A/N:
I've been posting on Saturdays, so this one's a bit late. I could use just a little leeway to get caught up, so I'll plan on posting the next chapter on Thursday next week, then back to Saturdays after that. Thanks for sticking around to join me for this chapter, and thank you Viggo for betaing!
Dragonrider's Fury, man, the Light Fury restores Toothless' tailfin, and you still don't like her just because she tried to kill Hiccup? You're a hard customer to please. :P Don't worry, she ain't the first character in my universe to have a rough start – I'm looking at you, Firebrand! I just can't wait to see what you think of the Skrill who I'll finally get around to introducing in the next chapter.
Emboldened
Hiccup closed his eyes as his dragon descended towards the island below, enjoying the moment of peace. He had removed his helmet and strapped it to the saddle, and the way the wind whipped his hair around was a familiar and comforting sensation.
One thing he was still getting used to, though, was how his beard would tug at his chin in the wind. The thing decided to start growing only four years ago, much to Toothless' dismay, and while Hiccup kept it trimmed, he allowed it to grow over the years.
Eyes still closed, he could sense that his dragon had craned his head around to grimace at the beard his rider was stroking. {I wonder if I can get away with burning that thing off your face while you sleep.}
Hiccup chuckled at that. "I'll keep my defense mechanism, thank you very much." Toothless had insisted it made his face less lickable, and it was always funny to see him in a goofy mood, licking his lips and whining as he contemplated if it was worth a mouthful of hair to lick his rider's face.
Toothless flared his wings and tensed for a landing, and Hiccup reflexively pressed his prosthetic down and inward to adjust the tailfin so that his dragon could remain stable.
It was only then, when Hiccup felt the distinct lack of resistance, that he realized the tailfin control lever wasn't attached to anything.
"Oh, right, sorry Bud," he groaned as he realized his error, which Toothless responded to with a playful chortle.
{Let's be honest, my dear Firefly, nobody here is surprised that you keep forgetting that my tail is whole, now. I'm honestly relieved that your body is capable of automatically breathing for you when you forget to do it yourself.}
"Yeah, yeah, rub it in, ya big bully," Hiccup said as he playfully swatted at one of the sensor lobes crowning Toothless' head.
They landed with the usual pounce and trot that Hiccup could hardly feel, joined by his mother and some other riders from Berk on their dragons. He automatically slid down to the ground, and without conscious thought, he found himself staring at Toothless' tail.
Sensing where his mind had wandered, Toothless curled his tail around and licked at where the newly-grown tailfin seamlessly replaced the one that had been torn off years ago. {Nothing has changed, Firefly. Remember that.}
Hiccup wanted to shout at that. Everything had changed! There was a gods-damned Light Fury, Toothless' mate – on Berk. She could not be trusted around humans, which was entirely understandable with her past, and she would be laying eggs in a matter of weeks, but Toothless stubbornly insisted that he would not budge from Hiccup's side, and it churned his gut to think that he was denying his best friend a life with his mate.
"How can you say that?" Hiccup demanded. He would never forgive himself if he inadvertently held his best friend back from the life he wanted with a mate and children. Even if it meant losing his companionship and never seeing him again, it would hurt like nothing else, but Hiccup would endure such loss without a question for Toothless.
"I would be entirely for you taking Frost far away and–"
Toothless snapped at him, nothing more than a gesture of irritation as Toothless would sooner harm himself than his rider. {I said nothing has changed.} The dragon purred and nuzzled Hiccup's face. {Including the reason we are here.}
Hiccup swallowed and followed his dragon's gaze up… and up, and up, and up. A gray mountain of scales and spines towered over everyone. Though he was large enough that he could crush a large house by stepping on it, the weapons brought up by the mainlanders were somehow able to kill him.
Tord let out an awed whistle. "Bigger than I recall."
Valka walked up and rested a hand against the massive tusk with her head bowed. "The poor thing knew only submission and subjugation straight from the egg, and for so long, that was all he could give."
Hiccup nodded. "And while we all only wanted to kill him, It was Toothless who saw what we were blind to, even in the heat of a burning rage." He smiled and gave the side of his dragon's snout a rub. "All along, he was never a greedy warlord, he only needed to learn that mercy is a thing, and from… there…" he paused in thought. "We never gave him a name."
"Understandable," Eret threw in. "After that white Bewilderbeast… ah, right, Dragon King took him under her wing – err, you know what I mean – you've never seen or heard from either of them since then. Not that I'm criticizing you at all, as there was no way that Berk could have survived with so many dragons nesting on your island or fishing the waters around it."
"Yeah, I suppose," Hiccup conceded. He reached up to give another pat to the underside of the massive tusk and craned his head to look almost straight up into the Bewilderbeast's clouded eyes. "You deserved infinitely better."
"I'll drink to that," Valka solemnly said.
Toothless gently nudged Hiccup's arm. {Don't forget we are here for a reason.}
"Yeah, yeah," Hiccup idly said. Dragons never saw the value in sending off the dead, or in mourning them and celebrating the life they lived. As much as Hiccup always told everyone that dragons were people, they certainly had different – some might say animalistic – values.
He started walking along the Bewilderbeast's head, towards the neck, looking up and using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. Several bloody gashes were marked by cracked scales and spines. Something had done that, something far more powerful than a ballista.
"Let's spread out and see what we can find," he said. He knew a little bit of what had happened here. Dragons had been captured and caged on this island, some of which had lived to tell the tale of what had happened. They were tortured, poked and slashed at for no apparent reason, and Hiccup realized the sickening purpose. These dragons were from the Bewilderbeast's flock, and the mainlanders somehow knew to use them as bait.
"Hey, Hiccup, over here!" Snotlout hollered from the other side of the Bewilderbeast's head. Hiccup gave a pleading look at his dragon, who offered his shoulder. It would have been a long walk to get around the head for how his stump was already starting to twinge, but only a short flight for Toothless.
He arrived to see Snotlout holding an iron tube about as thick and wide as his forearm. On close inspection, it was hollow with one end sealed off with some interesting contouring where the sides gently pinched in and then flared out. Hiccup ran his eyes and fingers along every bit of its surface, and he realized that it must have been cast in a mold to form a single piece of iron. It wasn't too heavy, though, as the walls weren't all that thick, but there were telltale scorch marks on the inside and outside.
A roar drew his attention to the Bewilderbeast's tail, and he saw Tord waving at him with his dragon, Intrepid, fanning her wings. {They think they found something that your iron tube might interact with, somehow,} Toothless helpfully supplied, along with an image of what they had been looking at. It never got old, and Hiccup took a moment to marvel at how handy it was to be a dragon whisperer.
A short flight later, Hiccup landed to see a much larger metal tube, but this one had round nubs on the sides that mounted it on some wooden, wheeled cart. This was also cast as a single piece of iron, and like the tube Hiccup had in his hand, this one was also sealed at one end. The scale of producing something this large and heavy made his head spin.
"Just like the ones we found on those ships," Tord noted. "The enemy had many of these, probably hundreds."
Hiccup nodded. He barely had time to even glance at the strange weapons from afar before dashing off to prevent every Viking and dragon from razing the fleeing fleet and giving the world an even greater drive to strike again, bigger and harder than before. All he knew was that they produced explosions and were not that effective at taking down individual dragons. It was easy to see exactly where they were aimed, and it looked like it was more arduous to reload than a ballista. No wonder the enemy quickly abandoned the use of such weapons during the battle.
Hiccup held his smaller iron tube up to the opening of Tord's larger one. It was able to slide in, as if it was designed to do so with a tight fit that was impressive for cast iron. He thought back to those "flash-booms" that many of the mainlanders had, and how they resembled a smaller version of this large iron tube mounted on the wooden cart. Those flash-booms also had a very clever plunger that went through one end of the tube, and striking it would spark a piece of steel against a flint to ignite some sort of fuel inside, judging by the scorch marks.
On a whim, Hiccup gave the smaller tube a little shove inside the big tube, and he could hear it slide down until it clanged against the other end.
For years, the Thorston twins had gone through a phase of playing with explosives, collecting the volatile fuel from their Zippleback into various clay vessels. Miraculously, they managed to survive with mild burns and didn't destroy anything they couldn't repair or replace. They had discovered that their explosions could push as well as burn, and when they placed a flask of fuel in a hole in the ground with a bucket over it, the explosion sent it flying – or at least pieces of it – a lot farther than if it was on flat ground.
"Clever devils," Hiccup breathed out. The mainlanders must have taken such a concept to the extreme, creating an explosion at the closed end of the metal tube. Instead of launching a bucket, the explosion would have launched the smaller iron tube that fit inside the larger one. But how fast? Surely not fast enough to launch it that far, or to break through the thick and tough scales on the massive Bewilderbeast?
Toothless nosed at Hiccup. {Cloudjumper and his rider discovered something peculiar.} Hiccup was about to mount up, but his dragon shook his head. {I will show you. They are in a precarious position.}
Hiccup closed his eyes – a habit that helped him focus – and saw what Toothless projected. Through Cloudjumper's eyes, he could see the dragon clinging to the Bewilderbeast's side with claws dug in between the scales. Valka was straddling one of her dragon's wing arms, wrestling with something wedged in the thick hide. It was a shard of iron, as thick as one or two fingers and perhaps a handspan in length. No, it wasn't iron, but as demonstrated when Valka dulled the blade of her knife by running it along one edge of the shard, it was hardened steel, fit to be formed into a durable dagger or shortsword. One end was flat, the other was clearly sharpened on a grindstone, and the profile from looking at it head-on reminded Hiccup of a pie-shaped wedge of firewood.
A gust of wind and grit snapped Hiccup back to his surroundings. Hookfang touched down, and Snotlout dismounted with a giddy expression and another one of those forearm-sized iron tubes.
"Hey, check this out!" he said as he held up his prized possession. "I found it in the shallows." This one was different, though, as the end that should have been open was packed with bits of wool and wax. "And look, this is like the plunger on those flash-booms things. It's a tight fit–"
"No!" Hiccup shouted, grabbing Snotlout's wrist. At the shocked look that elicited, Hiccup said, "Sorry, but I just have a bad feeling. Remember the plungers on the flash-booms we recovered, how it struck a flint and steel to cause an explosion?"
"Oh," Snotlout said, in disappointment. "But it's water-logged through-and-through." He shook it in demonstration, and water could be heard sloshing around inside. The wool and wax plug would have sealed it against an occasional mist during a long sea voyage, but being submerged for days, water eventually found its way in. "Hey, let's gut this thing and see what's inside!"
"Hmm, point there," Hiccup conceded. "But let's be cautious as I think it's designed to shoot fire and death out of that end. Ah! I still have some pliers in Toothless' saddlebag…" He ran over to fetch the tool. "There, now we can pull stuff out without risking our fingers."
"Good thinking, cuz!" Snotout said as he snatched the pliers and set to work.
"Hey, Snotlout, mind not pointing that thing at my face?"
Snotlout shifted his grip. "Ah, right."
It didn't take long. With a bit of tugging, Snotlout was soon dumping out all of its innards on a large, flat rock. Six steel shards had been packed in there, with the plunger running down the center that would have struck a flint that rested on top of what appeared to be some sort of fine black sand.
Eret picked up one of the shards, which was dripping with a viscous green liquid. He gave it a sniff and a lick, then spat in disgust. "As I thought, dragon root. Cowards!"
Snotlout gave him a disbelieving stare. "As if you're one to judge."
Eret looked over at his dragon. "I really don't know what he's talking about, do you? I mean, I was all about nets and bolas back in the day."
"I'd wager that this black sand would explode if it wasn't sopping wet," Hiccup idly mused. His dragon nosed his way in and started to blow out a gentle flame. "Toothless, no, what are you doing!" he shouted as he staggered back a step.
A loud explosion cracked the air, but Hiccup couldn't see what it looked like as he had closed his eyes and turned away. However, when he opened his eyes, he saw Toothless coughing out some smoke, and the steel shards and bits of wool packing lay a few feet away from where they had rested a moment ago.
Toothless wheezed and snorted. {That was a bit more intense than I expected.}
"Ask me if I feel sorry for you," Hiccup said dryly. "Go ahead, ask."
"That was awesome, Toothless!" Snotlout cheered as he pumped a fist. He suddenly turned and started running off. "I'm gonna go find some more!"
"So, I suppose that's how it worked, then," Hiccup mused. "The explosive powder in the large tube shoots the small one out, and that explodes against the Bewilderbeast to drive these poisoned steel shards in deep. That's… very…"
"Clever," Tord mused.
"Vile!" Valka spat.
Toothless nosed at Hiccup. {I think we will soon know for sure.}
Hiccup saw Toothless sharing his… well, not his sight, but something else that came from his sensor lobes. He sensed a presence in the area, a powerful mind that passively leaned on all dragons nearby without any conscious thought, and could do so much more by simply willing it to happen.
Hiccup looked out and saw a swell in the water.
"So good to see you, old friend!" Valka squealed.
########
########
In the depths, time had no meaning. There was no sun or moon, no clouds, no changing of the seasons. Tempests may rage above, wars fought, the cycle of life rolling on and on, but the depths were peaceful, unyielding, uninterruptible.
It was tempting to remain down there, to hide in the darkness. Even a great sea dragon needed to occasionally rest in the depths. It was safe and comfortable, and she could remain for much longer, subsisting on her great lungful of air.
No, it had been too long already, not that she was in any way aware of the rising or falling of the sun. No more hiding in fear. She knew that she had to confront the terrible truth sooner or later. Besides, she still felt the stinging in her right shoulder from some slivers buried deep in her hide, but she knew where she could find help with that.
She walked along the rocky ledge that was holding her down, almost weightless in the water, but even that was painful with the slivers in her shoulder, so she loped on her hind legs only. As she reached the edge, she paused in thought, yet again. It was tempting to remain down here…
No. She kicked off and allowed the air in her lungs to draw her up towards the surface, towards the light.
The darkness lessened a little, from an absolute lack of light – with the exception of the occasional illuminated fish – to bluish-grey. She found herself kicking her hind legs and swishing her tail back and forth, her destination set in her mind.
The light increased a little as she drifted up even more. This was the same way she had swam an unknown amount of time ago, when she had joined with her mate to reclaim his flock of dragons. Land-striders had stolen many and were tormenting them mercilessly.
It should have been an easy task to free those dragons. Land-striders had no means to puncture the thick scales and spines protecting the two great sea dragons. They would be absolutely powerless against the large and resilient foes whose wrath they had summoned. They would all die, crushed like insects or entrapped in ice and left to freeze and suffocate to death.
Or so she had thought.
Looking back, she saw the signs; she should have realized that it was a trap. Land-striders were clever, yes, very clever. It could have been a foolish oversight on their part in holding dragons here, but no, it was not an oversight so much as bait.
A shark caught her attention, and she swam after it, crunching through its midsection and gobbling up its head and tail in two gulps. It was a small snack, but it helped her feel a little better.
Her keen eyes caught the rise in the sea floor up to the shore ahead. This was going to be unpleasant, but she was committed to–
There were land-striders on this island! Still! She would kill them all! She would crush them and freeze them and–
No! They would kill her as they did her mate, as they almost did to her. However, they could not remain forever. She would retreat again and–
It finally caught her attention, the identities of these dragons and land-striders, the feel of the passive hum from their minds. She felt around, brushing across the projections from every creature on that small island. Not all land-striders were vile and evil, and she reminded herself to be very careful not to accidentally crush the good ones.
The sun brightened and came into focus as she drifted up and breached the surface to swim the rest of the way to the shore, her way of being considerate by allowing them to see her coming.
{Greetings, great sea dragon. We came here to figure out what had happened, but we will give you all the space and time you need.}
That was the black dragon, Toothless. Of course, there was no sneaking up on him so long as he was alert. Though he had less potential to lean on the minds of other dragons, the mental abilities of his kind did set him above the rest.
She pawed her way to shore, white scales gleaming blindingly in the sun. Moving on land felt more difficult than it had in the past, a consequence of remaining in the deep. A great exhale left her lungs, and the water lapping at the beach froze to ice.
It was already obvious that her mate was dead – his mind could not be felt as it had dissolved to nothing – but she turned to look at his body anyway. Whatever clever things those dragon-torturing land-striders had conjured up, she took only a few grazing hits. He took a great deal more to his face as evidenced by a multitude of tiny iron shards sticking through his hide, but it must have been the ones she couldn't see that were driven in deep to shred his insides.
Motion from the side caused her to swing her head around, and one of the land-striders below was walking closer. "My dear Dragon King, how are you?" Though the spoken words drifted across the distance, it was the projected thoughts, clearer than most land-striders, that she understood.
It was always amusing to hear that name that this land-strider had given her. Apparently, it was the habit of land-striders to associate some short, terse name to every person, their livestock, the stars, even their shiny claws. Dragon King's sex was incorrectly assumed at first, but the name stuck.
This land-strider too had a name, one that made no sense to a dragon. However, the dragons referred to her as the Dragon Savior as she had spent a good part of her lifespan freeing trapped dragons and helping them with their injuries.
Dragon King laid her head on the ground and closed her eyes. {I FEEL PAIN AND GRIEF AND SHAME.} Pain from the slivers in her shoulder, grief at her loss, and shame for having been filled with such fear from the land-strider assault that she fled into the depths.
Dragon Savior trotted closer to press her hand and forehead against one of the Dragon King's tusks. "I know how you feel. A violent situation forced us both to part from our mates, and we were both hesitant to return. I was able to see my mate for what seemed only an instant before he died, and I'm not sure if that was any better than your situation."
Dragon King let out a little rumble as she pulled her head back and stood again. She pawed over to her mate and inspected his many deep wounds, all with little iron splinters embedded. She could tell that those splinters had some sort of venom or poison on them as she felt the effects. It made her feel dizzy and tired, even as she frantically fled from the land-striders, and that was from only a few hits. He took a few hundred.
The land-striders who had died on this island still lay here exactly as they had fallen. She walked up to one body and stared down at it. Dragons did not mourn the dead in the way the friendly land-striders did, but she did feel a deep pit of loss. He was a good mate, and though he was raised by a very cruel land-strider straight from the egg, taught only to obey his master and dominate the dragons around him, he did make great progress once freed from such a position.
For most of his life, his body had developed, but his mind was that of a hatchling fresh from the egg. When he was freed from his servitude to that evil land-strider, he made tremendous progress under Dragon King's guidance. He learned what she herself had learned from Dragon Savior – a land-strider of all creatures – about how to manage a large flock. Instincts told them to rule by force and either quell or control those who ever did anything she didn't like, but that was very counterproductive.
When the dragons were ruled by force, they lost self-confidence. When they were often controlled, they had less self-control. The more they were coerced or forced to do anything, the more temperamental their behavior. However, by allowing the dragons freedom – a land-strider concept – to make their own decisions, figure out their own problems, and settle their own disputes, they became… better… in every way. There were squabbles and fights, and when severe injury or loss of life seemed imminent, Dragon King did exert some control over their minds with a light and very temporary touch. Together, with her mate, they had figured out how to make life easier and more pleasant for them and their flock.
These distant land-striders, though, were exemplars of abusive control, practically mindless thralls ensnared in the grip of their overlords. They were told to seek out dragons, so they did. They were told to kill dragons, so they did. They were told to capture dragons, torture them, draw out the alpha and–
CRACK!
The stoney ground underneath the land-strider's corpse – now a splatter – cracked under her paw. She scraped it off and shifted over to another corpse.
CRACK!
CRACK!
CRACK!
In the stillness that followed, a croon from Toothless caught her attention. She slowly – to avoid accidentally killing her friends – turned her head to see him nuzzling and comforting his rider, who felt a little sickened by what he just witnessed.
"That was so cool! That last one shot guts out like a whole stone's throw!" That was the enthusiastic outburst of a different rider as she pumped her fist and jumped up and down. She had named her head of the Zippleback she rode "Barf", who then named its rider the same in a stroke of draconic genius.
Firefly looked up at Dragon King and licked his lips. "Do you feel better now?"
A little, but not that much, and she knew that Toothless would relay her response to his rider.
"Is there anything we can do for you, Dragon King?" Firefly asked.
She flopped down on the ground, motionless. {YES. I HAVE SOME SPLINTERS IN MY RIGHT SHOULDER. PERHAPS YOU LAND-STRIDERS, WITH YOUR LITTLE LIMBS AND OPPOSABLE THUMBS, COULD PULL THEM OUT?}
Dragon Savior instantly volunteered, jumping on Cloudjumper, who flew up and clung to her side to allow his rider the free use of both hands.
"The flesh is irritated, but it has healed over the shards some. This will hurt," Dragon Savior warned.
{I AM NO STRANGER TO PAIN. I WILL HOLD STILL. I TRUST YOU.}
Dragon Savior was right; for such tiny little things, digging in and pulling them out did hurt. A lot!
Firefly asked, "Would you mind sharing what you saw here when–"
Dragon King let out a pained yelp that vibrated the ground, but she held still.
"Sorry," he muttered, "asking now was insensitive of–"
{IT WOULD BE A DISTRACTION, AND IF THERE IS ANY CREATURE WHO CAN DEFEAT THESE FOREIGN LAND-STRIDERS, IT WOULD BE ANOTHER LAND-STRIDER.}
Even better, she would be sharing this with land-striders, and with how slow their minds worked, this would take more than a fleeting instant, a good distraction from the pain.
It was a different sort of pain to dwell on how land-striders killed her mate, though. Dragon King and her mate had learned of the missing dragons, and of how the land-striders were cruelly torturing and killing their captives. These dragons would either be freed very soon or they would die painful deaths.
It did not take much deliberation between the two alphas. It was only land-striders. Yes, many, many land-striders, swarming about like ants, but they could be squished like ants. They had many sea vessels all around that island, but an alpha could easily smash them to splinters by ramming them, or encase them in ice with a single breath.
Dragon King and her mate struck from the depths without warning, instantly taking out two of the land-strider sea vessels. Unfortunately, they were all spread out fairly evenly, none clumped up, almost as if they were expecting this…
Both alphas shot out of the water, their front halves clearing the surface with a splash that dimmed the sun for a moment before the water fell in a heavy torrent. They rushed to shore to start smashing land-striders, trying to figure out how to release these dragons, when everything went wrong.
Deafeningly loud, painful clangs assaulted their ears. There were several structures, each with a large iron weight suspended from a vine, that would be released to fall and impact a… something Firefly thought to be some sort of massive gong. The land-striders would lift it and drop it again, and the cacophony it produced was like thunder in the alpha's head.
They stumbled about, uncoordinated, and Dragon King was vaguely aware of the sensation of what was probably a cage under her, instantly crushing its occupant. She tried to swipe at one of those thunder-makers, but she ended up falling flat.
That was when something bit her flank, and she jumped up to all fours again and whirled around just to see a flash of fire and smoke from the ground, followed almost immediately by something biting her chest. Another several claps of thunder nearby sent her stumbling. Her mate loped in front of her, roaring in defiance, trying to be heard above the roar of the land-striders. He opened his mouth wide and drew in a great breath of air to bathe everything and everyone in ice–
A massive volley of fiery explosions sounded out from all around, a hundred flashes of light and that terrible, ear-splitting thunder. He let out a pained roar and stumbled, scrambled up again and lunged for the nearest enemy, and ended up sprawled on his side, already on the verge of death.
All he shared in his projections with her was that he felt like he had been impaled in the nose, mouth, eyes, face, neck, shoulders – Everywhere! He urged her to flee as she would undoubtedly suffer the same fate.
She frantically stumbled towards the water as fast as she could, ignoring the stinging in her hindquarters.
Her head finally went underwater, and she would have thought that would subdue the thunder, but even down there, sea vessels clad in iron were themselves gongs, each sending pulses of painful sound through the water. She tried her best to ignore that and floundered wherever the sea floor fell down, seeking to go deeper and deeper farther away.
She never stopped until the noise had ceased, all light had faded, and she was resting under a rocky shelf in the depths that held her down so she wouldn't float up. She remained until she finally overcame her fear and decided to return to see her dead mate.
That was all Dragon King had to share, but her hope to have distracted herself from the pain hadn't quite worked out. Through Cloudjumper's projected vision, she could see Dragon Savior reaching for one of those iron slivers that had worked its way deep, almost bottoming out against her shoulder, but she wasn't moving.
"It was a mistake to let them flee," Dragon Savior growled out.
Dragon King instantly knew what she was referring to, and started growling herself.
"Hold still, I'm almost done." She grabbed the iron splinter and pulled it out, and it hurt a lot!
Dragon King expressed her thanks, and when Dragon Savior and Cloudjumper flitted back to the ground a safe distance away, she shifted her weight around, appreciating with renewed fondness how pain-free it was to do so. It was a moment of tranquility, no thunder, no pain, almost as peaceful above as it was below. She took in the calming sight of the friendly land-striders and dragons, the beach strewn with dead bodies, the sea with its waves tossed by the pleasant wind, the horizon that was unbroken except for a land-strider sea vessel–
She growled in warning. {Land-striders approach. Their minds feel foreign to me, so I would not trust them.}
A culpable tone poured out of Firefly, and Dragon King shifted slightly to look at him as he toed the ground.
"Oh, yeah, about that," Firefly sheepishly said. "If you could, ya know, not kill them, I'd be really grateful."
Suddenly, it all clicked. {THESE ARE AMONG THE FLOCK THAT KILLED MY MATE. TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW OF THEM AND WHY YOU THINK I SHOULD RESTRAIN MY WRATH.}
"Well, ya see, we had made contact with the enemy force as they were fleeing, and the captain and first mate on one of the ships was dead-set on coming back to bury their dead…"
His face paled as he looked at a red splatter
"I sorta saw this as an opportunity to offer some dragon training after they finished that," he said, regaining his composure. "And I promised to secure passage back home to those who would decline, and several wanted to join that ship, but it turned into a bit of a mess, and we had to pluck up some people who had to jump overboard to avoid being run through for treason, and I owe Snotlout ten copper when we get home–"
"Ha ha!" said rider cawed out. "I just knew something would come up and there would be some scuffles!"
"You're babbling," Dragon Savior hissed at Firefly.
{YOUR REASON THAT I SHOULD SPARE THEM IS THAT THEY WANT TO BURY THEIR DEAD BODIES?}
Dragon King saw one lying nearby.
CRACK!
Firefly flinched. "Stop that!" he wailed. "I realize I can't stop you from doing what you want, but–"
Toothless chuffed at that. {Given the precedence, I can stop her.}
Firefly gave him an unamused look and waved him off. "This is an opportunity to change the attitudes of some people from the mainland, and they will go home and tell others what they saw. Forgive me for saying this here and now," he gestured to Dragon King's dead body, "but if there was a time when we could deal with them with overpowering force, that time has passed."
Dragon King looked out at sea. Those few land-striders on one sea vessel were a minimal threat.
"Hiccup makes a good point," Dragon Savior said, drawing the Dragon King's attention; they had known each other for a long time, and their respect for and trust in each other naturally flourished. "I hated the idea at first, but we cannot ignore the facts that suggest he might be right. Toothless was once his enemy. So was Eret. So was Tord. Hiccup was once in a position to kill several of his loyal friends and allies, and he would have had every right to do so." She looked fondly at him. "It makes me proud to be your mother, regardless of the circumstances, even if your bleeding heart does drive me crazy sometimes."
Dragon King rumbled in thought. {SO I MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN SATISFYING MY DESIRE FOR REVENGE, AT LEAST IN PART, OR TRUSTING FIREFLY THAT WITHHOLDING MY WELL-DESERVED WRATH WOULD HELP US.}
"Thank you for summing that up," Firefly muttered with a roll of his eyes.
{I WILL TRUST FIREFLY, THOUGH IT WILL BE TORTURE TO DO SO.}
Toothless rolled his eyes. {At least you don't have to deal with his ways day and night, season after season!}
"Toothless!" Firefly chided, though he couldn't keep the smile off his face. He looked up at Dragon King. "Thank you, ma'am.
Dragon King turned around – careful to not accidentally crush everyone with her tail – and dug her tusks beneath the mountainous body of her dead mate to start rolling him into the water. {I WILL NOT TOLERATE THEM SEEING HIS BODY SO THAT THEY CAN MOCK ME, THOUGH. I WILL DRAG HIM DEEP AND DROP HIM UNDER A ROCKY LEDGE SO HE DOESN'T FLOAT TO THE SURFACE. HE WILL FEED THE FISH, AND THEY WILL FEED ME. I SUPPOSE THIS IS WHAT THE LAND-STRIDERS WOULD CALL 'POETIC'.}
Firefly suppressed a grimace as he put on a smile and waved her off as she descended into the depths with the tail of her mate's body in her maw. The approaching vessel was still a ways off but clearly approaching.
It wasn't long before Dragon King returned. Firefly had assumed she would prefer to leave this place and probably never come back, so it was with dumbfounded silence that he watched her lumber out of the water and settle down in the middle of what was a bloodbath hardly a week ago.
She looked down at Firefly and the others to answer the unspoken question. {THESE LAND-STRIDERS FILLED ME WITH TERROR, AND IT WOULD ONLY BE FAIR TO RETURN THE FAVOR.}
Firefly sighed. "You're going to make this as awkward as possible, aren't you?
Dragon King shifted her weight to place one of her titanic front paws on the beach.
CRACK!
{YES.}
