and daring each other to be the first to falter. The air became thinner and weaker, their breathing became more labored and wispy, and the horizon grew rounder and darker. A frozen chill turned every scrap of exposed moisture to a thin, crackling layer of ice on their snouts and wings.

It was a close one, but Frost passed out first, and Toothless threw his last shred of failing consciousness into taking a victorious nip at her flank. When they both regained consciousness, plummeting at terminal speed, she gave an indignant look at her flank and then an impressed, sultry look at Toothless.

Crippled dragon my rear end! Toothless thought to himself as he took a breath of the ever-thickening air to let out a roar.

They folded their wings tight and dove down, belly-to-belly, sharing the thrill of free-falling together, and Toothless tried not to think about how this reminded him of free-falling with his Firefly. She wasn't Firefly, though. She was a dragon, and she was available, and she was in heat, and she was everything he wanted at that moment.

By the time they spread their wings and swooped down to land, they were mated. They leaned against each other, sheltered from the storm's wind between some large rocks, panting, tails entwined and wings wrapping around each other, enjoying the moment.

Toothless hadn't realized that he had drifted off until he was startled awake by his mate trying to slink away, and he gave an inquiring warble. {Where are you going?}

He had a suspicion that he wouldn't like the answer. During their flight earlier that night, they had shared a bit about their pasts, how they ended up here. She had lost her dam, sire, clutch mates, and even her own eggs to land-striders at various times, flown in some dragon raids against land-strider nests far away, was captured, then escaped. She would have no respect for any land-striders, and she would naturally resent Toothless' bond with his precious Firefly.

He had made sure to share every little detail about his Firefly and the land-striders for whom he was now alpha, about all that they had done for the dragons in this area, freeing them from trappers, thwarting hunters, and participating in mutually beneficial relationships between dragon and rider. Such symbiosis was assured as any dragon always could – and sometimes did – fly away from if they didn't like it. Still, as much as she had to acknowledge these facts – and it did help a lot – even a dragon could find it difficult to let go of the past. Some scars left ugly marks no matter how long they had to heal.

Frost fanned her wings in the storm, and lighting flashed brightly on her scales. {I'm going to find your rider and free you from him. He is a distraction to you, and you need to focus on me and the eggs that I will lay.}

Toothless let out a venomous snarl. {You will not harm him!}

The Light Fury snorted. It was never her plan to put him in this position, but it was her desire now, and the opportunity arose.

{Try to stop me.}

With that, she leaped up and pumped her wings hard to fly away.

Toothless roared and took off after her, pushing himself hard. However, with his prosthetic tailfin, he struggled against the gusting and ever-changing winds. As he watched her ever-shrinking form fly farther away, he felt a rage boiling in his blood. She was going to kill Firefly! After all that land-strider had done for Toothless, for all the dragons in this area... He needed to stop her!

He felt a burning sensation within and without, and he noticed what he was doing, much to his satisfaction. Years ago, he had a certain out-of-body experience in which he saw the world from a different point of view, and he had learned that he could absorb power from lighting in a storm, fly through a fireball, and instantly appear some distance away.

It was something he had never done since then as it involved absorbing lightning, and he always flew with his rider and would never want to risk harming him in the process. He never even believed that a repeat performance was possible and that he'd probably only harm himself were he to try.

There was no such concern now, and every reason to try it again to save Firefly's life. Toothless felt arcs of lightning flow over him, and when the burning felt almost too great to endure, he let loose an unstable fireball and flew through the resulting explosion, his target burned into his mind.

The effect was instantaneous. He was on top of Frost – literally – and wasted no time in sinking his teeth and claws into her tail to drag her down. Fortunately, there was another little spit of land beneath them, and he angled towards that. He allowed her to flare her wings, and he did so himself, to make the landing bearable, but before they even touched the ground, he was all over her and ended up knocking her unconscious by slamming the back of her head against a rock. He was not gentle at all.

Frost woke up to a prickly, pinching sensation on her left tailfin. When she tried to yank it out of Toothless' maw, he only bit down harder. She raised a clawed paw to strike at him but stopped when those teeth threatened to tear the whole thing off.

She shrieked and howled at him. {What are you doing, Toothless?!}

{Isn't it obvious? You intend to fly off and kill my rider.} He shifted the tailfin around in his mouth. {If I bite off your tailfin, you will not be able to reach him.}

Frost whimpered at that. {That was a mistake!}

Toothless growled. {Yes, it was.} He stilled as a thought came to him. {I lost my tailfin, once. I thought I was grounded for the rest of my life, that I would never fly again. I thought I would die of starvation, at least I hoped I would before going insane from being denied the sky. Then, a land-strider came along and taught me about mercy and compassion, and he showed me how his clever mind could put me back in the sky where I belong.}

He snorted in amusement. {Perhaps I could find a land-strider to do the same for you.}

She shrieked in terror. {Don't do it! I will never harm your rider!}

Toothless leaned forward, tailfin still painfully clutched in his teeth, until he was nose-to-nose with her. He was still in the heat of his rage, and he even saw that faint blue glow of his fire in his mouth and nostrils reflecting off of her. His eyes bore unflinchingly into hers for a long time until she submissively swallowed and looked away. He was aware and entirely unapologetic of leaning heavily on her mind with an intensity that made his kind natural alphas.

{Swear it on the egg that hatched you and the dam that laid it, that you will never harm MY Firefly as long as you live.}

Frost let out a confused croon, and Toothless snorted as he realized how silly such a demand was, a result of land-striders influencing his thinking. Lying was as foreign to dragons as flight was to land-striders. It was a manifestation of imagination, something all dragons lacked. Their minds were efficient and precise, and they could sense the intents of others, both through scent and the emotional hum of their passive mental projections, so it was no wonder deceit was foreign to a dragon for how worthless it was. He simply had to make a demand, and he could tell beyond any doubt if she was absolutely sincere.

Frost stared into Toothless' eyes. {I see now that you would cripple me without a second thought to protect your rider, and I do not doubt that you would hunt me down if I harmed him. I will never harm Firefly if you will release my tailfin.}

{You will never harm him as long as you live?}

Frost let out a defeated whimper. {Yes.}

{You will protect him if you see him in danger?}

She held his defiant stare. {Yes.}

{Good.}

Toothless released the tailfin and chuffed at her. Frost curled her tail around to lick at her fin, which had suffered no more than a few light pricks that barely drew blood.

Frost looked at his tailfin. {I don't think you will be flying anytime soon.}

Toothless curled his tail around and yelped when he saw his artificial tailfin. It was a smouldering mess of twisted iron and burned hide, useless. The lightning must have done that.

He groaned and flopped onto his back, squirming on the hard rock beneath. This was a problem that could be fixed, though. He felt around with his sensor lobes, a feature of his kind that granted him a great range in projecting his thoughts and hearing dragons from afar, but they really were far away from everyone. A dragon would pass by eventually, and he could ask them to inform Firefly of his plight. Perhaps he might even trust Frost to go and–

A clawed paw pressed hard into the underside of his jaw. He yelped as he was flipped over to slam the back of his head into the ground.

A searing pain in his tailfin – his good one – woke him with a pained yowl, but a paw pressed against the underside of his jaw again and he lost consciousness. He woke again to pain and the sound of breaking bones, small ones by the sound, but again, he was knocked out.

When he was finally allowed to wake up, he found her sitting back on her haunches as she licked the blood from her lips. Toothless looked at the end of his tail, the source of his pain, and shrieked at what he saw. The tips of the bones of his good tailfin had been bitten off, as were some small chunks of the membrane. The artificial tailfin had been torn off, and where it had been, his tail was sliced open lengthwise, and he recognized what must have been the broken bones and bits of membrane from his good tailfin sticking out from the slice.

He stared at Frost in bewilderment. {What did you do to me?! Is this revenge for forcing you to promise not to hurt my Firefly?!}

She chuffed at him. {I do not need to kill your rider, as you know quite well that I won't. Your rider took your tailfin away, and his substitute is a sad bit of iron and animal hide. It is a mockery for the master of the sky that you should be. I restored your tailfin as if you never lost it.}

Toothless gave a dubious look at his tail with the bits of bone and membrane shoved into a slit, and though it took some effort, he managed to give Frost a flat stare as he gently licked the blood dribbling out. {I don't think I can fly with this.}

She chortled. {Of course not now. You know how quickly a torn wing membrane can heal or a broken bone can mend. Your body simply forgot how to regrow a tailfin there, perhaps because it was entirely removed down to the joints. I helped it remember. Just give it some time.} She looked up at the stormy clouds. {And I can speed things along. Wait here.} She warbled mirthfully at that last statement. {Don't go anywhere.}

With that, she spread her wings and shot up into the sky. Toothless stared up to see her enter the storm clouds, and the pulsing of white light indicated that she was absorbing lighting from the storm just like Toothless had to catch her. She then plummeted straight down, crackling with power that as she flared her wings for a swift landing almost on top of him.

She placed her nose to his tail, and what came out was a loud and putrid amalgamation of coughing, flaming, and hacking. Somewhere in all of that, Toothless felt several painful shocks to his tail, and the result was a glob of green goo all over his supposedly growing tailfin. It felt… soothing, though it tasted horrendous when he gave an experimental lick. He did not envy her one bit for being able to conjure this from her own mouth.

She wheezed and coughed, then let out a satisfied huff as she took a step back to examine her handiwork. {This was no less unpleasant than the last time.}

Toothless let out a little yip as realization dawned on him. Years ago, an evil land-strider somehow held command over a titanic sea dragon. That dragon fought another of his kind, impaling her with his tusks to kill her – or so it had seemed at the time. The wounds were real, but when Toothless had flown off to save his nest and returned again, she was alive despite having been impaled and buried under a mountain of ice and rock. Something had intervened to keep her alive, not enough to instantly heal her wounds, but enough to keep her alive until she could naturally heal and recover.

Toothless stared at Frost in awe. {That was you?} It was something she didn't share with him before, but he could tell there were many such things. Dragons tended to be "tight-lipped" as the land-striders would say.

She chuffed. {Yes. She was a good dragon.} Frost dragged her tongue up his snout. {You are a good dragon too, and it will be good to see you fly as a dragon should. We are not meant to be thralls to ants.}

Toothless snorted at that. {Your contempt for land-striders is understandable. I once felt as you did, as did most dragons, but don't expect me to leave Firefly's side just because the tailfin is restored… if this actually works. If you give them a chance, you will see that most of the land-striders on these islands are respectable, and you will see why Firefly is worthy of my adoration and dedication.}

Frost grumbled at that. {I do not share your optimism, but we are mated, so I am willing to endure them for a while.}

She turned and took off, coasting above the water, then dove in to snatch some fish. When she returned to regurgitate a couple, Toothless felt humiliated as he slurped them up, much to Frost's amusement. This would be a very embarrassing several days without flight, entirely dependent on another to feed him.

The flow of imagery ceased, and Hiccup couldn't hold back a chuckle. "Man, Toothless, you sure have a way with the ladies." He stole a glance at his dragon's tail, which sported two natural tailfins, a marvel of healing that he still had a hard time coming to terms with. "I'm just glad you're both alright. I never realized how close you two came to killing each other."

Toothless snorted at that. {You should know by now that was normal dragon mating behavior. There is a very practical reason that we fly away from you land-striders when we mate. We would accidentally tear you apart otherwise.}

"Ya." Hiccup gave a nervous chuckle. "This certainly wasn't normal, though. I mean, it was three days between when you flew off with Frost and a dragon came back to tell us of your flightless situation so we could send help, and I still have a hard time coming to terms with how much it had healed by then." A mischievous grin spread across his face. "How'd it feel being spoon-fed by your mate all that time?"

Toothless flicked one of his sensor lobes to slap Hiccup's face. {A little like that.}

Hiccup chuckled as he rubbed his cheek, but that smile faded as gaze drifted down.

Down below, he could make the shore of an island. On it was a gray mountain, or so it seemed. When that mountain was alive, it could demolish a large ship by ramming it, crush a large building by stepping on it, and encapsulate an entire village in ice by spitting on it. It had seemed that no force in all the world could ever harm it save another creature like it.

When it was alive.