Something was deeply wrong. As a charred corpse, Astrid considered herself more than capable of thinking as much, given she could think at all.
She had been watching the Night Fury breathe for what felt like an eternity. It was still staring at her charred, burned corpse. She could inexplicably still see and hear it, but she could not move or feel, and none of what was happening made sense. This was not how death was supposed to work.
The unchanging vigil was ended by something that would have been wholly unremarkable in any other situation. She blinked. Her vision darkened for a single instant, so quickly she almost didn't think it had really happened. Her body, or what remained of it, had to be a charred husk after what had been done to it. There was no way it could blink, and yet she had no other explanation.
She thought to try and blink, and to her surprise it worked. One eye and then the other, separately, together, slow, quick... she could blink.
The Night Fury was watching her more intently now.
Feeling began to return to her, though not correctly. Her whole body was buzzing like when the blood came back to a leg she had been sitting on, but for everywhere and then some. Much of what she could feel didn't feel right, the incessant tingling spreading beyond where it should. But right or not, she was feeling something, and the dead didn't feel.
Which meant she wasn't dead.
That realization sent a bolt of surprise through her, and she shrugged off the fatalistic acceptance that had fallen over her. If she was still alive, she still had some tiny shred of control over her fate. She would not sit idly and let that slip away.
All of which was good – she would always take a situation in which she had some influence over one where she was helpless – but she still had no idea what was going on. There was no way she had survived what had happened to her, and the gods did not work like this. If nothing else, the stories all agreed that the Viking gods were generally good sports about explaining what was going on, unless Loki was responsible. As she had not done anything to anger Loki, she was sure she would have gotten an explanation of some sort by now, if this was their work.
The Night Fury stood and padded towards her, approaching cautiously. it leaned over and nudged at her forehead with its broad muzzle.
She felt it touch her and jerked away from it, taking advantage of her returning control over her own body to express her dislike in some small way. She hated the Night Fury, a burning anger in her chest that sprang to life of its own accord, though not without reason. She hated it for torturing her, for tricking her into not hating it before that, for losing Hiccup, and for getting her to hope that maybe dragons weren't all bad after all.
She hated it, and she could act on that hate. She lurched forward, her body not responding in the ways she was expecting, and totally flubbed an attempt at a punch. The Night Fury hopped back, staring curiously with utter disregard for her attempt to strike it. Her arm had not even struck out, which on second thought made perfect sense as she had tried to use the mangled one.
If it was still mangled. She was using it now, hunched over on all fours, totally ignoring the fact that it should be entirely worthless. Her entire body should be, thanks to the horrible burns she should have, but that arm most of all.
She tried to pull her arm up in front of her face, to see it, but it didn't work the way it was supposed to. Her arm responded, but it was oddly restrained, seemingly incapable of reaching in front of her face.
Then she thought to look down instead of pulling her limb into view, and her entire existence shattered on the harsh rocks of impossibility.
Black paws sat brazenly under her. An equally black, scaly chest sat above them, barely visible under where her head was. Her view was oddly wider than normal... and when she looked back, craning her stubby neck, a long, horizontal midsection, hindquarters, and tail met her eyes, taunting her with the impossibility of it all.
She had to be hallucinating. She must have survived the burning somehow, but was still horribly injured and delirious from the pain. This was just a very strained mind's way of coping with the damage, a waking dream...
Or maybe all of it was a dream! That felt much more likely to her, given all that had happened. She must have been knocked out in the arena today, and had been dreaming ever since. It all made sense, seen that way. Vikings told ridiculous tales, and she was stressed. Of course her mind would come up with some truly twisted nightmares for her to deal with.
Never mind that she had never, ever, had a nightmare this horrible, long, or realistic. She was dreaming. She had to be, and since she now knew that, she would wake up. That was how dreams worked.
She closed her eyes and stood still, willing herself to wake up. Now that she knew it was all a dream she was not quite so horrified, but she would rather not continue with this oddly treacherous and downright unrealistic dream. No real Viking dreamed of being a dragon.
But try as she might, she couldn't make her surroundings go away. The oppressive heat and foreign sensations of moving air on a body she shouldn't have eventually forced her to open her eyes. It seemed she couldn't make herself wake up.
Immediate escape thwarted, she tried to remember if she knew anything about dreams, completely ignoring the imaginary dragon in front of her while she thought. The only thing that came to mind was that Gothi could sometimes interpret them, to mixed success. She was definitely going to have to go to Gothi with this as soon as she woke. It was so convoluted and strange she stood no chance of deciphering it herself.
She wanted to wake up. To go back to the real world. Maybe if she left this ledge...
Her shoulders twitched, and she hunched in on herself, denying that possibility before it could tempt her. She crawled towards the cave, the place the dream Night Fury had not let her go.
"What are you doing?" a rather normal, if oddly resonant, voice asked.
She didn't even have to look back to know the dream Night Fury was talking. It was a dream; anything could and would happen.
"I want to wake up," she said. Her own voice was higher than normal but at the same time low and similarly resonant, and she was not talking as she usually would, rumbling in her chest to form words like she was trying to muster up a cough.
"Wake up?" the Night Fury asked.
"Yes. How do I do that?" She still hated him, but it was a distant hate. He was some figment of her own imagination. If he were real, she would be attacking him, but there was no point in doing that in a dream, even if she still felt the urge to.
"I don't know what you mean," he replied.
"Then go away," she said dismissively, crawling – walking but like she was crawling – into the cave itself, which was curiously well-lit despite the lack of light sources. A whine echoed from behind her, but she did not look back. That figment of her imagination could disappear; she did not like it.
The cave was strangely straight and clear, smooth under her imagined paws. She was walking steadily now, moving as if she had always possessed this horrible, treasonous form. This was definitely a dream. There was no other explanation as to how else could she walk without even thinking about it, or as to why a cave, or more of a tunnel now that she was in it, was so impossibly well-lit.
Of course it was all a dream. There was no other explanation.
Her confidence wavered for a split second, but she ruthlessly quashed the small hint of doubt. This was a dream, nothing more, and she would act accordingly.
The tunnel was long and sloping upward towards, as it turned out, the outside world. Astrid walked out into the less sulphurous grey haze, jumping down to the ground and landing easily on all four legs.
Definitely a dream. As long as she did not think about it, actions like jumping and walking came naturally, despite how unnatural it really was–
She stumbled, planting her elongated face in the sharp, ashy beach. The small cuts carved between her eyes and around her nose proved she could still feel pain.
That was odd, in and of itself. She could not remember ever feeling pain in any other dream. But this one was so strange anyway, a dream unlike any other. She could not wake up, and she felt like she had been here for days.
Astrid regained her footing, forcing herself to contemplate the environment so that she would not focus on her own body and stumble again. The waters were dark and ominous, polluted with ash. Fog obscured most of the sea around the nest, but she could see the imprints of sea stacks at the very edge of her vision, the dark shadows that jutted out of the waves. That would be the maze, the horrible tangle of open passages and corridors formed by sea stacks, patrolled by dragons and utterly impenetrable by Vikings.
This was a dream, and looking out at the hazy, nightmarish horizon she was sure that if she somehow swam or flew out there she would see the worst thing her mind could come up with. All of Berk, dying in an attack on the nest, maybe. Or perhaps it would be an endless maze that stretched to infinity, a place anyone could get lost in and never escape. Either was terrible, and this was definitely a nightmare, so either would be fitting.
But she was not going out there, she was standing here on the shore, alone, in the body of a dragon. That meant her dreams would have to come out with some other horror. She strained her eyes, trying to see the shapes of ships in the mist. The absolute worst thing she could imagine was a nest hunt coming here, now, all of her people finally finding the nest and slaughtering her there, thinking her a dragon. Killed as a traitor, and unable to warn them of the monstrosity they would be provoking, the thing that would doom them all.
She began panting, straining with an urgency born of fear to see the first signs of the dream around her making that terrible scenario reality, or as close to reality as a dream could be. If it happened then it wasn't real, so she wanted it to happen.
Nothing came for her. No ships, no horrors. Just a single Terrible Terror, flying back towards the nest, not even looking in her direction. It was followed by two more, and all three quickly made for the volcano's upper slopes, returning to their horrible mountain home.
Astrid walked along the ashy shore, looking out into the fog. This dream was not fading, and until she could find a way out, she had nothing to do but observe. She wondered if other dragons, more figments of her imagination, would return. If they would be able to talk like the Night Fury. At that, maybe they would all be Night Furies, a horrible impossibility.
She hoped something like that would happen, because it would reassure her that all of this was obviously not real. She knew this was a dream, but it was a convincingly realistic one at the moment, and that made her nervous. Something utterly impossible would be proof, though it would have to be more impossible than her current body, which continued to feel frighteningly real...
She stomped down on that same small, lingering doubt, uneasily crushing it, though doing so was not so easy as last time. This was a dream. It had to be.
As a way of reassurance, she looked down at her decidedly inhuman paws for a moment. There. All the proof she needed. There was no way this could be real.
But if it were...
She had heard whispered tales of dark things done in the night, or in secret. Vikings did not hold with magic of any kind; it was seen as both unnatural and cowardly. But there were still tales of what happened when enemies did not have those same inclinations. Stories of men cursed, and a surprisingly wide variety of stories about futures told that always came true in the worst ways. None of it had ever sounded the least bit real. Just tall tales designed to both impress upon children that the enemy could be crafty and would be willing to dishonor themselves, and to entertain the adults telling them. There was no truth to them.
No truth at all. None.
Astrid looked away from the body this horrible dream had stuck her with, again staring out into the fog. As if summoned by her need for distraction, flying shapes began to appear, returning to the nest in twos and threes. Not a flock of identical Night Furies as she had hoped for, just normal dragons of all the common types.
She snapped to attention when a few clearly noticed her, angling their flight to land by her on the beach. This was a dream, but she had no desire to die–
That thought led to another, this one far more helpful. She remembered someone – probably Fishlegs, he would be the sort of person to talk about dreams – saying that it was impossible to die in a dream. If it was impossible, then dying would force her to wake up.
In that case, all she had to do was let the dragons come. They would make short work of this terrible fantasy. She sat docilely, watching them land in front of her. Two Deadly Nadders and a Hideous Zippleback, more than enough to finish her off if she did not struggle. This was a dream, so there was no dishonor in ending it as efficiently as she could.
The Nadders were both light red, almost pink, with white highlights. The Zippleback was a dark grey. They stood facing her, clearly looking her over. They might be figments created by her own mind, but she definitely wasn't consciously in control of them. If she was, they would be leaping and ending it right now.
The Zippleback spoke, both heads hissing in unison, alternating between words without missing a beat. "Coming here was a mistake."
Astrid nodded at that nonsensical remark, agreeing with the sentiment. "I want to leave. Help me."
"We can't do that," one of the Nadders replied. "There is something strange about you. Only the most uninformed flame in the archipelago would voluntarily fly here."
"She is perfect," the other remarked, sounding jealous, clicking her tail spikes together in annoyance. "Too perfect."
"This again?" the first Nadder asked wearily. "We already checked, the Bolt is utterly against using a Flicker. Or a Flightless, for that matter. Inferna would not force him, either. She wants a natural female to come calling."
"So... which are you?" the Zippleback asked, this time letting the left head do all the talking. "Flicker, Flightless, or Bolt?"
Astrid shook her head numbly, entirely lost. This was a creation of her own mind, but her own hallucinations were using terms she didn't understand. Inferna, Flicker, Flightless, Bolt... none of it made any sense.
"Use your head," the first Nadder said angrily. "The Bolt has been missing. A female Bolt shows up out of the blue. We all know Inferna gave the Bolt an exception if he saw a natural female in her territory. It is obvious this is a natural Bolt."
"Use your eyes." The second Nadder stalked around Astrid, flicking her deadly tail to trail across Astrid's sides. Astrid didn't move, still hoping the second Nadder would kill her and get her out of this dream. She might have attacked, had she known anything about fighting with this body, but the way things were going, she would somehow kill all three and be right back where she started.
"Perfect scales and the darkest possible black, without a single imperfection in color," the second Nadder continued, her spines drifting across Astrid's side as she talked, deadly points dragging harmlessly over scales. "Slim, but strong. Very strong, looking at those muscles. In perfect health and perfect shape. Perfect," she trilled mockingly. "You think she is natural?"
"If she would just tell us," the first one growled, "then we will know."
Before Astrid could think of something to say in response to this incomprehensible argument the Zippleback intervened, clicking its right head, sparks flying aimlessly from it. "Stop it," the left head hissed. "She would not tell the truth if she were not natural. The Bolt would have brought her here either way, and he has been missing long enough that she could be an adjusted Flightless or Flicker, or she could be natural, and we would not be able to tell either way."
"A Flicker, then," the second Nadder declared derisively, leering at Astrid. "Given she is standing around like a stone, hoping we will leave her alone."
"Help me leave," Astrid asked again, more forcefully this time. She disliked these dream-dragons. They spoke down to her and discussed her like she wasn't even there. It didn't help that she still had no idea what they meant by some of the words they used.
"A stupid Flicker," the second Nadder added venomously, raising her tail threateningly. "We all know that's not an option, so stop asking. And if you are somehow naturally that beautiful, then you've just made a terrible mistake, and for a mediocre prize. There is no leaving here once Inferna gets you."
"I still don't know," the first Nadder mused. Then she let out a happy chirp. "Let's find the Bolt and ask him."
"Finally, a good plan," the Zippleback murmured, both heads speaking. "Come on, if we hurry we might find him before everyone else gets back."
With that, all three dragons took off, not even looking at Astrid as they left. Astrid watched them go, utterly confused and angered. She didn't know what her subconscious was trying to tell her with any of that. She was going to have to remember it, when she told Gothi about it after waking. To do that, she needed to wake, which meant she needed to die somehow.
She looked around, assessing the mostly empty shoreline. There was a Monstrous Nightmare just setting down a ways right of her, but no other dragons seemed to be stopping here. Plenty were flying by, but almost all were passing over without so much as looking down.
She began to run, not thinking about it in her haste. Asking obliquely had not worked, so she would straight-out demand the Nightmare kill her, and if that didn't work, she'd try attacking it.
The shore, that messy snarl of sharp shells and pointy rocks, raced by beneath her. Despite trying to ignore it, Astrid did eventually notice just how fast she was going, how she was sprinting with perfect coordination–
Only to tumble out of control, skidding to a halt and belly-flopping down on the painful shells. She grunted gutturally, hurt and embarrassed. Every time she tried to think about what she was doing, her body stopped doing it!
"Are you okay?" A pale green, toothy, and quite large muzzle helped her stand, lifting her almost off her feet in its haste. She whipped around to glare at the very same Nightmare she had been running towards.
"And who are you? Welcome to our nest," the Nightmare continued politely. "Are you... are you one of us, yet?"
"What does that mean?" she asked irritably.
"I was asking if Inferna has spoken to you," the Nightmare clarified. "Also, forgive me for asking, but are you natural?"
Astrid snarled, frustrated by the endless questions she didn't understand. "I don't know," she gritted. "Kill me."
The Nightmare recoiled, almost comically shocked, flailing its wing-arms in surprise. "What?"
"Kill me," Astrid repeated, unamused. "I want to wake up from this horrible dream."
"Dream..." The Nightmare wilted. "I guess he was willing to bend his principles after all. Sad." He looked down at Astrid with wide, sad eyes. "This is not a dream, and I am sorry, but I could not kill you even if I wanted to."
Astrid gritted her teeth, stalking forward. "I will make you kill me," she growled. "I want to wake up."
"I will not strike at you," the Nightmare repeated, sounding serious. "It is my duty to protect all of inferna's flames, even those who are not natural."
She snapped, enraged beyond reason, and leaped at the Nightmare, hoping to force him to fight. He dodged her and jumped into the air, circling warily.
She flung her wings open without thought... and then thought about it, realizing at the last moment that she was about to fly after him to make him kill her. Her wings fell back as if boneless.
This time, she could not stop thinking about it. She couldn't even move her wings right now, because every other thought involved trying to figure it out. It was maddening, a problem that looped back into itself. Wanting to kill the Nightmare, wanting to fly after it, trying to fly after it, failing to fly after it because she was trying, which made her even more determined to kill the Nightmare–
She screamed angrily, though it came out as a powerful roar.
The Nightmare called down to her; "please try to calm down!"
"No!" she howled up at him, forcing him from her mind. He would leave or just disappear if she ignored him, that was how this worked.
Fighting was out. That left killing herself. The ocean was right in front of her, available for her use. She trotted out to the surf, preparing to drown herself. Dragons did not breathe water, or at least dragons of the air did not. This would work.
"That water is too ashy, it is not good to drink," the Nightmare warned.
Astrid ignored him. She did not plan to drink it, anyway. She planned to kill herself with it. Killing oneself was dishonorable in the extreme, but only in real life. Here, it was just a way to kill off the dream and make herself wake up.
The water was cold and silty, so thick with ash she could feel it swirling around her ugly, ungainly paws. The Nadders had called her body beautiful, but she knew the truth. It was ugly and horrible. No matter; she would soon be rid of it.
The water sloshed around her neck, and she knew she was deep enough. This was it. Breathe out, stick head beneath waves, breathe in. Simple and effective.
She hesitated for a brief moment, the single spark of doubt in her mind rearing up stronger than ever before. If this was not a dream, if this was real, she would be doing something terrible and permanent–
She shoved down the doubts, exhaled, and dunked her head, inhaling as powerfully as she could once her nostrils were below the surface. Water rushed through her, a terrible feeling made even worse by the ash, and she held herself down through force of will–
Talons grabbed her sides and yanked her up, throwing her back onto the beach. The water rushed out of her as she coughed uncontrollably, undoing her own work.
She glared blankly up at the Nightmare standing over her. It had stopped her.
"Don't do that!" the Nightmare pleaded.
"Let me..." she rasped, rolling to her feet. "I have to wake up."
He stepped between her and the water. "Killing yourself will not fix this," it cautioned. "This is no dream, and there is nothing to wake up from but life itself."
"Get out... of my way," she panted. It was between her and the water, and she could tell it planned to stop her, again and again if necessary.
In response, he roared powerfully, calling out to the empty sky and the volcano behind her. "Help needed!"
Astrid shied away, her ears ringing. It took her a few moments to clear her head, and by then...
Four more Nightmares dropped around her, closing in from all sides. "What is this?" a tan, almost brown one asked.
"I think she isn't natural, newly changed," the one who had been blocking her said quickly, bowing deferentially. "She is trying to kill herself, so we know she isn't of our nest."
"And if she were natural, she would be fleeing as fast as she could, not wishing for death," another growled. "Inferna has commanded us to bring all new dragons to her, natural or not, but she is sleeping. We must wait until she wakes."
"What do we do until then?" the first Nightmare asked.
The largest Nightmare of the group burst into flames. "We cannot kill it, and we cannot let it kill itself, but I do not want to help with this one. Permission to leave?"
"Granted," the tan one said solemnly. The large Nightmare flew off.
"Now what?" Astrid's unwanted rescuer inquired.
The tan, apparently senior Nightmare shrugged, and leaned down to address Astrid directly, its sinuous neck not quite close enough to grab. "Flicker or Flightless?"
She did not want to answer questions, she wanted to wake up. "I don't know and I don't care," she growled. "Let me wake up."
"Wake up... you know how to do that?" The senior Nightmare rumbled knowingly, leaning in. "If this is a dream, you need to go to sleep to wake up. Killing yourself in a dream does nothing but change it to something else."
The Nightmare sounded so sure... Astrid's mind flashed to the time she had been sure she was dead. The dream had changed then, from unlikely but possible to talking dragons and an unfamiliar body. This figment of her own mind might be right. Death had not woken her last time, if that had actually been death.
And if it was wrong... sleeping would not harm anything, though she was loath to linger in this dream and this body any longer than she had to.
"Okay?" the Nightmare asked. "There is nothing to lose from trying it, at least."
"Sleep..." she nodded slightly. "If that will work, then yes."
"You promise to try that first?" he asked.
"Fine." She still hated dragons, but she could accept advice from her own subconscious... and pacify that lingering worry she refused to acknowledge, but could no longer stamp out. "Knock me out, then, and let me sleep."
"No," the senior Nightmare immediately corrected, "it must come naturally. Being forced into unconsciousness is not the same thing. We can lead you to a good place for sleeping, if you wish."
"Go away," Astrid mumbled. "I will find my own place."
"As you wish." The leader flew away, landing a few dozen paces down the shoreline, and the others followed. They were probably talking amongst themselves, but Astrid didn't care. It was not as if they could do anything to her that was worse than her current predicament. Death was what she had wanted, and that was pretty much it.
She needed to find a place where she could fall asleep. This shoreline was not an option; she did not care about discomfort, but sleep would not come easily in any case, and being in pain while she tried to find it would just be stupid. So, she needed to get off of the shore at the very least.
She turned back to the volcano, considering her options. No flying, and she would not want to try going into the nest anyway. There was no point in going back to the ledge she had started on; the Night Fury she still very much would hate if he were real might still be there.
There were rocks out here, though, large ones at the base of the volcano, some flat and smooth. Those might do.
Astrid walked towards the nearest such rock, and after reaching it hopped onto it, where a problem immediately presented itself. She was not comfortable. It wasn't the rock; that was fine. She just didn't know how a dragon slept. No matter how she laid on her side, her wings got in the way and generally ached. Lying on her back was similarly useless for much the same reason.
Eventually, she tried just lying on her arms and legs, and discovered that was apparently fine. It was strange, to sleep what would be face-down if her head was normal. It made her wonder whether she would wake up face-down in her real body.
Not that she cared, so long as she woke up at all. This dream was ridiculously long and detailed, and she was beginning to suspect that it was something more than a nightmare. It was possible she was in a coma. That Gronckle might have knocked her out in some freak accident. If it was a coma, that could explain why this had not ended on its own.
Bucket, the only Viking she knew who had been in an actual coma, had said he was totally aware of what was going on around him, not stuck in a dream, but he wasn't a reliable source. He wore a bucket on his head and claimed to be able to predict the weather based on how tight it was on any given day. He was not right in the head, though that didn't stop him from leading a normal life as a part-time warrior and sheepherder.
All of that made no real difference right now. She set her oddly-shaped head down on her front paws, hating the feel of scale on scale, and tried to relax.
Time passed, and her body began to calm down, the aches and random twitches subsiding. She was tired, in body and mind. Fighting was her calling, not thinking or interpreting, and she would much rather have been trapped in a dream of an endless raid, or a duel, or something better suited to her. This was as exhausting as it was confusing, and she didn't like it.
On second thought, maybe it was a good thing this dream was so aggravating and horrifying in turn. If she had dreamed of something pleasant or at least normal, given how realistic all of this was, she might never have realized that none of it was real. Even now, with talking dragons and a body that was not her own, a part of her believed this was all really happening, like a particularly stupid Viking at the back of a crowd, quietly grumbling that he still didn't get the plan, even after it had been explained half a dozen times.
She grumbled softly, waiting for her heart to slow. It was still beating fast, probably because she had been high-strung and stressed recently. Once it did slow down to normal, or whatever passed for normal in a dragon, she might be able to relax and fall asleep, and this nightmare would be over.
All of this could not end soon enough for her. She could forget talking dragons, and the monstrosity, and Hiccup riding dragons, and go back to her own, normal problems, that of recognition and rivals. Hiccup would still be alive, too, and still doing... whatever he was doing. If she had been knocked out in the arena, she still did not know the real answer.
But that was not the only possibility she could imagine, and she couldn't stop herself from thinking about the others. She might not have been knocked out in the arena, it might have come later, after she encountered Hiccup and his Night Fury.
Or maybe she had just never truly awoken from the unconsciousness induced by the agony of the Night Fury cauterizing her wound. Maybe she would wake up where she had crashed, injured and human again, and have to find her way off of this horrible island.
Hopefully not. She wanted her world back to normal, and the possibility of her making it off of this island by cobbled-together raft was unlikely, if not entirely nonexistent.
No, she had to hope she would wake up in her home, or in the arena, or in Gothi's hut, being treated for a head injury. Not in the cove, or on a ledge in the middle of hostile territory...
Or, the traitorously logical part of her whispered, she might wake up here, on this rock, still trapped in a body and world she no longer understood in the slightest.
Astrid drifted off into uneasy sleep, dreaming of waking up to find her world as it should be.