Knowing what the launcher was didn't help, the net was already crossing the short distance. One of the weights bounced off the deck beneath Dreamer's chest, and another under his tail, the net itself pulling his wing to his side and wrapping around his flanks as he was pulled onto his side.
He struggled to get to his paws, his hindclaws already tangled in the web of rope, but heavy hands grabbed him and forced him back down, holding his mouth closed.
It was over in a matter of heartbeats, the only sounds the hissing of the strange little torches on the rail, the grunting of the struggling riders and dragons, and the scraping of claws against wood.
"You had one job," Viggo calmly scolded the injured hunters, briefly closed his eyes to take a breath, then looked between the Nightstrikers. "Ah, Dreamer," he greeted warmly as he walked over, "a pleasure to see you again."
Dreamer growled at him, staring either side of the hand holding his snout down.
"Come now, you have to be prepared for a little give and take. Speaking of, I have a small task for you, if you will." Dreamer growled again. "You don't even know what I want of you yet, I suspect you'll find it rather fascinating. Now then…" A hunter handed him something, and he held it up with a grimace as if it were a rotting rag.
For a few moments, Dreamer couldn't quite work out what it was, a short metal bar attached to some straps… but he hissed dangerously once he recognised the muzzle.
"Indeed, I cannot say the prospect thrills me either." Viggo tossed the abominable device over his shoulder, and it dropped over the rail and out of sight. "My policy is to show people at minimum the respect I am shown myself. You appear to be an intelligent dragon, so I implore you, do not make me regret that…"
Dreamer stared impassively at him. On one paw, this still felt a little too close to Alvin's ultimatums. On the other, Viggo struck him as a man of integrity, despite his despicable occupation, and if they'd put that muzzle on him he would have fought them every step of the way; in some ways, he appreciated the consideration. He nodded, as much as his flat head allowed while being held down.
At a signal from Viggo, the hunters warily let him rise and untangle himself from the net. "Boss, what do we do with the others?" one asked.
Viggo looked at the man, a miniscule widening of his eyes and then a diminutive furrowing of his brow suggesting he'd not considered it; he had a very good handle on his expressions, more than most Long-Paws. "Hold them there while… you, and you, haul cages up onto the deck to put them in. Put the riders with their dragons." Maybe Dreamer just wasn't reading his extremely subtle tells properly, he sounded almost bored saying that.
Having kicked off the last of the rope, Dreamer snorted at him. "Of course," Viggo said graciously as he turned, then led Dreamer with long steps to the aft of the ship. "You," he picked out one of the four hunters holding Wanderer down, "come with me."
Dreamer glanced at Wanderer before ascending the stairs up towards the second cabin, giving him a resolute and determined look before they lost sight of each other. Some of the ropes around his head were burned, but not enough to get him free, and a hunter holding his snout down prevented him from doing more. He was looking back at Dreamer with trust in his eyes, knowledge that he would get them out.
Which he would. He just needed the right opportunity, when everyone had relaxed their guards a bit… Unlike before they developed their fire, he really wasn't concerned now. Viggo likely didn't know just how versatile it really was.
"Dragon fire has some unique properties I doubt even you're aware of," Viggo said conversationally, freakishly matching Dreamer's thoughts. He opened the door to the smaller cabin and stood in the threshold a moment, then backed out and closed the door again. "My ancestors found a particularly unlikely use, though I know not how, and made this."
Dreamer was forgetting himself in genuine intrigue now, staring at the cylindrical device and simple bag being shown to him. Viggo drew something out of the bag and held it up, a hexagonal piece with a clear centre. "These are the keys to using it, difficult to track down and harder to read, but with the right dragon…"
He slotted it into the cylinder, then pointed one end at Dreamer. "Don't worry, it's perfectly harmless," he said reassuringly as Dreamer flinched, "but if you would… light your mouth?" He chuckled. "I must confess this is as strange to me, I am obviously unaccustomed to asking."
Hrrr, just hold his fire in his mouth? The end of the device facing him featured a small glass circle surrounded by runed plates. The other end was pointed at what appeared to be Viggo's own cabin, so it was unlikely to be a weapon, however such a thing would work… Despite the situation, Dreamer was dreadfully curious.
He cracked open his mouth and prepared his plasma, but didn't let any out; he was low enough on it already, and he still needed to do something about everyone else. The blue glow lit the deck around him, a brief whistle all the protest it made as he held it back, a sound that quickly faded into a quiet passive hum..
But he was much more focused on what suddenly appeared across the wall of the cabin, so absorbed that only the wobbling images alerted him to Viggo tensing in surprise. Where his fire shone through the device, it focused the blue light into startlingly clear pictures and symbols of totally foreign design. The pictures were simple, and yet the closer he looked the more detail seemed to present itself.
The picture in the middle was a dragon, one he had never seen before and that didn't even resemble anything in the Book of Dragons. It had horns protruding from its nose and chin and generally looked stocky, with a thick neck and short tail. Its teeth were bared, but there was something different between them and its claws, despite being about the same size…
The images flicked away from the wall as the lens was swapped for another from the bag, apparently having been handed to the hunter so Viggo could get a closer look, while Dreamer stared at the device in fascination.
A different set of images now, of a Gronckle. This time he focused on the surrounding symbols, though they similarly seemed to have details hidden within details, difficult to see with the minute unsteadiness of the device being held by hand.
Dreamer had never had so many questions about something. He might have more questions about this one device than he'd ever-
Surprised shouting from behind him snapped him back to reality. "Someone ge' a torch!" one of the hunters shouted gruffly.
"They ain't 'ere!" another voice shouted back even as Dreamer turned to look, closing off his fire in the process…
Darkness. The torches on the rail had burned out, plunging the deck back into darkness. The whole ship into darkness.
What am I doing!? Dreamer dodged around the steering wheel and dove over the rail, landing on one of the hunters pinning Wanderer and driving him firmly into the deck. His wing took a second in the side of the head, the sheer force knocking him unconscious even through his helmet, and his tail swept the legs out from under the third and then slammed into his gut.
Wanderer rolled and Dreamer used a stream of fire to cut through the netting tangled around his paws – a shout pricked his ears, and he fired at the net launcher without a second thought, reducing it to splinters.
That done, he grabbed the net in his teeth and tugged it off, and Wanderer let out a bellowing roar of defiance before leaping back into the renewed fray, firing on the second net launcher before tackling the two hunters trying to force Stormfly into a cage.
Confusion and blindness once again prevailed, with all Viggo's surprises expended. The blazing torches had even done a better job than Stormfly's and Hookfang's fire in blinding the hunters with the sudden darkness, while the riders had already freed themselves and were working on their dragons.
While everything was in paw, Dreamer wanted something.
He spun and leaped back up to the second level, quickly noticing a complete lack of Viggo. He had to be around somewhere, but it would be dangerous to go looking for him when he was expecting them. That wasn't what he wanted anyway, and with a bit of luck…
The other hunter was still blundering around the upper deck, clutching something in a meaty hand, a cylinder and a bag. His eyes were already wide and bordering on frightened, looking around Dreamer but failing to rest on him.
Maybe this could be handled more carefully. Dreamer bared his teeth and let his fire light his mouth again, only for a moment, giving the hunter what had to be the most frightening image of a dragon anyone had ever seen. He was clearly a Viking, maybe even a Berserker from his appearance, but Dreamer was the offspring of lightning and death itself.
And of course, the only thing a Viking feared was something they couldn't swing an axe at. Dreamer smirked as the items were dropped in favour of a sword and shield, and snatched them in his claws before leaping into the sky.
The speed at which the riders were working was impressive, they were all already free again and were working on the last few cages on the beach, so he just observed from above just in case there really was something else Viggo had up his sleeve.
What, exactly, had gone wrong? For starters, the hunters had been prepared for a night ambush, with those strange torches. Had Viggo somehow harnessed Spine-Tail fire? Dreamer drifted down to get a look at where the fires had been burning, noting the little canisters attached to the rail. They had to be in a place that could be reached to light them, and were distinctive enough to spot now he knew what to look for.
Drifting over the ship, he happened to get a look at the side of the cabin where he'd fired at it and noticed a dull glint of metal through the hole. That was another part of it, they had reinforced the part of the ship that had been hit last time. Using the same tactics over and over would not work against these hunters.
The net launchers were another matter… Dreamer wheeled around as torches were finally located and lit, hunters surveying the damage and beginning to clear debris, including that of the mounted weapons that had emerged from the hold. There had been a lot of force in the net that hit him, they would be capable of firing well into the air.
That they had been hidden in advance and somehow lifted onto the deck was not how they would normally be used, this had been prepared in advance for this specific situation. They had to have guessed they would be attacked sailing so close to the Nest's territory, and prepared countermeasures. To be of any use on the water, however, such launchers would need to be mounted on the deck in plain sight.
But there might be other surprises, other traps. He had met Viggo twice, and both times he had felt he was on someone else's territory; metaphorically as well as physically. Viggo always seemed to be the one in control.
At that, he was still on the island. This could be an excellent opportunity…
"Wanderer," Dreamer barked, and his friend dropped down from where he and the riders had been circling above. "You still have fire?"
"Yes," Wanderer chuffed. "I shoot where you shot?"
Not this time, the rudder could be rigged up with ropes; awkward, but possible. He wanted the ship landbound and requiring extensive repairs. "Shoot its nose. Use all your fire, we leave after." All except that last shot, but that was unspoken.
"Hrrr, yes," Wanderer agreed, then climbed for some height to dive from.
The hunters had to be getting tired of hearing this rising screech by now, it had to play Hel on morale. Every time they heard it, something was about to explode, and they were powerless to stop it; it was very strange to be on this end of the 'hide and pray it does not find you' warning.
The 'something' in this case was the prow of the ship, the bolt of fire striking where the deck met the thick beam that held the front of the ship together. Had held the front of the ship together, most of it was now laying in the sand.
"Oh man," Snotlout exclaimed as they rose up to meet the wheeling riders, "that was so satisfying!I don't know why you guys don't blow stuff up more often."
"Tell me about it!" Ruffnut agreed enthusiastically.
Dreamer warbled thoughtfully as they angled for the Nest. He remembered the satisfaction of destruction, slashing at trees with a toy sword, and… actually, watching Wanderer smash apart catapults had been just viscerally exciting in a way nothing else could be. But now, he didn't have that feeling, that desire to destroy, to dismantle.
Hrrr, though humans were incredibly fragile creatures, in and of themselves. They didn't simply live in the world around them like everything else, they needed to beat it into submission just to survive. Perhaps those instincts stemmed from that need.
He took a breath of the cool night air and glanced back at the island, at the faint light on the shore that was fading into the distance behind them. Viggo wasn't just going to give up, but at least he was stuck here while they repaired their ship, and while they repaired they couldn't hunt. They would probably still leave with a hold of dragons, but the ship would be as vulnerable as ever once it started sailing again. The net launchers were both in ruins, and if they timed their attack at dawn again the strange bright torches would still be useless.
Either way, they weren't going anywhere soon. There was plenty of time to fly home, rest, replenish their fire, and return; even if they missed the departure by a whole day, it would be easy to find on the water.
Fishlegs hadn't been able to sleep on the flight back. It didn't matter how knackered he was, though he himself had done precious little during the raid, it was how his backside hurt from being sat in the saddle for so long and of course there was the surrounding darkness trying to suck out his soul.
He couldn't see anything at all! Why couldn't the sky have remained nice and clear for the whole flight? For all he knew they were moments from crashing into a mountain and falling to their deaths. Of course, he trusted his Meatlug, but a blade at your throat was unnerving regardless of who held it.
Logically, he knew descending meant that they were finally home, which was cause for celebration, but it was also another unknown that-
He was jolted in the saddle as Meatlug touched down. "Land!" he exclaimed, sliding out and running up to hug the doorframe.
…Not the doorframe of his hut, he quickly noticed as Hiccup lit the fire, but the communal hut. "Light!" he exclaimed, suddenly uncaring, and ran inside to warm his hands by the flames.
Hiccup barked to get his attention, walking around the table on his hindlegs. The reason for that became clear when he set a bag and a weird metal cylinder on the table. It was a beautifully crafted thing, with a glass piece at each end, etched with the likeness of scales, and a dragon's head held the larger glass end in its open mouth.
"Uhhh… You take that from the hunters or something?"
"Yes," Hiccup chuffed happily, then fumbled with the device to pull out a hexagonal component with a glass lens set into the middle, which dropped to the table.
"...What is it?" Fishlegs asked, picking up the lens and inspecting it closely. It was like nothing he'd ever seen, lighter than he'd expected, and without any sign of imperfection or damage.
"Hrrr, not know. See." The Fury teased another hexagonal lens out of the bag and gestured to Fishlegs, who slotted it into the same place, then arranged it on the table and leaned down behind it, mouth lighting up with a blue glow.
Fishlegs frowned. "Is it supposed to be doing something?" All that seemed to be happening was there was light shining through it.
Hiccup pointed with a wing, and Fishlegs turned… and dropped the lens. He glanced at where it had hit the floor, but decided it could wait.
Words failed him, all he could get out was something of a drawn-out squeak as he approached the images on the wall, stepping aside so that his shadow wasn't in the way. "Is that a Speed Stinger?" he finally managed. It was a simple image, but it had all the dragon's features in precise detail. To scale, even, he noticed as he pored over it, something most people didn't bother with.
But the very design of it all… something about it struck him as familiar, and it took him a little while to work out what it was. "Hiccup," he said quietly, "remember when… someone we knew would occasionally show me plans for something? Drawings of how something was going to work? This… This looks a lot like one of those."
The bright blue light died off, returning the room to a warm orange glow, and Fishlegs spun to find Hiccup panting lightly. "Not can breathe like that," he explained.
"Wait, really? Oh, wait, that makes sense. Like trying to breathe while swallowing, I guess."
"Not much like that," he huffed. "Hunter alpha say his kin make this, much time past. I think they use this for hunting, tell them about dragons, make hunts easier. I was thinking I show all these, but holding fire is hard. Want show you this one."
But Fishlegs was thinking about something else. "Do you think…" He watched as Hiccup teased the dropped lens out from under the table. "Do you think there's one on Night Furies?"
Hiccup froze, ears going up and eyes narrowing to slits. Abandoning the lens on the floor, he then lunged for the sack and started clawing out its contents.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Fishlegs exclaimed, running for the dragon. "They might be fragile! Here, I'll do it." Hiccup grumbled while the lenses were clumsily swapped out, then hastily lit his mouth with a brief Night Fury screech.
While Fishlegs was achingly curious himself about if there was anything on Night Furies, he was still highly interested when a Monstrous Nightmare illuminated the wall. "Hey!" he shouted when the projection cut off after only a few seconds, but Hiccup just grunted at him and impatiently pawed at the remaining lenses. "Okay, fine…" He grabbed another and swapped them over.
There was a dragon that wasn't in the Book of Dragons, a stocky thing with lots of pointy bits, and then a Zippleback was the last lens in the back.
"Sorry to get your hopes up," Fishlegs commiserated, scratching around Hiccup's ears.
He looked downcast, disappointed, but then his ears lifted a little. "Hunter alpha say he find these," he pawed at the bag of lenses, "maybe we find more… We still not have Spine-Tail."
"Yeah, that's the spirit! We can ask Johann, he's likely to know. Or, maybe we could track down some of the inhabited islands around here, they might know something too."
"Yes…" He was hopeful, but he didn't look all that convinced. Fishlegs understood, Night Furies were just so rare, what were the chances of there being a lens for them at all? "Here, I want show you this one." He dropped to the floor and nosed at the lens still laying there.
"Oh, yeah, that one!" He had a suspicion of what was on it, and wouldn't waste time with questions.
With the lens slotted, Hiccup lit his mouth and the proud image of a Gronckle was displayed on the wall. Fishlegs breathed heavily as he approached for a closer look, running his hand under some of the images and watching them play over his skin.
This was a great lens to start with, he already knew a lot about Gronckles which would help him deconstruct these strange symbols, and…
There was something about the outline of the Gronckle too… His jaw went slack. "Hiccup… This diagram details the composition of a Gronckle's hide. I mean, like, really details it. The outer scale, the softer middle layer, the tougher deep layer, and then the growth layer… It's all here. These aren't just drawings… They're… This is all of it."
He looked back at the Night Fury, who let the light in his mouth die off to take several deep breaths. "This changes everything."
Wanderer levelled his nose to a slight change in the wind, happy to be flying and more so to be flying fast, but still feeling a little sullen for some reason.
He would much rather be doing this than sitting there with his fire in his mouth so that Fish-Legs and usually also Dreamer could gawk at the marks it made on the wall. This, however, was not flying for fun. These first cycles of having their fire they were supposed to be exercising their freedom to do as they wished, no sires or dams to tell them not to sleep all night and stay up all day, or scold them for rolling in mud and letting it bake dry under the sky-fire.
He didn't really have much of a desire to do any of that himself, given he had already done as much once before, but Dreamer had not had such an experience and therefore should. It was the principle of the thing.
He snorted. Dreamer grew bored far too quickly to be content with that life for long; it was equal parts admirable and frustrating.
While he himself would rather be goofing around and just exploring, it was a mild preference that was the sub-wing to Dreamer's drive. His own happiness was important of course, but that was tied heavily to Dreamer's, and he did want to help the wing-hunters these Long-Paws were hurting for no real reason.
A growl rolled through his throat at the thought of the hunters. Predators hunted prey, it was the way of life, but these hunters were drawing out their kill, playing with their prey long after it had been caught. It was a cruelty that sickened him and made him just want to rid the world of such creatures. With the small-land now in sight, it was tempting to just open fire on them and be done with it, rather than fly all the way here every light to check for when they were leaving so they could free any more wing-hunters they'd taken in the meantime.
The fury simmered beneath his scales, urging him to attack and tear the danger apart… but he trusted Dreamer to know what he was doing. Perhaps had Dreamer not experienced being hunted and trapped by Long-Paws himself it would be different, but Wanderer trusted him to know what was best when it came to Long-Paws.
The sight of the empty beach snapped him from his thoughts; the hunters were no longer there. His head pivoted to scan the sea but there was no sign of them.
He had been here himself last light, the big tree at the front of the ship had still been lying in the sand. It was still lying in the sand, they must have made another or something. He growled at himself and flapped a bit harder to pick up speed and work off his frustration.
But this was a ship, and like the Long-Paws themselves it was dreadfully slow. They could not make it far enough in a single light to evade him, and it took no time at all to find the big shape floating in the water.
Excitement burned in his chest, here was a way to vent some of his frustration without flying against what they'd been trying to do here. His wings continued powering him forwards, taking him above the ship, before folding and dropping him into a dive.
The place Dreamer had struck featured a spindly protrusion that had, until his sound-sight started building, had a Long-Paw standing in front of it, that must be the target. He let his fire build in his throat, preparing a shot that was probably larger than necessary, and released it at a safe height before levelling off.
Glancing back, he watched it take a large bite out of the ship, then purred in satisfaction at the thought of the hunters within it cowering in fear; they, at least, would know not to hunt Nightstrikers. Personally, he thought he should just blow the whole thing apart and be done with the hunter alpha for good, that one was nothing but trouble, but while he would discuss it with Dreamer it would be both their decision. One would have to convince the other; he was fairly sure his clever Dreamer would win him over, but it wouldn't stop him bringing up valid thoughts.
He turned tail to fly back to the nest, trying to envisage Dreamer's response to the suggestion of killing the hunter alpha and come up with counter-arguments.
As he flew, he realised that he had done more thinking since they'd hatched again than he had in his life before then. He buried his thoughts for a moment to appreciate that with a long purr. Long-Paws were so dangerous because they could think – wwrrr, and also that there were just so many of them – but there wasn't much in a Nightstriker's life that needed thinking much about. Judging conditions to be comfortable or not was about as complicated as it got, including deciding if another Nightstriker was good company.
He hadn't really been given much of a chance to think like this before. There were no big decisions to make while a fledgling and part of a proper family, and then he had not wanted to think after that. Maybe, living in the jaws of the massive thought-controlling queen had just been his way of escaping that.
Everything was all so much better now. He didn't feel his thinking was being squashed – quite the opposite, he felt he had to sprint to keep up – and he and Dreamer were entirely equals, even more so than before.
Why hadn't he tried talking to Dreamer before hatching again? It seemed an obvious thing to do now, but at the time he just hadn't considered it. He hadn't actually done much talking at all since leaving his family, other wing-hunters did not typically use words; mainly to teach their hatchlings, and when required to seek help for something specific.
Looking back, it was as if he'd been sleeping his whole life, and his currently rapidly growing mind was only part of that.
He shook his head and focused on the flight, digging up the discussion he would be having with Dreamer again about the hunter alpha as he cut through the air with a quiet purr.
The ship came into view for the second time that light, though it was moving much more slowly this time. Wanderer looked it over warily, there was something going on with the hole he had blasted open but it didn't look like they'd finished fixing the tail-fin-thing yet. Evidently not, by how slowly they were moving.
He listened to Astrid relay the plan, the usual except that this time they would be hunting for the hunter alpha, probably grabbing him in claws and carrying him back to the small-land. Dreamer would talk to him through Fish-Legs, and decide what to do with him from there.
Not quite what Wanderer wanted – he'd rather just kill the alpha – but this was reasonable. He might simply have bad thinking that could be fixed, or maybe he wanted something else.
There was something Dreamer wasn't telling him about it though, some thinking he did not want to put to words, but Wanderer couldn't think what it might be.
It didn't matter. They were descending on the ship with the sun behind them, only a paltry few Long-Paws visible on it. Of course, the Rock-Scale's loud wings gave them away long before they reached it, but it wasn't enough time for any defences to be prepared.
They swept over the ship, the Nightstrikers landing on the raised part with the usual sounds of injured hunters coming from below. There was only one Long-Paw up here with them, who wouldn't be a problem after Wanderer's fangs tasted its leg and Dreamer pounced it, and then they turned on the door to the small cave.
With a glance to check they were both ready for it, Dreamer fired on the door and it disappeared, revealing…
Nobody.
Dreamer warbled in confusion, then leaped over and stuck his head around the door to scent inside. "He not here," he said dejectedly.
"Toothy! Hiccup!" Astrid's voice perked their ears and turned their heads. "There's no dragons here!"
"Don' feel bad," the nearby hunter chuckled tensely, wheezing and gripping his leg. "Tha's jus' the boss for yeh. Ain' nobody smarter than 'im."
Says you, Wanderer thought proudly, even though the current situation did not favour that opinion; he growled at the hunter regardless.
Dreamer walked to the edge and growled over the water, towards the small-land, then leaped into the air and beat his wings hard.
Wanderer followed, as he was the only one who could at this speed. "Go back to nest," he roared back to the Long-Paws at the last moment, before pumping his wings hard to catch up; he was still faster than Dreamer, of course.
They quickly arrived at the small-land, and Dreamer pulled up above it, over the mountains that almost split it in half. His keen gaze looked down over it, though Wanderer knew not what he was looking for, then they were diving again towards where it met the water.
Dreamer alighted on a beach, the opposite side of the small-land to where the ship had been, and Wanderer landed a little way ahead of him. "What you thinking?" he asked, uncertain.
A thoughtful hum was his only answer while Dreamer looked around, occasionally bounding to a new place to stand on his hindlegs or scent something. After a short time of this, he pawed at a long groove in the sand… then slashed it, sending a spray of sand into the air. "I stupid," he snarled.
Wanderer growled at him, for saying something so stupid, but otherwise waited for him to explain.
"We see ship, we watch it. But they have ship here also." His tail lashed furiously behind him, kicking up more sand. "They left here nights before now. Also take dragons with them. He know! Hunter alpha know we do this, he…"
At a calm bark from Wanderer, Dreamer closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "You not do this," Wanderer reminded him, "rotted hunters do this."
"I know," Dreamer said quietly, sitting on his haunches to take another deep breath, relaxing his shoulders and straightening his posture.
Calm, safe, Wanderer purred, walking forward and giving his Dreamer a brief nuzzle.
When Dreamer opened his eyes again, they were still narrow, but not as narrow as the angry slits they had been before. Determined, gratitude, he purred back, then walked down the beach and stared out over the water. "Yes. We just need be better."
A confused and questioning growl, accompanied by the rhythmic clicking of claws on the wooden floorboards, took a few moments to pry Fishlegs' attention from the wall. "Hiccup!" he greeted the Fury enthusiastically, rushing over to him with the intention of pulling him over to the wall but finding a lack of much to really grab hold of and his mouth was hanging open a bit which was unsurprising given how awesome this was but it was showing his teeth which looked rather dangerous and made him think better of it-
"Come see!" he exclaimed instead, running back to the wall and running his hands under the shapes projected onto it, which was really a fascinating thing as it was like there was writing on the wall but when he put his hand there the writing was on the back of his hand instead of his hand over the writing-
His thoughts were all over the place but he was just so excited because he'd found-
"Dark Deep!" he cheered, pointing at the images that appeared crudely drawn but were actually highly detailed that surrounded the Gronckle displayed on the wall.
Hiccup seemed more interested in Meatlug and the device they'd taken from the hunters. "Not need Nightstriker fire for this?" he warbled, closely inspecting the cylindrical device.
"Who cares about that!?" Fishlegs shouted. "This is Dark Deep! The ancestral home of the Gronckles! Bork was really brave when it came to sailing out of the Archipelago in the name of knowledge, but he couldn't navigate to save his life." He paused, furrowing his brow. "…Actually, maybe sailing all over the place and running into dragons everywhere wasn't by choice."
Hiccup barked a laugh – but they were off-topic! Fishlegs frantically waved his hands to get them back on course. "That doesn't matter! Hiccup, do you know what this means!?"
"…We know where we can find many Rock-Scales?"
"No! Well, yes, but this is a chance to see Gronckles living in their original habitat! We might find more evolutionary deviants, like the Speed Stingers, o-o-or maybe-" Fishlegs ran over to Hiccup to stare him directly in the face, "-a Titan Wing Gronckle… Hey, it could happen! There's plenty of evidence Titan Wings exist, and that was before the Speed Stingers came along with their Titan Wing alphas."
"Can be… Alpha-Wing if not have wings?" Hiccup warbled thoughtfully. "But Fire-Scale alpha in warm-nest was Alpha-Wing."
"WHAT!?" Fishlegs shouted, the word coming out much more shrilly than he would have liked and actually waking Meatlug, who glanced around, stopped, tilted her head in confusion, then chewed on the lava dripping from her mouth. "…Sorry girl," he said gently, "everything's fine, you can go back to your nap."
"I not say that?" Hiccup mumbled abashedly.
"You don't say anything anymore," Fishlegs grumbled, his exuberance suddenly boiling into aggravation. "Everything I know about Night Furies, I know from observation. The only thing you really told me was when you get your fire, and the first I hear about that being wrong was Toothy blowing Alvin to pieces, and the first I see of it is you firing it at my feet. I've been dropping hints, but are you really going to make me ask about it?"
He didn't know where this was coming from, and Hiccup was looking remorseful, but the flood gates were open and there was no closing them. "Do you have any idea how much work I put into the new Book of Dragons? Did you even look at it? I thought you of all people would be interested, but I guess it's nothing you don't already know, right? Nothing you couldn't have just told me from the start." That wasn't really the issue, as the work had been enjoyable, but he was riled.
"I mean, hey, never mind that you've literally met a Titan Wing, something that hasn't yet been documented well enough to be sure they even exist, why would I want to know about that? And I get that you've been secretive about how," Fishlegs gestured to the Fury, "how this happened in the first place, but come on, I don't even know how much you know about it. What else don't I know about? I don't even know enough to know what questions I should be asking!"
A quiet whimper cut off Fishlegs' tirade, and he felt himself slump back into his usual posture. "Sorry, I just…" He just what? I thought we were friends, his mind supplied, but he couldn't bring himself to say it. Hiccup looked tiny, somehow appearing to have shrunk significantly, and was glancing up with wide, miserable eyes.
"Oh Thor, you can drop the kicked puppy act," Fishlegs groaned apologetically; such intelligent and deadly dragons should not be this impossibly cute. "I just, you're our friend, okay? I just hope we're your friends too…"
"Yes," Hiccup replied with some determination. "I not have friends before…" Fishlegs felt his stomach drop a little. "I want keep them now."
"I… didn't really mean any of that," Fishlegs said quietly, nervously scratching his face. "I don't even really know why I was mad."
"But you right," Hiccup hummed. "I do better." He then staggered as Meatlug licked him, throwing his wings out and hopping to his paws. "Maybe I be your friend also?" he crooned at Meatlug.
"Yes, friends!" she agreed in her gravelly voice, startling both of them.
"You know, sometimes I forget she can talk," Fishlegs admitted sheepishly.
"I also," Hiccup agreed.
"Hey… Random question… When you introduced yourself to Viggo, you gave your dragon name. I mean, we kind of named you before we knew… anything… but would you rather we call you that too?"
Hiccup chuffed. "I not mind, you friends. It… Hrrr… Think if hunter alpha call you 'fish'."
He imagined Viggo calling his name. Ominous, and gave him the chills. Then he imagined Viggo calling him by his nickname-
"Oh yeah that would be really weird," he agreed. "Okay, fair."
They stood there in awkward silence for a few moments.
"…Want go to… 'Dark-Far'?"
"Dark whuh?" Fishlegs blurted out before he could connect the dots. "Oh-! Dark Deep!" Dragons must not have a word for 'deep'. "Is the sky blue?" he asked sarcastically.
"Hrrr, I think it cloudy this light," Hiccup mused with a cheeky grin. "Tuffnut, Ruffnut!" he suddenly barked.
Twin thumps accompanied by grunts of surprise could be heard from outside, and the troublemakers appeared around the door a moment later. "Hey guys, what's up?" Tuffnut asked slowly.
Fishlegs quelled his rising worry with logic; Hiccup wasn't worried, so he wouldn't be either. They had probably arrived after his tirade.
Hiccup promptingly tilted his head at Fishlegs, a small grin on his face. "Oh, er, well, the hunter's device thing told me where to find Dark Deep," he said, feeling his enthusiasm rising again. "Ancestral home of the Gronckles, their original habitat! Ooh I can't wait!"
Ruffnut took a breath, but Tuffnut spoke first. "Oh, yeah, count us out. That sounds like… secrets and stuff, but like, the kind you gotta go look for."
"Ugh, those are the worst," Ruffnut agreed.
"Right!?" Tuffnut shouted at her. "Like, you don't even know what you're looking for, and then maybe you find it but maybe you don't even know it's a secret, or maybe you gotta find loads of little secrets that add up to one big secret, and before you know it you're scrawling dolphins on the walls but nobody's ever seen a dolphin so they don't even look like dolphins they look like secrets."
There was deafening silence as everyone, including Ruffnut, stared blankly at him.
"So…" he continued slowly, "on a completely unrelated boat, where will you be leaving that hunter doodad while you're gone…?"
"You don't have to bail on such an awesome discovery for that," Fishlegs grumbled. "You can mess around with it when I'm done with it."
"Yeah," Ruffnut said in her sweet gravelly voice, "but we're hoping for some time sooner than Ragnarok. You guys go geek out or whatever." The pair then ducked away.
Fishlegs scratched his head, then picked up the hunter's device from where it was propped on Meatlug's slab and set it on his desk. "Might as well make it easy for them to find, they're only going to trash everything otherwise. When do you want to leave?"
"I just get my things," Hiccup chuffed, then turned in a circle, stood on his hindlegs to scratch his belly, and gave himself a shake. "I good, we can go now."
About three seconds was all the flat staring Fishlegs could manage before he melted with an exclamation of excitement; it seemed the world was dragging on him today, but this was much too big to pull his mood down from. "Just think Hiccup, Dark Deep! Meatlug, we'll get to see where your ancestors originated from!" The Gronckle wagged excitedly, giving him a big grin. "Let's see, I'm going to need notebooks…"
In the time it took him to grab a few necessities, he was taking to the air on the back of Meatlug to join the two Night Furies wheeling in the sky above, and then they were on their way. Astrid and Snotlout must not have been interested in coming either, as Hiccup had said he was going to check with them; that was their loss.
"We happy for answer questions," Hiccup crooned as they fell into a close formation, "but you say you not know what ask. I try tell you things." He suddenly started building a shot and held it, Fishlegs covering his ears at the unexpected screeching. "This sound, also sound when we dive, let us see. Not use eyes, can see with sound."
Fishlegs sank into the saddle in disbelief. "Wait, you can see with sound!?" He was a little bitter Hiccup hadn't thought to tell him about this before now, but it took the off-hand to just how crazy it was. "So that's why I could never work out the conditions to make it, you guys were choosing when… Can you turn your head and see how many fingers I'm holding up?" He held a fist up, ready to experiment.
"Not see that well," Hiccup grumbled.
"Unless do this," Toothy supplied, then opened his mouth-
A deafening note nearly knocked Fishlegs off of Meatlug and left his ears ringing. "Ow…" he groaned, his own voice sounding to him as if he was underwater. Hiccup and Toothy were engaged in a rapid discussion, one Fishlegs was not privy to half because of his ringing ears and half because Hiccup was facing the other way.
Some time later, after his ears had stopped aching, Hiccup crooned sheepishly at him. "I not know we could do that. I try later. That use fire, but see very far."
"I guess we're all learning something," Fishlegs replied, dazed. "It's a wonder it doesn't knock you out, given how loud it is." Hiccup hummed thoughtfully at that. "It uses your fire? So, you explode it in your mouth… or something?"
Both Furies winced; yeah that sounded like a really bad thing to do. "I explain our fire," Hiccup warbled.
It was only moments into the explanation that Fishlegs was wishing he'd brought more notebooks.
The long flight passed Fishlegs by in no time, thanks to learning vastly more about Night Furies than any human had ever known ever – though Hiccup still remained guarded about how he'd actually become a dragon – and a craggy, jagged island appeared in the distance, exactly where the hunter's device said it would be.
"Look Hiccup, Dark Deep, it's gotta be!" Fishlegs exclaimed, hastily scrawling down where they'd got to on how Furies used their sub-wings in flight before stashing the notebook and leaning forward over Meatlug's head.
With every moment came a new observation. The island was large, first of all, and seemed composed entirely of a very dark rock. There wasn't a scrap of greenery to be found on it, the whole place was just desolate wasteland, perfect habitat for rock-munching boulder-crushing dragons. The twin peaks of a single mountain rose from the far side, and absolutely massive stone spires speared out from the coast towards its steep cliffs.
Fishlegs couldn't touch down fast enough, his feet thumping into the hard ground before Meatlug's paws. "Can you believe it?" he shouted to everybody and nobody, then picked up a nearby rock and tossed it to his dragon. "How does it feel to be eating a piece of home?" he asked her, and she wagged back at him enthusiastically as she crunched it up.
He immediately began cataloguing information; the shape of the island, the consistency and features of the rocks, the atmosphere, anything he thought might be relevant. In theory, this should be the Gronckle's perfect habitat, the one they were originally suited to, and he wanted to understand everything about it.
"Well, I can understand why you guys eat rocks," he mumbled after a while.
"Not much here," Hiccup agreed, looking around warily. "No Rock-Scales also..."
"None that we can see," Fishlegs corrected, walking to a nearby crevasse and peering inside. Not only were there signs of boulder-class dragons inside, but there was a group of Gronckles picking through the rocks littering the smooth ground. "See?"
The Gronckles jumped and spun to face him, backing up. "No no no, it's okay," he said soothingly, holding his hands out. Meatlug appearing by his side to look down seemed to help a little. "What do you say girl," he asked her quietly, "want to make some friends?"
He hopped onto her back and they dropped through the narrow opening, Meatlug softening the landing with a short burst of her wings. It was an odd sort of crevasse, more like a round tunnel with an open top, the rock arching up over him but not meeting in the middle. He noticed the Furies slipping in after him, but he kept his eyes on the Gronckles, who were quickly backing up and retreating down the tunnel. "Hey, wait up!"
Pursuing them was only likely to scare them more, but what were they even scared of? They were Gronckles, they weren't aggressive dragons but nor were they timid. Mostly they were just indifferent.
Wary rumbling between the Furies gave him pause, and soon he felt it himself. Heard it too, but while a distant rumbling was ominous enough in such a long and rounded crevasse, feeling it through the soles of his shoes was far more worrying. Whatever it was, whether one entity or many, it was very heavy. "Erm, I'm thinking maybe we should get out of here?"
The Furies darted around him, heading after the Gronckles, and Fishlegs shared a look with Meatlug while hurrying after him.
"Hiccup…!" he called ahead, looking around for some nook to hide in, as the ominous rumbling gradually intensified. Something was approaching, and very likely through this passage, but there didn't seem to be any way out or anywhere to hide; the walls were mostly smooth, and the gap at the top was too narrow to fly up through.
Whatever it was, it was coming from behind them, and gaining fast. Running was too slow – he vaulted into the saddle and tugged gently on Meatlug's ears, prompting her to take off and trust him not to crash them into anything.
He wished he'd taken Astrid's lessons more seriously, flying through the forest, though the path was long and clear-
An odd sound joined the rumbling, sounding like a muted bellowing. Fishlegs' heart raced, this was feeling less like a natural hazard and more like something bearing down on them.
A darkness slid into view ahead, an irregularity in the rock that could only be a side tunnel. The Gronckles, still running but just ahead of him, turned into it and disappeared from sight, quickly followed by the Furies. Their dark heads poked out a moment later, one above the other-
Twin streaks of light lanced past him, startling him which caused Meatlug to veer wildly around the chamber as explosions sounded behind him. The look of surprise on the Furies' faces did not bode well.
Fishlegs threw a reticent glance over his own shoulder, then urged Meatlug forwards, away from whatever was filling the tunnel behind him.
They crashed into the wall of the passage, trying to take the turn too fast, and bounced off to the ground. Fishlegs scrambled to his feet just as quickly as his dragon, peering around the corner-
He hastily withdrew his head as a giant boulder rolled past, the rumbling suddenly very loud as it passed before quieting…
Fishlegs shared a look with Hiccup as the sound rapidly died off into silence, and they peered around the other corner, the direction the boulder had gone.
It rolled to a halt as they watched, twenty paces from the corridor, and Hiccup made an odd sound somewhere between confusion and concern. Fishlegs made a similar sound as the boulder started rolling back towards them.
The passage they were in was not nearly so refined, more jagged. The boulder, or whatever it was, would not fit inside, but Fishlegs did not feel all that safe as he backed into it.
The boulder rolled into sight, and right as he noticed the uniform patterns across the plated exterior, and the spines jutting out at the sides, it unfurled.
"It's a dragon," Fishlegs said incredulously with a slack jaw. A very big, very spiky, and very angry dragon, one growling at him specifically. "I don't think it's friendly!"
It roared, the sound deafening in the mostly enclosed area, and the fact that its lower jaw had split into two halves was almost fascinating enough to distract Fishlegs from the imminent mauling it clearly wanted to give him. It ignored the Furies roaring back at it and advanced menacingly, its tail thumping into the sides of the tunnel and breaking apart the rock as if it was nothing.
Hiccup knocked into Fishlegs' side, spurring him into the fleeing he should have been doing already. "We need to get out of here!" he shouted as he ran. The Gronckles were no longer anywhere to be seen, having fled while they stood around to gawk.
Without any discernible communication, Hiccup and Toothy both fired at the ceiling some way ahead of them at once, creating an opening they might just fit through. The thumping footsteps following them lent Fishlegs a little more speed and confidence in jumping back onto Meatlug and preparing for a daring manoeuvre.
The Furies had no trouble, leaping up one after the other with a small flap in the confined quarters to grab the ledge and slither out of sight. Despite the situation, it was close enough to ascending from the hold of a ship that Fishlegs felt in strangely familiar territory as he guided his dragon by her ears. They lifted into the air, then twisted and briefly stilled her wings-
Meatlug yelped as she was yanked out, nearly throwing Fishlegs out of the saddle but giving him an excellent but brief view of the three jaws snapping together where they had been a moment ago.
He and the three dragons tumbled over each other to the ground, then shared brief looks before staring at the crevasse; such a big dragon could not get through such a small gap, but boulder class dragons weren't usually impeded by rock.
Heavy footsteps picked up, impossible to tell the direction of, and then that transitioned into a smoother rumbling that faded into the distance.
"We not should stay here," Hiccup advised as Fishlegs breathed a sigh of relief.
"Yeah, you're probably right… But did you see that thing!? I mean for a boulder class dragon its mouth doesn't look that good for crushing rocks, the split jaw is weird, and-"
Hiccup cut him off with a low bark. "Oh, right," Fishlegs muttered; there was a chance it was just finding a way out to get to them. "Well, we should be fine as long as we don't wander into any more caves." There would be plenty to find on the mountains, and he wanted to check out the stone spikes rising from the ground like a giant flower. "…What?" he asked as Hiccup looked uncomfortable.
"We use all our fire," the Fury explained.
"Whuh? You only used two shots each!"
"Two big shots," Toothy growled. "Rock is hard."
"Oh, yeah, fair point." That was still boggling his mind, that Night Furies could control the strength and thus number of their shots, though there were two limiting factors that separately capped them on count, though there were alternative uses for each that did not depend on the other… And then Toothy had gone on a spiel about, as far as Fishlegs could tell, the composition of the shots, influencing the type of explosion. He was going to be allowed the privilege of sitting in on Hiccup learning it himself, which would additionally be a unique experience of observing a dragon learning their fire, or at least an aspect of it.
But the point was they were now out of fire, so they needed to be careful. "We can check out some more open areas," Fishlegs suggested, looking up to the mountains. "Maybe we can find some more Gronckles."
"…Yes, we watch for danger," Hiccup agreed, then spread his wings.
"I'm sure it was just a one-off or something anyway," Fishlegs mused, brushing off the encounter as he climbed back into the saddle; he'd long since grown accustomed to dragons trying to eat or dismember him, and was hoping he'd get a chance to study it under less hostile circumstances.
They met no resistance as they ascended into the air, turning towards the mountain and stone spires. In their natural habitat, would Gronckles prefer a cave, or a ledge on the mountain, or did they sleep in the semi-open tunnels that appeared to cover most of the island? If he found out he could hopefully set something up to make Meatlug more comfortable back at the Nest; not that she wasn't comfortable there already.
He figured he'd check out the stone spires first, watching them as they approached. They were such bizarre things, absolutely massive in size and probably made out of an extremely hard-
Hiccup suddenly swerved ahead of him and forced them off course. It took a few moments for Fishlegs to catch on and start following, letting Hiccup take the lead between the two peaks of the mountain. "What's going on?" he shouted, but the Fury ignored him, flying at a solid pace and occasionally glancing back to ensure Meatlug was keeping up.
Fishlegs looked around, unable to see the big dragon that had chased them, or any other living thing for that matter, but Toothy was also looking around carefully. Ignoring a dragon's caution was folly, but he wished they'd clue him in.
But when they emerged from the valley, hugging the mountain around to the right, Fishlegs drew a sharp breath and stared intently.
A lot of large ships were anchored on the shore, probably somewhere between twenty and thirty, tiny and insignificant in the distance but prominent with their large white sails, even furled. He couldn't see it from so far away, but he was willing to bet anything they bore the hunter's crest.
Author's Notes
One might think I would do another Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference in this very important chapter number, but honestly, I totally failed to notice until the last possible moment. Hm? Dolphins? Oh, no, that's not a reference, that's an inside joke with Fizzlemcfuzzle. Which I'm hoping he got, or this is going to be an awkward AN xD