I am once again sorry for taking a long time. But since the last chapter, life happened. Most importantly, I started university and moved to another city away from home, meaning that suddenly, finding and cooking food became the most pressing priority. Fortunately, I managed to discover grocery stores, and fanfiction writing is now back. I hope you will enjoy it.
Dart reemerged from the water empty-handed. This was not a problem since most of the time, fishing consisted in taking a fish in one's teeth and since Dart, being a dragon, had paws instead of hands. Tragically, her jaws were equally empty. She had not found a tuna, and with every passing second without that happening the chances of Pouncer catching one before her increased. She snarled angrily, taking a moment to recover her breath and look around, reassessing the situation to find some better place to find her target.
While she was looking around, she noted something. An orange monstrous nightmare was looking at her with worry from the other bank of the river, mere metres away, and she could swear that she had seen him before. But where?
"Pouncer!" she barked as a warning as the nightlight reemerged from the stream.
"Distracting the opponent to win?" mumbled the green-eyed dragon, not even trying to divert some of his attention away from the water to look at her. "Typical poor Dart, too skinny to win cleanly."
Dart barked angrily. She wasn't skinny! The nightlight made a mental note to give back for her brother, later. "The dragon that almost hurt Ruffrunner is here," she barked, so as to make her brother understand the graveness of the threat.
"Uh-huh", answered Pouncer, who was not paying attention to her in the slightest.
Dart looked back at the monstrous nightmare. "He is looking at us," she barked hastily.
"Ah."
"He is starting to escape!" she barked in warning.
"Sure," hummed Pouncer.
Dart blinked. Really, talking was not that effective.
"Ow!" whined Pouncer as Dart bit her ear.
Dart, feeling quite proud of her self-control, did not bite down harder. Instead, she released the dragon and explained the situation in the quick and efficient way only she could truly provide. "You are stupid. That is why you need to follow my orders. I order you to help me capture that dragon," she explained with the sweetest voice she could manage. At the moment, this meant a voice that was firm, but not overly spiteful.
Pouncer still looked quite perplexed, so Dart opened her mouth wide, stretched her teeth and poised herself to eat her brother for added effect. This worked surprisingly well, as Pouncer immediately leapt towards the captor, and more importantly away from Dart's jaws. "I get it!" he barked in panic, desperate to please his sister. Finally they were off.
As they flew, Dart found herself thinking of herself, and how she had managed to deal with her brother. The nightlight concluded that she would make an excellent alpha if it came to it.
In their ramblings, the monstrous nightmare had managed to acquire quite a lead. But for the offspring of a light fury and a night fury, this was not a big issue. Her body was flowing with adrenaline, her heart was strongly and rapidly beating, and her wings seemed to crave to move themselves. Tightly following by the side of her brother, the two made up the lead by the second. The captor was heading for outside this tunnel, and in this familiar racing ground, she could reach fenomenal speed. The open air of the cavern showed itself in the rapidly decreasing distance, where they saw the orange dragon start a dive. As the nightlight tightly tucked her wings, she couldn't help but smile.
Ruffrunner stretched, savouring how his body was relieved from various aches. The nightlight let out a content purr as he pushed his forepaws forwards and did the same with his tail, arching his back.
How long would it take for his siblings to return with his fish? They had to find a tuna and return, which was an admittedly difficult task. However, when it came to competition, both he and his siblings often found ways to surprise, both positive (a hidden shortcut) and negative (that happened to be so narrow one got stuck in it and had to be pulled out). This meant that Ruffrunner was unsure of how much time would pass.
Calmly, he stepped towards the wider world until he was standing at the edge of their home cavern. The air was clean and pleasant on his nose, but he noted how it was becoming colder. Summer was coming to an end by this time. But the nightlight wasn't overly worried. The hidden world was enclosed with layers of rock and had the seawater literally pouring into it, meaning that it rarely got truly cold. Furthermore, fish were found during the entire year. Winter was not a big deal, with the exception of not being able to enjoy the sun's warm rays.
Ruffrunner looked out to the cavern with a solemn gaze. When his two siblings returned with his tunas, he would be sure to give them a worthy welcome and congratulate the winner. A small price to pay to make sure they didn't decide to keep his fish.
A monstrous nightmare swept down before him, tightly flanked by two black and white dragons, all three very familiar. Ruffrunner's eyes went wide.
How had they managed to get into that situation?
The nightlight gave a long, longing gaze behind him, at the love of his life. Smooth, warm and always there for him. How he wished to just be able to forget his siblings and just pass more of his precious time with his beloved sleeping slab.
But things were happening. Ruffrunner leapt off the cliff and dove. Resenting his siblings' existence would come later.
Dart noted Ruffrunner joining the dive and huffed. He wasn't much, but would maybe prove helpful. For her, this dive was rather slow, having to brake to keep the captor's pace. Meanwhile, the captor was at his maximum, wings tucked tightly and body tensed against the airflow. But he was a monstrous nightmare, and it showed. For a short moment, she crossed eyes with him, his being bright orange and thin as slits and angry, likely due to the high speed and three dragons ready to attack him. He was pathetic, in Dart's opinion.
She swerved, aiming for the dragon's tail. He attempted to evade, but she quickly corrected, grabbing it, throwing him off cours, and the dragon was sent towards the wall, and needed a hard bank to avoid crashing. The nightlight could hear the orange dragon shrieking in the process.
"Land or your wings are gone!" roared Ruffrunner, and the captor took a nervous flap in a futile attempt to get distance. Dart and her siblings positioned themselves above the dragon, ready to strike down and deliver on the threat. She blinked in surprise. The three of them working together without insults. That didn't happen everyday.
The monstrous nightmare flared a moment later, and flattened his path. He aimed for a forgotten tunnel, landing on the ground and running to pass through the tunnel's narrow opening. The nightlight growled. This was her chance.
Panting, Dart followed at high speed, with no intention of slowing down. Her eyes fixed on the opening, she approached with her wings tense towards a point just slightly below her target. As the rock got dangerously close, Dart spread out her wings and angled upwards. Now with enough vertical momentum not to crash, she tucked her wings, streaking down the narrow hole without losing two of her limbs or scraping away her underside. The nightlight emitted a jovious roar, but soon focused back to the task at paw.
Her eyes were back to the orange dragon, precise movements in the wings leading her just above him. A feral grin on her teeth, she stopped down her paws and landed squarely and heavily onto the monstrous nightmare's back, nearly collapsing him into the ground. Easy. As she had thought, the monstrous nightmare was practically helpless. She barked triumphantly as the dragon stopped. "Ha! I caught you!"
Her jovious blue eyes quickly widened in terror as she saw that the dragon she had 'caught,' massing about five times her weight, turned around and cast a quite irritated stare at her. During the moments before the disaster, Dart took a moment to consider that maybe, just maybe, her decision to approach this dragon had not been such a good idea.
The captor flipped to his side, during which the nightlight desperately held on, and then shoved her onto the ground by raising his tucked wings. Dart found herself on her back, trapped below his wing, and before she could escape by wiggling away, the wing had been replaced by a heavy and potentially lethal hind paw.
"This is not how this is supposed to work!" she whined desperately. This wasn't fair!
"You should not-", she attempted, but a second paw pressed down on her throat, depriving her of air. Pained half-coherent sounds emanated from her as she tried to claw away both of the limbs keeping her down, with no success apart from superficial scratches. Pouncer and Ruffrunner landed the next moment to the scene and looked horrified at the scene in front of them.
"Fly away. She will pass out, I will hide. Everyone will live," stated the captor coldly. "If you don't leave, she is dead. Are we clear?"
"Don't harm her!" deplored Pouncer. "I need help to attract females, and I will be old and senile before there is even a chance that Ruffrunner becomes-"
"Are we clear?!" roared the monstrous nightmare once more. The two brothers, through a seemingly independent decision, nodded and tensely backed off. If a fight broke out, their chances were too low, and it would be far too easy for something truly bad to happen to Dart.
As soon as Pouncer and Ruffrunner were on the other side of the narrow opening and out of sight, the darker dragon hastily explained the best course of action. "I will call for help. Get somewhere where he can't see you, but make sure to be ready to grip in if Dart ever seems in real harm."
Pouncer looked at him with a worried, low growl."Why does everyone keep acting like if I am stupid and giving me orders?!"
Ruffrunner put a kind yet firm paw onto his brother's shoulder and gave him a serious look, toxic green eyes to toxic green eyes. "Because that is just who you are."
Oh, please be fine, thought Light she pushed her wings to their limits in a battle for speed. Curse her and her mate for having been in one of the hidden world's lowest caverns. As her muscles became heavy, and her speed started to drop, Toothless gained speed and passed in front of her. The light fury placed herself in her mate's slipstream to save energy. At the gruelling rate of the climb that they were maintaining, this was by no means resting, but it prolonged having to slow down for precious moments. From the moment of Ruffrunner saying 'captor' and 'making Dart not breathe' to the moment of her, her mate and all of their advisors taking flight, less than five seconds had passed. Her adrenaline was filled to the maximum, but right now, she couldn't be anything but grateful for it.
The black and white dragons climbed rapidly, their path near-vertical in the tunnel, looking for the cavern Ruffrunner had described. And as the correct ledge became visible, the light fury's breath stuck in her throat.
A loud roaring emerged from this ledge. "I will go into that cavern, alone if I have to, and take his air away! You can't stop me from having my revenge!"
Light sighed in relief. "She is fine."
Meanwhile, Toothless thought about what his daughter had just roared. "Not for long," he growled.
They approached the correct ledge and entered the narrow opening to find both Dart and Pouncer physically intact, with Pouncer struggling to keep hold on Dart's tail as she tried to wiggle herself free. Naturally, this was accompanied by various profanities, ranging from one's complete lack of consequence thinking to this being the reason one would never be appreciated by females. In other words, safe and sound.
Toothless barked sharply to get their attention. "What happened?" asked the night fury
"I heard wingbeats shortly after Ruffrunner left. Then I came back here, and saw Dart unconscious on the ground while the captor was gone. She regained consciousness a few seconds later, and started demanding that I let her go and chase after the captor," started Pouncer.
"Which this disgrace for a brother did not allow," continued Dart before giving the night fury a view of wide, impossibly innocent bright blue eyes. "But now that you are here, could you please tell him that I can have my lovely, sweet revenge?"
After breaking their daugher's heart and sending their offspring away, the night fury and light fury devised a method to find the captor in the ravine they found themselves in. The cavern's walls were dotted with over a hundred caves, leading to them facing a laborious task. Gathered just inside of the narrow opening, the night fury explained their course of action.
"Hookfang, Stormfly, help me search these caves. Make yourself noticed if you find anything," explained the alpha. He gave his advisors a serious look. "And when someone calls, get there fast. Clear?"
Light stepped forwards, trying her best to hide her nervousness. "I will also join you!" she barked.
Her mate tilted his head and displayed an amused smile. "Do you deem yourself capable of surviving an attack by an angry monstrous nightmare?" he asked teasingly.
"Well, that just isn't a fair comparison," started the light fury in a conversational tone. "You spent years dealing with aggressive dragons and humans alike together with Hiccup, and cannot expect me to have the same level of…" She was cut short by the light fury lovingly licking the side of her neck, and nuzzled her head onto his back with a sigh.
It was the right course of action, but that didn't mean she had to like it.
"Be careful," she purred softly.
The night fury purred back, just as softly. They bumped heads before taking to the sky.
Light was not pleased of not being a part of the search and fight, but that didn't mean she couldn't watch. The light fury was admired as the three dragons flew in and out of caves. The beasts would quickly disappear into them with complete focus, seemingly ready for everything, just to come back seconds later, veer aggressively and move to a nearby cave. Seeing her mate, Stormfly, and Hookfang acting like this felt strange, as they were so… professional. It was different. But considering who they were up against, it likely was for the best.
Finding her use, Light started keeping track of which caverns had been searched, and made sure that no cave was taken twice so as to ensure efficiency, while the three dragons moved further and further into the tunnel. The dragons settled down in a steady rhythm, and time quickly started to fly. This time, the captor would be theirs.
But by the end of the search, only one world stood out. Empty.
The night fury looked around, at the many caves that they had examined. Some had been long, some had been short, and some had been… average length. But they had searched through all of them, and none had contained their target. "How is this possible?" His emerald green eyes flicked rapidly towards his mate, suddenly filled with worry. "Did we make sure that the narrow opening was guarded at all times?"
"Pretty much," answered Light promptly. "Well, I cannot see all of the tunnel system every fraction of a second, but almost."
The night fury, increasingly nervous, flicked his tail to point at the wider tunnel. "But could he have escaped by passing where you were not watching, and while we were searching in caves?"
"It doesn't make sense. He would have had to pass impossibly quickly, or I would have seen him," barked Light defensively. She could miss a spot for one, maybe two seconds. That was by no means enough time to reach the opening.
"What if he went from cave to cave, always making sure to hide when you were looking in his direction?" asked Toothless, loudly, as his advisors looked nervously from the sidelines.
The light fury shook her head. "Still, it would be almost impossible for him to…"
Light stopped, her heart suddenly heavy in her chest. Almost. It was almost impossible. "Are you completely sure that he cannot have escaped?" asked Toothless, one final time.
The light fury looked down, a wave of guilt washing over her. She couldn't believe that it had happened, and she still found it couldn't fathom how it was possible, but the harsh truth was that she was just not sure. "No. I am not."
Toothless nodded, and took a few paces into the cavern, before suddenly giving a piercing, wordless roar aimed at the ground. He and all of his advisors, searching all morning, had not found anything. But in just a few minutes, his hatchlings had managed to find themselves face to face with the captor without even trying, and then those three had managed to chase him into a one way-cavern, almost die, and managed to lose him. The night fury thought about the three dragons. "They are incredible," he stated. Not only in good ways, he thought.
A few days later, the captor laid once more on the ground in the stupid cave. The other dragon had returned a few moments ago, bringing fish and a particularly bad mood. Unfortunately, this time, the captor had not found a reason to roar back. He could do nothing but look down as the other dragon paced angrily around him.
"Out of all the dragons to satisfy your stupid primal urges you try with the alpha's advisor?!" roared the other dragon after some time.
This wasn't true. Yes, he had met and talked with Pinch, but it wasn't for mating. The captor explained how Pinch's openness and smart ideas just made her pleasant to be around, and how he would have done the same if she had happened to be a male.
"Oh, apologies," said the other dragon. "Out of all the dragons to satisfy your stupid need for frendship you try with the alpha's advisor?!"
The captor looked down. There was no denying it. It had been stupid. But he hated it here. He wanted to go outside, meet people, fight, and the other dragon just couldn't give it.
"And what have you done?!" he barked back suddenly. "Thanks to me, that light fury has been hurt! The alpha has been filled with trouble! The entirety of the hidden world knows that Toothless is not capable of protecting his hatchlings! So tell me, what have you done besides giving me orders and telling me to keep a low profile?!" he asked in one long, powerful roar. There was a silence as they stalked each other.
"I have recruited people," said the other dragon in the end. The monstrous nightmare was taken back as the other dragon started explaining in detail. "I have met dragons that are willing to help us. We are still too few, but I am changing that. The day that we rise up, we will be strong enough to not get crushed." There was a brief silence. "Unless we let the alpha capture us, of course."
The orange dragon growled. Of course all lessons had to be on him screwing up. "You want me to be stuck in this cavern for eternity?"
"For the time that it takes to gather enough people," answered the other dragon, the voice now defeated. But slowly, the other dragon began grinning, until it was quietly chuckling while looking at the cave's stone floor.
"And what are you so happy about?" barked the captor somewhat bitterly.
The other dragon looked at him. "When convincing other dragons to help me remove the alpha… it's surprising how easy it was."
The God Enrager left the harbour, heading for one more of its journeys, having returned and refitted in the weeks that had passed, the characteristic sail catching the wind as the wing it was initially supposed to be. But turmoil was rising among those left behind.
Back on Berserker island, the second viking scoffed. He didn't like that they were in a different tavern than usual, he didn't like the way the mead in this tavern tasted and he absolutely didn't like where this conversation was going. "They ain't met dragons or they ain't be alive now, it's impossible-"
"Shut up and listen," growled Ulf acidly, interrupting him. The ex-dragon trapper looked at him furiously. "Twenty children that somehow tell coherent stories. Claw marks on the deck. A pile of food that would feed scores of vikings for months that disappears in a week. And you think it's just a stunt they made up to get more clients?!"
There was a long silence. The second viking desperately wanted to show that no, Ulf was wrong, but just didn't have the facts. He crushed his face in his hand as he slowly accepted the dreadful implication. His son was on that ship. And heading towards his death sentence. He didn't want to believe it. No. The second viking crushed the wooden jug as he slammed it on the table. "And what yer want me to do about it?!" he shouted desperately, loudly enough that the whole tavern could hear.
The noise woke up the third viking, who had previously been fast asleep on the table, who leapt upright. "Aye, I'm on board! What are we doing?"