Astrid came to no clear resolution to her moral dilemma on the way back to the nest, though she struggled with it for the entire flight. There was no answer; she was growing fond of the Nightmare, and maybe now his mate too, as if they were her friends. But they were dragons, the enemies her people had fought and killed for generations. Her new friends were her enemies.
That was, of course, a direct violation of all that was right. Honor required that she not truly make friends with the enemy of her people, spy or not, but she was not faking it. She did not think she could fake friendship for long. Deception was coming easier than she had expected, but she wasn't that good.
Honor required she suffer her position for Berk's sake. That was the only thing that made her life worth anything, and not just a tragic farce. She was still fighting for her people.
There was no answer. She kept coming back to that. Never before had what she wanted and what she should do turned out to be so entirely opposite. She wanted, apparently, to not hate certain dragons. She should hate all of them.
But that was stupid, too, honorable choice or not. She knew they were people, and she even knew they were fellow prisoners, in a way. Fellow prisoners could be different, even if they were forced to also be the enemy. She just hadn't known that was what they were until now. Nobody had known.
There was an answer there, but she was too tired of thinking about moral quandaries to see it yet. She put that aside, and decided to think about something less problematic.
She needed names for the Nightmare she knew best, and probably his mate too. It would distinguish them in her mind, even if she never actually spoke said names. Dragons might be okay not having names for each other, but Astrid couldn't live like that. Enemy, friend, anything in between, she needed something to call him.
What she would call him was not nearly as obvious. Nothing too Viking; that would just be a mockery. Nothing fire-related, because odds were any word involving fire or heat was already in use somewhere in the extended dragon world. She didn't want to call him something just to find out that said name also happened to refer to some exotic dragon, thus rendering her work moot as the name would once again be confusing.
His name should reflect who he was to her, if she was naming him. He had been friends with the last human here, he wanted her to thrive, he answered questions. He also helped lead raids and was apparently responsible for taking orders directly from Inferna, implying he was the closest thing to a second in command she had, but he didn't like her...
What name could possibly fit all of that? She would have to choose one aspect and just refer to that. But nothing was jumping out at her as especially important. She didn't know enough about him, really, but even what she did know seemed to defy being named. Humans were named twice; once with a terrible name to ward off trolls, and again at adulthood, with a name bestowed again by their parents, in front of the whole village, something that was considered the last act of authority the parents had over their children.
Said parents also had the advantage of a list of generic Viking names to pick from, should their imagination, always in short supply with the average Viking, fail them. Then it was just the matter of adding a fitting adjective, and they were done. The same system would not work for Astrid here, unless she wanted to call a Monstrous Nightmare 'Sven', which she did not.
Astrid drifted forward in the formation, flying just a little faster than the dragons around her, and watched the Nightmare she was trying to name. He led the formation now, flying towards the nest with strong, steady wingbeats. He was a bit larger than any of the other Nightmares she had seen, and had a calm, confident attitude. He was a tannish-brown in color, but that was no help.
She went through her memories of him once more. He had tricked her into sleeping instead of killing herself. Later, he had stopped her from killing the Night Fury, and pinned her until she gave up on her rage. He advised and taught her, but only when she asked. Not a teacher, not really, more of a mentor, someone less aggressive in imparting knowledge but no less effective at it.
Mentor. The word stuck out at her. It was not a name she would ever give a human, but dragons did not take names, so there was no precedent to follow. Except for Inferna, but one exception did not make a pattern either.
So... Mentor. She would call the Nightmare Mentor, though she would not address him as such anywhere but her own mind. It seemed to fit.
Astrid briefly considered naming Mentor's mate, but she despaired almost immediately. Naming things was hard, and the fog of the nest was already visible on the horizon. That would have to wait until she had some equivalent flash of inspiration.
~O~o~O~
The trip through the nest itself was simple and nerve-wracking. Astrid had seen this little ritual before, but it was something else entirely to be participating in it herself. To fly over an unseen but undoubtedly gaping maw, hoping fervently that their offering was enough, knowing that the creature below could and would lunge up to eat someone if it was not satisfied...
She passed over the depths that hid Inferna without incident. Everyone did; they had brought three more sheep than the dozen requested, all white in the color of their wool, though Astrid had no idea why Inferna had cared enough to specify. From the looks of the somewhat occupied ledges, the fishing dragons had already returned. As each raider passed over Inferna and left the dangerous air above her, a joyous reunion took place, their family or friends calling out to them from nearby ledges, clearly relieved to see them alive and mostly unharmed.
Astrid could not help but notice the few dragons, either in the air or on the ledges, who did not have someone to greet. A small huddle of Gronckles mourned in a somewhat dark corner, speaking to nobody. A striking pink Zippleback stared at nothing, and was not even watching the procession. Several Nadders were preening themselves, ignoring the returning raiders so hard their feigned disinterest was transparent to a casual onlooker.
As for the Nightmares… Astrid watched Mentor and his mate as they passed the gauntlet. They flew down, far below the main ledges, and landed on a small one barely big enough to hold five dragons. It had been and remained empty aside from Mentor and his mate, but they both looked around sadly.
It wasn't even a conscious choice; Astrid found herself gliding down to them. She had to know who they were looking for, even if it would be hard to ask without being rude or cruel. They were... friends... of a sort. She should know.
A small part of her rebelled yet again at the very use of the word 'friend' in reference to a dragon, and she felt she really should agree with that part of herself, but she couldn't. That moral question was on hold, anyway.
"Female Bolt, are you well?" Mentor's mate asked quietly.
"Are you?" Astrid asked bluntly, deciding to get to it immediately, rather than bother them more than needed. "I cannot help but notice..."
"We have lost someone recently," Mentor explained solemnly. "Our son, who was just old enough to go on raids, was downed at the human island of strange things and greenery. We still miss him."
"What do you mean by strange things?" she asked. She knew what she would consider strange, but after the last few days she had to think that their definition of strange might be different.
Mentor's mate answered quickly, seeming happy to distract herself from her grief. "It varies every raid. Sometimes things explode without our interference, and other times odd contraptions can be seen around the human nest. We do not know what to make of all of it, but none of it has ever really hurt us."
That sounded familiar. Very familiar.
Then Mentor added, "and yet, the Bolt was downed there. We thought him dead, but it seems the Flightless who found him was not like the rest. I have yet to ask him the details. He still mourns, and it is not right to torture a fresh loss." He looked at Astrid, and then over at his mate. "But this is not so fresh, so I am not chastising you, female Bolt."
Astrid barely heard him. Berk. They were talking about Berk, and... There was a small possibility. "Your son, was he lost in the last raid on that place?"
"Yes. He was young and strong, but easily distracted. One Flightless managed to lead him to their strongest warriors, and that was the last we saw of him." Mentor bowed his head in grief.
"Large, red in color?" Now she was almost sure. This had to be the Nightmare Stoick had taken down and subsequently imprisoned in the arena for the next session of dragon training. The Nightmare Hiccup was supposed to kill almost a week ago, now. Dragon training would have continued, and a new winner would have been chosen from the other teens… though maybe not yet. She had not been gone for that long and the search for her and Hiccup would have delayed and confused everything.
"How did you know?" Mentor stared at her, his eyes sharp and narrow in suspicion. "You came here with the male Bolt, who was downed on that island and very likely had only just fallen back into Inferna's range recently..." he added thoughtfully.
"You were one of them," Mentor's mate growled, looking as if she would be pacing were there room for it. "What do you know?"
"I didn't kill him," Astrid blurted out, already seeing that very suspicion growing in their minds. "I've never killed any dragon. And I don't know for sure, but..."
She had meant to say that their son was either already dead or doomed to die before anything could be done, but she trailed off as she thought about it. There might be a chance. A small one, a dangerous one. She was a spy, not a traitor. Here was that same moral dilemma, magnified a thousand times over, and she still had no answer. It felt like there were two of her. The Astrid that would do anything to keep her honor, the Astrid that wanted to see dragons as enemies...
And on the other side, the Astrid that had stopped seeing scales, and only saw a mother and father mourning a son who might not be dead yet, but would die if she said nothing. The one that whispered that they had a right to know, if only for closure, and that a rescue operation might even be possible. One that hurt nobody on either side, but freed captives tortured and slain for raiding against their own will.
If positions were reversed, if a dragon turned into a human on Berk and knew that she was captive in this terrible place, she would have wanted more than anything for that dragon to tell her parents. Even if it was hopeless. Maybe especially then, so that they could move on. And she wouldn't have considered that dragon a traitor to the rest, if it happened that way. Maybe.
"Speak, please, or..." Mentor glared out beyond Astrid, at the sulfurous pit behind them. The threat was clear.
A quiet moment passed between the three of them as what he had implied sunk in. His mate glanced at him uncertainly.
He sighed and tossed his head. "No. I cannot do it. I will not ask Inferna to make you speak, but please, as repayment for all I have tried to do for you, tell us what you know." There was the faintest hint of a whine in his voice.
That broke her resolve; it would have been easier to deny him when he was trying to force her to speak. She pushed her own mental turmoil aside and spoke the truth she wasn't sure should be known. "That village," her village, "keeps prisoners. I think he was taken as one of them. He may not live now, but I do not know, and he was alive when I was taken from there by the Bolt."
Both Nightmares snapped to alert, staring intently. "You know he was alive less than ten days ago?" Mentor's mate asked.
Astrid nodded, unable to process what she was doing beyond the implications of the moment. All she was doing was telling parents that their son might yet live. And where to find him...
"You know where he is being held," Mentor continued. "You know how to get him out. Tell us. Please."
The loyal side of Astrid reasserted itself and tried to fix the damage she had done. "I can't, you'll attack and kill people, people I know–"
"We will kill none unless absolutely no other option is available," Mentor promised vehemently, cutting her off. "We cannot and would not wait for the next raid. This must be done by stealth, and thus without bloodshed."
"Will you help us free them without fighting, or will you tell us how it can be done?" Mentor's mate asked eagerly. "Either is fine, but if you do neither, we will have to figure it out, and that means Flightless will be more likely to notice and force us to kill them."
She had betrayed information about Berk... but they were offering a way to make it so that her failure was not so terrible. "I will do both," she offered. "The prisoners–"
"How many?" Mentor interrupted.
It occurred to her that now, having let the Terror out of the sack, she had to share more knowledge in order to mitigate the damage. "One of each kind. One Coal, one Blast, and so on. All of the kinds here but Bolts. They are kept in a stone bowl outside of the village, in cages that can only be opened if you know where the levers are."
"Lever?" Mentor growled uncertainly, repeating the word as if it meant nothing to him. Which, now that she thought about it, was probably true. "You will have to show us. But it can be done without danger?"
"There are guards, but if you're quick about it they'll never notice a thing." She was advising enemies of Berk on how to strike more effectively. Even if it was to ensure Berk took as little damage as possible from the inevitable attack, this was a slippery slope, and she had already been falling to get to this point in the first place.
"Thank you," Mentor hummed, apparently satisfied with the plan as it stood. "We might get our son back, thanks to you. And I know it cannot be easy to send us to your old home." He reached out, probably to touch her in some way, but stopped himself just in time.
Not that Astrid would have cared. She was still in shock at what she had just done. She nodded numbly.
"I am going to go gather volunteers," Mentor's mate declared, looking up at the more occupied ledges. "We will need as many flames as we can get, just in case it does go bad, though we will do everything we can to prevent that." She looked over at Astrid. "You said there are other flames being held there. Can you describe them? I may be able to find their families here, to let them know."
Astrid shook her head in denial. She probably could, but she had said far too much anyway.
"Never mind then, we can sort that out once we have gotten them back," Mentor's mate said firmly. She leaped off of the ledge and flew at a high speed over to the nearest group of dragons, setting herself aflame to attract attention.
Astrid tried not to hear the recruiting speech Mentor's mate was undoubtedly giving. She shuffled her feet uneasily, regretting her decision to speak. She had not wanted to side with the dragons; she still sided with Berk, against the dragons. Yet she had spoken anyway, and now Berk was going to be attacked, or at least infiltrated, and there was nobody to blame but herself. She shouldn't have told them.
Mentor seemed to catch on that Astrid wasn't happy with herself. He moved closer, staring down at her. "Please, female Bolt, do not fret. You did nothing wrong."
That, coming from someone she liked, but also coming from the enemy, was too much to bear. "I betrayed my people!" she exclaimed. "I did everything wrong!"
"I see." He was quiet for a moment, as if composing his thoughts. "I will not tell you that they are no longer your people. That would make me a liar, as such is clearly false in your own eyes. But... what have you betrayed?" His voice grew cold. "We do not keep prisoners, and I consider it a horrible thing, but if they treated theirs well, I might thank them for taking our people away from Inferna, if not entirely out of her grasp. But you say my son might be dead by now, so they clearly do not. All you have betrayed is a single cruel practice that does not affect their ability to defend themselves."
She had to correct him on that; the words tumbled out of her without prompting. "It does. We train our youth to fight your kind by setting them against the prisoners. That is why they do not last long." After all she had given away, that was nothing. Just another tiny betrayal to add to the pile.
"Cruel and terrible," Mentor snarled. "But there are other ways to learn. Your people will not lose anything important, and we will recover something thought lost." He lowered his head almost to the ground, staring right into Astrid's eyes. "Please. Do not hate yourself for this. No lives will be lost, no damage done to anything but the prison if we can help it, and nothing of lasting importance learned by my side or Inferna. All that will change is that your people will have to fix their cages. And here, for us... my mate will mourn no more. I will not grieve for my child. Others will recover what they thought gone for good. And life will go on, horrible and restricted as it can be here, but life nonetheless."
And so the traitor was reassured that they weren't really over the line, that they had not crossed it yet, or if they had, that it was not so bad. Astrid knew she should not listen to his words, to his calm and heartfelt plea. She should hate herself. But she had named him Mentor for a reason. He was wise, good with words, and good at making himself understood. She really hadn't betrayed anything of value.
But the value did not matter, it was the principle of the thing.
Of letting someone who was apparently only barely an adult be executed, instead of rescued and reunited with his parents. She was only betraying the very system that she had intended to win glory in herself, only to have it taken by Hiccup, who had not wanted it.
She didn't want it either, now. This was all so messed up. She was still loyal to Berk, just... not to dragon training. Not to what, looked at from this point of view, was just a senseless cruelty practiced on people who could not choose to stop attacking and being captured.
Another step down the road leading from spy to traitor to her own species. But this was a step she could not in the end make herself regret taking. She could stop here. Berk was good, dragon training was unintentionally bad, Inferna was horrible, and the dragons only enemies because they had no choice in the matter. That was a world she could live with.
"Are you always right?" she asked bitterly.
"Not even close. But I have seen all of this before, so I know more than most would," he explained. "Maybe, had I this experience in dealing with the last former Flightless to come here, she would not have had such a horrible life. That is my failure."
So he thought he was only succeeding because he had failed before. That was terrible, but she could not argue, given she had not been there to see it happen.
"What gesture means comfort, given between friends?" she asked quietly. "I could really use whatever that is right about now." Maybe she sounded weak or stupid, but she didn't care right now. She would take reassurance from wherever she could find it.
"... Like this," he eventually responded, placing one of his wing arms on her other side and pulling in, lightly trapping her under his wing, though trapping implied she couldn't escape, which was not true. "I am sorry our good fortune is your misfortune."
~O~o~O~
The rescue mission did not begin that night; most of those who would go had just come back from a raid, and needed time to recover. But when night rolled around again, hot on the heels of a short and listless day of recuperation and self-recrimination, dragons began gathering in the sky once more. Astrid was one of the first there, and found herself flying with Mentor and his mate again, like last time.
She had set this into motion, and she had to see it through.
"Not all of the Blazes are coming, and only about ten of all other kinds. Aside from the Flickers, that is. They're all coming." Mentor's mate sounded fairly satisfied with her report, but she was clearly nervous, flying erratically above the clouds. "They all know we are leaving soon. Do you think it will be enough?"
"That will be more than enough," Mentor reassured her. "But all of the Flickers? What did you say to them?"
"Nothing, I could not even find one to talk to," Mentor's mate admitted. "They have moved their hiding places again. So I just announced to the whole nest that we were going to rescue, among other flames, a Flicker. Then one found me and promised every able-bodied Flicker would come if I made sure nobody would bother them for the duration of the trip."
"I am unsure whether they come out of loyalty to the captive, or just to get away from the nest for a few days, but it is all the same no matter the reason," Mentor grumbled.
Dragons began to arrive above the clouds soon afterward, though far fewer than the last raid. There were eight Gronckles, five Zipplebacks, three Monstrous Nightmares, and a duo of Nadders, along with the aforementioned flock of Terrible Terrors, who immediately swarmed Mentor and his mate, hiding on and around them.
There was something going on there. If Astrid didn't have too many problems as it was, she might be more interested in finding out what, but as things were, she didn't need to add to the list of issues to deal with. Sticking her nose where it didn't belong – again – would be a stupid thing to do anyway. She resolved to not bother the Terrible Terrors on this trip.
~O~o~O~
Said trip was accomplished in two nights of boringly slow flight, with a rest stop during the day. It was not a horrible way to travel, but Astrid ran into a problem when they stopped to rest. Her stomach was painfully hollow, and she felt strangely weak. More urgently, a disagreeable taste was building up in the back of her throat, and she had coughed a vile, unrecognizable liquid on the sand immediately after landing.
She was obviously at the point where food was an imminent concern, but she still didn't know how to fire. Figuring it out had to wait until she had a day with nothing else going on, and that did not seem to be coming any time soon.
So she flew up to Mentor, who was circling over the small, barren island they had stopped on, watching over his flock. "I am coughing up strange liquid," she reported.
"What?" he asked, then did a double-take. "I thought you had gotten fish from someone else days ago! You never came to me, and I was sure it would only take a day or two… Are you really only beginning to starve now?"
"You told me it wasn't urgent until–" she began, only to be cut off by him flapping his wings erratically, taking to the air with far more haste than usual.
"Follow me now!" he demanded.
The pressing emptiness in her stomach gave her ample reason to obey, though she would much rather have let him fish for himself and saved any demonstration or participation for pater.
"I am very, very sorry," he called out, circling back around to overtake her and lead her away. "I thought you had eaten already. I think maybe the male Bolt gave you a form with a full stomach to start with, or possibly one strong enough to need less food less often, but… no, this is still my fault."
"It's fine, so long as you show me how to feed myself now," Astrid assured him. He had told her to wait until this happened, he didn't need to be sorry that she had done as suggested. "And get me a lot of fish in the process," she felt compelled to add as the telltale burning in the back of her throat returned. She hacked out a bit more of the vile liquid as they flew. He had never told her what it was that she was coughing up… Probably bile of the dragon variety. There was a reason stabbing dragons through the gut always came with the knowledge that if one got the weapon back, one would be cleaning it as soon as possible.
"All you can eat," he promised. He led her out over the ocean, some way from the island. "Where the fish are varies for many reasons, so finding a good source is mostly luck. But there are some here, so luck is with us today."
Astrid looked down into the water, and saw fish swimming far below the surface. Her eyes were incredibly good at seeing movement in the murky depths.
Not good enough, on the other hand, to identify said fish, but that was a long shot anyway. She was no fisherwoman, and despite fish being Berk's leading food source, knew almost nothing of the different kinds. Definitely not enough to put a name to them with only a few vague glimpses, and in all honesty, probably not enough to figure out what they were once she had one right in front of her. It didn't matter; they were food.
"This part varies depending on what kind of fire you have at your disposal," Mentor continued, inhaling deeply. "For me, I have to rely on my fire being partly liquid."
Astrid saw what he meant when his torrent of heavy flame hit the water and immediately extinguished itself. In its place an odd film of murky, unclear liquid dropping like a net through the depths, down towards the distant school of fish, bubbling all the way.
"This might take a few tries," he admitted, and flamed the water again, sending down another net of foreign liquid. She knew Nightmares used their spit to light themselves on fire, but she had never known it was heavy enough to stick together in water.
After the third try, the fish began floating up to the top of the water, dead. The Nightmare swooped and snagged a few in his talons, before calling out "grab some more, you'll need quite a few!"
Astrid did as told, easily picking up half a dozen with her sharp and strong claws, piercing flesh deeply enough that it wouldn't fall apart when she pulled it out of the water. It felt disgusting, but she was too hungry to really care.
That same lack of caring also applied to actually eating the fish. She let her instincts take over the moment she landed on the shore of the barren island, and the fish disappeared almost before she could take notice of how she had eaten them, swallowing each one whole.
Mentor landed nearby and tossed his catch to her. "I suspected you would have trouble with those," he admitted. "I was told Flightless burn fish first."
Astrid shrugged, and swallowed the rest. "I'm no picky eater," she asserted, feeling as if she could manage a dozen more, but satisfied nonetheless. "How much should I be able to eat?"
"Many more than that, as you are starving, but I will not get you more," he said firmly. "Not yet. Your body must adjust to not slowly starving away before you can manage much more than what you just had. We will do this again as soon as we return to the nest. That should be long enough for you to adjust. Then you should learn your fire and fend for yourself."
Fine by her. She was just glad to not be starving any more. She hadn't really noticed the discomfort until it edged into being unbearable, and now that it was gone she doubted she'd be willing to let it get that bad again.
If only all of her slowly building troubles that reached intolerable levels were so easily dismissed.
~O~o~O~
Seeing Berk again in the dark of night brought back a torrent of memories, many of them good ones, and thus painfully nostalgic. Astrid remembered being given her first ax, using her first ax to train... many moments of happy preparation for a future in which she was respected and knew her place in the world.
She let herself remember for a brief moment, before mentally shoving it all aside. She was no longer the little girl she remembered, and she could never get any of that back.
Berk still looked good despite that. It still looked like home, a brave expanse of Viking stubbornness claiming a much larger island. It was home.
The home she was ridding of a cruel and pointless practice, at least temporarily. Berk would be better off without captive dragons anyway; there was a lot of effort put into all things dragon training, and Mentor had been right in saying there were other ways to train. Dragon training was just the unknowingly cruel method Berk currently used. Maybe this would make them rethink that. It might even be good for them in the long run.
Or so she told herself to assuage the guilt. It was still true. Hopefully.
Astrid flew alongside Mentor, helping him lead the way by pointing out the arena. The torches of the guards were just leaving it, so as long as they were careful, this could be done perfectly.
"Three Flickers, one Flare, with us," Mentor commanded quietly. "The rest of you, circle above. Send a Flicker if the Flightless are coming, but do not reveal yourselves. We want to do this safely."
Nobody objected. Stealth missions were not the usual way they did things, but they were used to going quietly until they were caught. The only difference tonight was that getting caught was not inevitable or even particularly likely, so long as nobody messed up.
She did have to question who Mentor had decided to bring, though. "Why them?" she asked, just before the four dragons requested flew up alongside them.
"Flickers to fit into small spaces, a Flare to melt metal if needed. I am there to lend strength, and you to lend your knowledge." Mentor had clearly anticipated her question. "You know how to free them?"
She did, at that. There were levers up in the stands, ones that would open the doors in the arena, and another in the tunnel leading down to the arena for the passage itself. Both areas were at the moment unguarded.
It wasn't that simple, though. If they just pulled the levers, it would look like a human had done it. Astrid didn't want to incriminate some random, hapless Berkian for her own crimes. They were going to do this the hard way.
"Yes, I know how to do it." She led the small group of dragons down to the tunnel and gestured inside. "Flare, burn the metal blocking the end of this tunnel. Just burn the top, that is the anchor point."
The bright yellow Nadder nodded, though it glared at her while she actually gave the orders, and hopped down the narrow passage.
"I will block the light," Mentor decided, spreading his wings and positioning himself to cover as much of the tunnel opening as possible. "Is this all that is needed?"
"No, there are individual barriers for each dragon," Astrid admitted. "Flickers, come with me."
"No," one said timidly, hiding behind Mentor.
Mentor sighed heavily. "Go. You have my mate's promise."
With that, all three Flickers crept out into the open, staring at Astrid with wide eyes.
"Well, come on." She didn't need to understand the Terrible Terrors. There were more important things afoot. She led the three little dragons up into the spectator seats, and from there down to where Gobber controlled the gates. Said gates were too reinforced for any dragon to break, so this part was going to look suspicious, but she had a solution for that.
"Yank these little things down," she explained, tapping her tail on the levers. They each had a label, but she didn't bother reading them. All of the dragons were being set loose, so it didn't matter. "And be sure to bite hard, they're stiff."
Biting hard would also leave teeth marks, obvious ones. When Berkians investigated this breakout, they would find evidence of small dragons pulling levers. Alongside proving it wasn't a human action, Astrid hoped somebody would figure out that they were vastly underestimating dragon intelligence, if Terrors could understand and manipulate human devices as complex and abstract as this.
She was helping Berk in a small way. That would ease her conflicted conscience, if only a little.
The Terrors did as told, eagerly latching onto and pulling the levers all directions until they found which way had some give. Their small wings flapped frenetically, and the stiff levers ended up being no problem.
Astrid leaned over to look into the arena through the chain dome above it, watching as the dragons within were all let out.
The first to exit was the Nightmare, staring in all directions, clearly confused. He was a little smaller than normal, and obviously malnourished besides, but he moved quickly enough, taking the as of yet mysterious freedom with wary but quick movements.
The other dragons were slower to come out. The Zippleback stuck its heads around both corners of its open doorway before slinking into the arena. The Gronckle buzzed out slowly, eyes wide. Over on the far wall, the small gateway meant for a Terrible Terror remained empty for a long moment.
Then the Nadder, which had exited so quietly and subtly that Astrid hadn't noticed, stuck her beak in the small opening and squawked. "Come on, you can fly away."
"Really?" a distant, tiny voice asked.
"Get over here!" one of the Terrors watching with Astrid called out impatiently. "Move it!"
"Fellow Flickers?" A Terrible Terror leaped out into the open and took to the air, throwing herself at and promptly squeezing through a gap in the chain mesh, eagerly joining her kind. "How? Why?"
"Blame her, and thank her, I think," one said quietly, gesturing at Astrid. "The Blaze promises safety for us on this trip, so do not worry too much."
A clanking of metal interrupted their quiet conversation. Astrid recognized that sound for what it was; the Nadder had finished its work on the exit.
Sure enough, the Nadder they had brought with them stepped out into the arena and beckoned with a wing. "The way is clear."
Astrid took that as her cue to make her way back to Mentor, who was no longer covering the tunnel. "That was easy," he remarked. "But only because you made it easy for us. We could not have taken this place without much loss on both sides, if you had not helped. We did not even know about it."
Astrid nodded stiffly, still troubled. She watched as the captive dragons, now somewhat aware of what was going on, exited the tunnel one by one and flew up to rejoin the flock. The Nightmare was last, barely fitting in the tunnel, and he froze when he caught sight of Mentor. "Sire?"
"I did not know you were here until recently, otherwise I would have come sooner," Mentor rumbled, nosing at his son as he left the tunnel, almost knocking him off balance, he was pushing so hard at his chest. "You are not hurt? You are well?"
"I am well, We should go," Mentor's son said quickly, looking around. "I never want to come back here."
"Let us go," Mentor agreed. He and his son sprang into the sky, flying away from the arena as fast as they could.
Astrid lingered for a brief moment, staring at her work as it departed. This was for the better, for both Berk and her own sake. She did believe that. Mostly. And if it was not… it was not worse for them, not really.
She rejoined the flock as they flew over Berk, moving slowly because those who had come were busy checking the captives to see who they were. The entire group of Gronckles buzzed around the one who had been freed, and Mentor's mate was beside herself with relief, fawning over her son even as they flew. The Nadders were oddly formal, far less frenzied than the other dragons, and it seemed the captive Zippleback was not at all related to any of those who had flown out, but he was greeted warmly enough.
Seeing all of these reunions, Astrid ached to have one of her own, one her mind knew was impossible, but her heart craved. To just see her parents for a moment, even if they did not know her...
No, too risky. But she couldn't help but look down at the village, staring at her house, the building she wouldn't even fit into were she to go down to it now.
"What are you looking at?" Mentor asked softly, his mate and son gliding down to fly by Astrid as they slowly passed over Berk, unnoticed by any below.
"My old home," she admitted sadly. "My family is there, in that hut with the blue-painted peak. I wish..."
A soft whine interrupted her. She looked back at the Nightmares, wondering who was mourning with her. Probably Mentor.
"Oh, no," Mentor's mate groaned, her eyes narrowing. She flew back up to the main flock and began speaking in low tones.
"What was that?" Astrid asked, feeling abruptly uneasy. Everything had gone perfectly, but Mentor's mate seemed to think otherwise and she wasn't sure why...
Astrid began to really worry when Mentor refused to meet her eyes or answer her question. "What is it?" she asked again.
"Sire, what is going on?" Mentor's son asked, noticing that something was wrong. He, at least, seemed as ignorant as Astrid felt.
"Son, obey me and do not ask questions," Mentor commanded urgently, whipping his neck around to stare at his son. "Do not listen to anything anyone else says, no matter what. Remember what I taught you about blocking things out?"
"If I do not believe and do not understand, I can escape certain things," Mentor's son repeated, some sort of comprehension dawning on him.
"What is happening?" Astrid asked again, now truly confused and utterly overwhelmed with a sense of foreboding.
"Take the female Bolt down to the forest and keep her there until I come for you," Mentor commanded. "Female Bolt, go, or he will force you down."
"No, I want–" Astrid had barely begun to object when Mentor's son flew into her, knocking her away and driving her towards the forest far below. She battered at him with her paws, no claws, just trying to throw him off of her. Something terrible was happening, and she would not be sheltered like a child!
But Mentor's son, weak and malnourished as he was, seemed to know a lot more about fighting another dragon than she did. He steadily forced her to lose altitude, driving her to the ground, and pleading with her all the while. "Please just cooperate, Sire only says that when things are about to go bad but I don't understand enough to be involved, I don't know what's going on and can't know, or else I have to help, so please just stop fighting–"
Astrid twisted in his confining grip and dropped, getting a good look up at the other dragons. All of them, from the Nightmares to the Terrors, were wheeling around and diving now, dropping towards...
Her home. Her hut, and her parents, who were surely within. Astrid felt a desperate shriek escape her throat, but Mentor's son just kept pulling her down and away from the village, where she could not intervene.
All of the dragons Mentor had enlisted to come save their fellow flames, and the captives themselves, hit Astrid's home with everything they had in a strike unlike anything she had ever imagined. Mentor and his mate flamed the roof with the other Nightmares. The Gronckles blasted blobs of molten rock through the walls. Nadders and Terrors burned everything they could reach, and Zipplebacks came in afterward, filling the interior of what remained with gas–
And then Astrid's view of the horrible atrocity being committed was cut off by a tree, as Mentor's son finally drove her down into the forest. By that point, she was struggling with all her might, but there was nothing she could do. She hit the ground hard and was immediately pinned, but Mentor's son was lighter and weaker, she could struggle free–
A final, massive explosion rocked the night, lighting the sky for a brief instant before fading away. The sounds of fiery destruction ceased.
Astrid slumped as if boneless, the fight knocked out of her by that terrible death knell.
Author's Notes: Sorry, it was all going too well to last. The more perceptive of you will probably guess at what just happened, and more importantly why, but I'm curious to see if anyone will make further leaps of logic than the obvious one.
Also, fun fact: I have no clue what chemical compound Monstrous Nightmares produce to fuel their fire, but there's clearly something going on there beyond the generic flamethrower, as the fire is visibly heavy in the first movie. Here I've made the slightly dubious (in the physics and materials engineering sense) move of depicting the liquid in question as capable of sinking in water and remaining hot enough to kill fish as it does so, meaning it's definitely not something as simple as regular oil. Perhaps a variant of oil or kerosene with solids suspended in it… It's as realistic as anything else the Monstrous Nightmare does or can do, including existing, so I'm okay with that.