The raid had not gone well, but it didn't really sink in until Astrid was counting the dead afterward.
Two Coals, a Flare, and a half-dozen Flickers were dead. Or, as Astrid would put it, two Gronckles, a Nadder, and a half-dozen Terrible Terrors. That was the toll. Not the toll of who died in battle during the raid; she'd not gotten an exact count of those losses. The toll of who Inferna ate to make up the difference in prey caught and prey required.
Astrid had flown at the front of the morose, terrified line of returning raiders, her empty clutches worrying even though she had been assured that the very first dragon in line was safe. That was the place reserved for the Night Fury, who never stole food but was far too valuable to pay the price of a failed raid. She was first down, first over the obscured depths, and first to the relative safety of the ledges. Nine of those who followed her were not so lucky, randomly snatched out of the sky with a sudden violence that did nothing to dull the horror of their deaths.
It probably was not random, Inferna was probably sitting down there thinking about who she could afford to lose, who was valuable, and who she wanted to eat, but it felt random to Astrid. Like a cruel pretend-god striking them down on a whim.
Astrid hated Inferna with an intensity that blazed right alongside her Solar fire in her chest. This was what she was somehow, someday going to end. She had not forgotten that vow, even if it still seemed just as impossible as it always had been.
Once that horrible spectacle was over, Inferna rose out of the sulfurous mists and called a few random dragons out of the crowd, asking after Astrid's actions as she had said she would.
"The only thing stopping this from being a total failure," a Nadder chirped, his voice wavering but confident. Belated terror over seeing his brethren eaten was there as expected, but he didn't let it rule him. Inferna didn't care about his feelings, she just wanted to know what he had seen. She probably wouldn't eat him if he said the wrong thing.
Probably was a world away from definitely. Astrid understood his fear.
"She delayed them, that gave me time to take a prey before they even showed up," a Gronckle said nervously when he was told to speak. He was all but crediting Astrid with his life, given what had happened to some of those who came without prey clutched in their talons.
"She used her shots in an effective, thorough way," Mentor's mate testified in a flat, forced tone that could have hid anything from terror to murderous rage. "I would have spread them out, but with the way the fight went, her decision to use them all at the start was the better one."
Inferna dismissed them all and sank down to sleep without another word, not even looking after Astrid. Somehow, that felt better than being praised would have. She would rather Inferna forgot about her entirely.
"Inferna must be getting ready for the big sleep," a Nadder hissed to those around her. "She sleeps more, we raid more leading up to it... it's almost here."
Astrid turned to the Nadder, too curious to let that slide. "What's almost here?"
"She sleeps through the whole cold-season," the green Nadder explained. "A whole season of safety. We mate then, too, and have eggs, and teach our fledglings to fly, all before the ice thaws and she wakes. It's the best part of the season-cycle."
Astrid nodded in understanding. So that was the real reason dragons didn't raid in the cold-season. They didn't have to feed Inferna at all, and they took advantage of her absence to have their kids and raise them.
But Mentor's first daughter had been 'helped' by Inferna, and that had happened in the Winter... or maybe Inferna had decided she was no use after the third Winter of no results despite year-round 'help'.
"Oh, and you are friends with the blue Flare, right?" the green Nadder asked.
"Friends is a strong word," Astrid said hesitantly. "I know her, and she was assigned to guard me." She might still be, depending on what Inferna said. She'd been pulled off the job to tend to the Night Fury, but Astrid wasn't sure whether that was permanent or not.
"She's annoying, but she's pretty," he said admiringly. "Mind putting in a good word for me? The cold-season is coming, after all. She might make stupid decisions, but she will make a good mate. Our hatchlings would be beautiful."
Astrid was reminded of when the Night Fury had said humans must be like Nadders, only concerned with looks. That had sounded like a stereotype, but regardless of the entire Nadder population, this dragon definitely fit that description.
"What stupid decisions?" Another Nadder asked, a red male with strikingly pale yellow eyes who had just come from the next ledge over.
"Remember, she tried to fly in that storm as a fledgling?" the green one explained. "And she volunteered to watch this Bolt. But she is pretty."
"Not as pretty as the light pink female, surely," the newcomer objected. "But she is mine, so you can have the storm flier."
Storm flier... Stormfly. Astrid snorted and left them to their argument. That was a good name. It referenced the Nadder's personality in more ways than one, given flies generally buzzed around and bothered people, but it also sounded pleasant enough. The blue Nadder was Stormfly. That just left Mentor's mate, and probably his son too. If only their names would come so easily.
And thinking of Stormfly... Astrid looked around, checking the ledges she knew could be accessed by tunnel. There was no sign of either of them, so they were probably already on their way back down to the shore if they had come at all.
Astrid wanted to take her job back now. She jumped up and flew out of the volcano, circling around to find the Night Fury. Bringing him water was her responsibility, and she had only passed it off because she had no other choice. It was unpleasant, annoying at times, but it was hers.
She spotted both Stormfly and the Night Fury on their way to the Night Fury's rock. The Nadder was all but hopped rings around him, moving five paces for every one of his.
"Oh, female Bolt!" Stormfly exclaimed. "I did not know you were back!"
"You didn't see us all flying in?" Astrid asked skeptically.
"We did not go. I was taking the male Bolt for a walk, because he seemed bored," she explained happily. "Inferna told me to care for him, not come up and see when everyone returns, so I stayed here. It's a long walk to there anyway."
"You kept him supplied with clean water?" Astrid asked sternly. She didn't care what else Stormfly took it upon herself to do, the water was the important thing.
"Of course. I kept him entertained, too." Stormfly sighed morosely. "But his throat is still bad, I think. He hasn't said a word, no matter how many times I asked him questions."
Astrid pointedly did not look at the Night Fury. If he wanted to pretend to be mute to avoid Stormfly's incessant questioning, more power to him. She wished she had thought of that for herself.
Still, it seemed Stormfly had done well, annoying personality aside. "Thank you for stepping in for me." she said grudgingly.
"Oh, it was no trouble," Stormfly assured her. "It got me out of going on the raid, so I should be thanking you! How was it?"
Astrid grimaced. "Bad." She could feel Stormfly winding up to ask for details, so she quickly continued. "You should go up to the volcano. There is a green male Flare who wants to see you about something, I'm sure he'd tell you more about the raid too."
"Him?" Stormfly chuffed. "Oh, good. I was wondering when he'd come to his senses. You can walk him back?" she asked hopefully, looking back at the male Bolt.
"Yes. Go." Astrid didn't dare say anything else. Luckily, Stormfly was too excited to sit still, and flew off at an impressively fast pace, toward the top of the volcano.
Once Stormfly was gone, Astrid looked back at the Night Fury. "Your throat is fine, isn't it?"
"Do not tell her," he requested, his voice mostly normal, if a little low and strained. "She speaks day and night as it is. I cannot imagine a conversation with her ever ending."
"She did you a favor," Astrid remarked, leading the way back to his rock. She would walk him and refill his water if needed. Then... well, she'd find something else to do with the rest of her day.
"An excessively chattering favor." He sped up a little and came to walk beside her. "You were the one giving me water in the first place, for her to fill in for. Thank you."
"It is not that big a deal," she muttered.
"It is saving my life," he retorted.
"What?" she asked sharply, glaring at him. "You said you were not seriously ill."
"I lied," he admitted. "It would have become serious. But clean water and rest helped me recover. I would not have, otherwise. I know that illness."
"You'd have wasted away and died," she realized. "Leaving me to my fate once Inferna didn't need me. Your priorities certainly jump around a lot," she complained.
"You must only survive until the cold-season," he argued. "Then, when she sleeps, you can forgo your stupid promises to obey her and fly far, far away. If you go when the others are all laying eggs, nobody can stop you." He inhaled slowly. "The sickness would not have killed me until then, but it would have rendered me all but useless by the time Inferna noticed."
"She might have made you do it anyway, and she would still destroy my home if I fled," Astrid countered. "I wouldn't have left. That was a stupid plan."
"It was a plan that was not 'stall for time', so it was better than yours." They had reached his rock, but he was not going up to it and lying down. He was facing her, now. "Why did you help me?"
"It certainly was not because I forgive you for all you've done," she blustered, feeling irritatingly unsure of herself. She didn't quite know why, not in a way that she could put into words. Her response wasn't even close to an answer, and she knew it, but only because she didn't have one to give.
"I knew that," he growled. "You are right to blame me for some of what has happened."
"All," she corrected with a short snarl.
"No, not all," he retorted. "Some is on me, much is on Inferna, and some is on you." He flicked his tail meaningfully, then coughed.
"I was not the one to shoot you from the sky," she objected.
"No, but you were the one to drive me back here!" he growled quietly. "I do not really blame you, I blame myself for not remembering that the borders of her power move sometimes, but you were the one to make us fly. If you had stayed and listened, or never come to our place, none of us would be here."
His words rang like a rough bell in Astrid's mind. It was her fault they were all here. Her fault Hiccup was dead, her fault the Night Fury was suffering... and her fault she had been changed. She was not the only one at fault, by a long shot, but she had never considered herself at all in the wrong. Now she was seeing that it could all be laid on her own shoulders.
"I am not blaming you," the Night Fury continued. "I am not complaining if you choose not to continue helping me. I am just trying to understand who you are. Who I brought into my own kind of body, and set loose upon the world I inhabit. Who my friend desired, but will never get to have."
"He'd have never gotten to have me in any case," Astrid snarled, latching onto something she was still sure of in all of this. "And what was your plan there? I'm surprised you wanted him to have me."
"What is that supposed to mean?" the Night Fury asked angrily.
"You made me into this," Astrid explained with a flourish of her wings, voicing the theory she had just come up with. "This is apparently what you wanted in the back of your mind. But you didn't want to change me, you were hoping to change him at some point. It sounds to me like you had picked the person you wanted." If he could change her body to the degree he had done, surely he would have been able to make Hiccup exactly like she was now, gender and all. Or maybe he would have foregone that and still wanted him; either would have been reprehensible, just as him changing her had been.
"You think that I wanted him as my mate?" The Night Fury bared his teeth at her and snarled. "First of all, you have no right to criticize even if that had been my plan. Second of all, that would not have worked in any case, as I would not have made him female no matter how badly I might have wanted to. I knew he was male, and since I knew that was how I thought of him, Flightless or Bolt. Third, we were close, but not like that! Never that." He groaned, shaking his head. "You want to know my plan? I had hoped he would come up with a way for me to fly on my own."
"And then you'd abandon him," Astrid accused. She had plenty of objections, but that one stood out as the most important.
"And then I would take him somewhere safe, change him, and let him learn to be what he was so clearly meant to be from the start." The Night Fury was pacing in a tight circle now, not even looking at Astrid, staring out into the fog all around them as if seeing what he had lost. "He would have liked it. We would have truly been brothers. I never wanted to make myself a mate, that would be… no. I'm better than that. But I would have been willing to give my Solar fire as a gift to someone who would appreciate it. What he did with his after that would have been up to him, but I think he would have been even less okay with using it than I am... was."
"You used it on me." She was still angry, but in the back of her mind she knew this was not just an argument. They were both looking for answers, and as long as they kept talking, one or both of them might find some. So while she definitely wasn't happy, she kept from just snarling and cutting off the conversation.
"To save your life." He whined piteously. "Please, tell me, was there truthfully any chance of you living to escape?"
Truthfully, probably not. She could have built some semblance of a raft if luck was with her... if she still had both arms. Maybe even if her bad arm was just useless. But what she had been left with would have been far too agonizing to ignore.
"No," she admitted. "I had no chance."
"So I bent my principles to save a life," he finished quietly. "That was all I was thinking about. All I could think about, with the agony of losing him still fresh in my mind. Saving something, anything at all. I am sorry if you would have preferred death."
In that moment, maybe, but now... No, she would not have. But she didn't say that. Saying that she was glad he had changed her was like forgiving him, and she wasn't going to do that.
Instead, she changed the topic. "Your principles," she growled sarcastically. "Why don't you tell me what they are instead of just telling me whether or not you have any?"
"So you can throw them back at me?" he huffed. "I am trying to be a good person, that's all. That includes not using my Solar fire for bad purposes, not mistreating those I have power over–"
"You have power over nobody," she interrupted.
"And I consider that a good thing," he shot back. "No temptation."
"My father always says to assume anyone who claims to not want power is lying," Astrid shot back. It was a favorite saying of his, there was some story behind it Astrid had never bothered asking about…
"Your father says that," the Night Fury rumbled bitterly. "He is not wrong."
"Was," she corrected. "Was not wrong. He's dead now, thanks to you."
"That is entirely Inferna's fault, and I will have no part in accepting the blame," he barked.
"Fine," she conceded. She didn't feel like arguing the point; it had been a petty shot at him, not a serious accusation. She didn't really think that was his fault. She hadn't sworn revenge on him for their deaths.
"Now let me ask you something," he said seriously. "What are you?"
"A Flightless stuck in a Bolt's body," she said, using their words for her situation. "You know this, you did this. What was the point of asking me?"
"Not that.. I will rephrase it. What are you like?" he asked. "You attacked me and tore my ear off, and it did not seem to make you any less angry, but later you passed up a free shot at me for no reason. When I suffer by no direct fault of your own, you help, but you profess to still hate me and constantly try to blame your many problems on me regardless of whether they are all my fault."
Hearing it said made her realize just how contradictory she was being, which blunted any anger she might have felt at being so directly questioned . "It makes no sense," she admitted. "I can't explain what I don't understand myself. I hate you, but..."
"But?" he prompted, after a moment of silence.
"But we are not so very different." She didn't know what she was trying to say. "We fear the same thing. A common enemy. And when I see you suffering, all I can think is that I am not the kind of person to watch and enjoy it, but that does not mean I like you as a person." It was like she was on the edge of a cliff, teetering back and forth with no wings to steady herself. If she fell, she would be giving in to Inferna and giving up her own will, in no longer hating the Night Fury, accepting that he had not been in the wrong, which she still entirely believed he was. Even he believed he was.
Every time she felt herself tilting in that direction, like now, she pulled back. But her empathy, the comradery born of a common oppressor, kept pushing her back to the edge, because she would help anyone she saw in such dire straits if they were not immediately threatening her.
"I dislike you as a person, but we are allies in that we are both oppressed," she summarized. "That confuses me and makes me mad, but it also makes me feel guilty, because I have been treating you as a target, not an ally."
He said nothing, though he did resume walking down the shore. She walked in the same direction, parallel to him but far enough away that nobody could have said they were walking together.
"I still have to know you," she concluded. "We must work together, like it or not." The nature of their situation required it. Inferna was going to start pushing them together, and eventually she'd be stuck with him in a more intimate fashion. They were just going to keep clashing if she did not figure out how to handle the internal contradiction.
"I understand that," he conceded in a low voice. "I'm trying my best not to do any more wrong by you."
"You're not failing," she admitted. Her problems with him all stemmed from Inferna and what he had done weeks ago, now. Ever since, she'd either been berating him, enlisting his help, or hating him from afar. He'd served as a target, not an active enemy.
"Not failing is a lofty goal for me, these days," he said sadly, his eyes downcast. "Next time you come by with water… If we could talk more…"
His rock was up ahead, and it was late. She knew a dismissal when she heard one, and she wasn't inclined to argue. "I don't know what we would have to talk about," she said, "but fine."
She leaped into the sky, groaning as a realization hit her. Mentor's mate had advised pretty much exactly this a while ago. And now she was doing it, because there really wasn't any other way to improve her future at all. Whatever was coming, whatever her plans might be, the Night Fury was going to be involved. She would rather have him as an ally to use than an obstacle or an enemy to resent. That didn't require she like him, but it did require her to understand him.
~O~o~O~
Astrid woke in the middle of the night, unsure at first what was happening.
It wasn't Inferna; the deep vibrations of her snoring continued unabated. She wasn't under attack. Nothing was going on in the volcano. She might have been the only person awake at the moment, for all the activity she saw.
But her heart was racing, and something had woken her… Maybe a bad dream. She tried to think back to her dreams, hoping to remember what had to have startled her out of her sleep, and came up with nothing. Maybe a vague feeling of confusion and fear, like she had made a mistake, but that was it. Nothing solid, nothing real or truly frightening.
At least she hadn't had a nightmare about the Night Fury. After talking so long and so frankly with him, it wouldn't even have been a surprise for him to feature in unsettling dreams. Not that he had told her anything particularly disturbing…
She thought back to their conversation. In retrospect, she had been overly aggressive, and he had taken it in stride. He acted like he deserved her derision up to a certain point.
But that just meant he had standards. Or that he tried to have standards. Anything to be better than…
She growled quietly, feeling something on the tip of her proverbial tongue. Better than… someone. He had said something about wanting to have the moral high ground, but not in so many words. He'd never said over who, though. Not Inferna, everyone in the nest was already a better person than her. Someone else.
This was not what had woken her; she'd probably never know the details of her forgotten dream. But she had happened across something nonetheless, something buried in inference and hidden away until she truly thought about it.
The Night Fury wanted to be better than someone. He wanted to be better than them in a very personal way. Meanwhile, Astrid had lost her parents because of an old order Inferna had given on the subject of a female Bolt. An order given to everyone else, not the female Bolt herself. Mentor had known a human who had been forced into the body of a dragon, and he regretted how her life had turned out.
The Night Fury Astrid knew was not a human who had been turned into a dragon. Which meant he had parents. There were no other Night Furies in the nest.
Astrid didn't remember if the Night Fury had ever spoken of his mother or father; she didn't have a perfect memory and a lot had gone on in the last few weeks. If he had, it had slipped by her, seemingly unimportant.
She was still pretty sure she could see where everything connected, though. It made sense. A female Night Fury, unhappy and formerly a human. A male Night Fury, naturally hatched and hoping to be better, more morally upstanding, than somebody he knew when it came to how he used his Solar fire.
Three Night Furies. A father, a mother, and a son.
She knew what his father had to have done. Why he spoke the word with such disdain.
Father. Sire. One word was used by humans, and the other by dragons. The Night Fury had very specifically said 'father', not 'Sire.' That was another thing that stuck out; she had never heard it said in this language. But somehow she had understood it, whereas dragons tended to not understand when she used words that didn't match up.
"Father," she said, enunciating carefully. It sounded strange in her ears but she knew what it meant. Even when she was hearing another dragon say it.
He had probably learned it from his mother. If his mother really had been human. If Astrid had actually figured something out, and not just turned the experience of waking up from a bad dream into a series of incorrect leaps of reasoning. It was possible she was completely wrong.
She'd find out in the morning. If she was right, the Night Fury had a lot of explaining to do.
~O~o~O~
Astrid woke bright and early, though it was only truly bright above the clouds, which was where she immediately went. She had far too much energy for what was going to be a tense and likely depressing conversation, so she spent it in wild flips and dives, using everything she had taken for herself from the instinct given by the Night Fury.
Then she could stand it no more and pulled out of her dive to leave the sun-lit skies and find out the truth in the fog below.
The Night Fury was awake and rubbing the side of his head against a rock, humming lightly. She didn't know what he was doing, but it had the feel of a morning routine, something pleasant because it required no thought. He was actually in a good mood for once.
She didn't know how she felt about that. It was easier when she could safely hate him and think no more about any of it.
"We must talk, Night Fury," she said as she landed.
True to her late-night theory, he responded with no confusion. "I am a Night Fury, and so are you. You might do better to call me male Bolt. That way flames besides me know what you are saying." After a few more absent rubs against the stone, he turned his head to look at her, eyes still slightly sickly, but bright. "What about?"
"Your human mother," Astrid said confidently. She intentionally continued to use the 'human' words for things, rather than the dragon equivalents she had been taught over the last few weeks. He would understand.
His ears fell, and the content light in his eyes dimmed. "So you were told, or have guessed, or just put things together," he sighed. "What of her? She is gone."
"Tell me the full story, as if I did not know any of it, from that horrible event to now," she commanded, sitting on her hind legs to show she did not intend to leave until he complied.
"I should have guessed. It is not a good story," he warned, sitting to face her. He struck an almost regal figure, reared up on his hind legs and tail. Something closer to, but still entirely unlike, a human in stature. "There is nothing in it to excuse what I did to you. And I will not be exaggerating to gain sympathy. I deserve none. So do not accuse me of lying, all of this will be true and unembellished."
"I am listening," she agreed. Though she withheld the right to question and doubt him as she saw fit.
"My Sire lived far from here," he began, his face twisting into a grimace. "He was an older Bolt, dangerous and well-respected, though he was not particularly pleasant to be around. As far as I was ever told, he grew tired of searching for a mate and instead sent out other flames to search for a suitable substitute, for both Flightless and Flickers were scarce where he was and those flames he sent owed him for things he had done for them in the past. One eventually came back with a live Flightless in his talons."
"Were they searching for women?" Astrid interrupted, already seeing a flaw in the tale. "You just said Flightless, you didn't specify." He had said yesterday that he could not make Hiccup into a female, meaning that any human the searchers brought back might be the wrong kind.
"He knew nothing of them, so it did not matter," the Night Fury explained. "He wanted a mate, so any Flightless he changed would end up female. I could not change my friend to be female because that was never what I wanted, not because it is impossible. It all depends on what the one doing it wants, what they know, and how they want it."
She had no choice but to believe that, at least until she could find the Zippleback who was the expert on such things and ask him. She nodded tersely.
"But she was female anyway, so it did not matter," he continued. "He thanked the flame, changed her, and mated with her as many times as he could before the paralysis wore off."
Astrid growled angrily, offended on the woman's behalf – no, infuriated on her behalf. The Night Fury growled with her, though his growl was far less heated. Not, she thought, because he was any less angry about it, but because it was ancient history to him, not a fresh offense.
"That was not the end of it, obviously," he continued after a moment. He was looking directly at her, holding her gaze with his own, and it leant his words a weight they might not otherwise have had. "She knew nothing of the body she had been forced into and could not even talk, let alone walk or fight back, as is normal in the use of Solar fire."
So when that enthusiastic Solar fire expert had spoken of the Night Fury doing something new, they really had not been exaggerating.
Astrid was a thousand times more grateful for her strange instincts than ever before. That would be a special kind of Hel, to be quite literally trapped in a body that did not work right, no matter what.
"It was a terrible thing he did," the Night Fury said firmly, still holding her gaze. "She laid an egg before she could even walk on her own, or talk. All she could do was lay there, survive off what he provided her, and listen to him whenever he spoke. To him, that was ideal."
"How did she learn, then?" Astrid asked, intrigued and horrified in equal measures. "Surely she figured some things out just by trial and error…"
"By the time I hatched she could crawl, and that was the extent of her capabilities," he said with a low snarl. "With the benefit of hindsight I believe that she only ever learned to talk, walk, or fly by watching as he taught me. With me, he spared absolutely no effort."
"He did not treat you just as badly as her?" Astrid was assuming that such a miserable excuse for a father would be just as terrible–
"No," the Night Fury said shortly. "She was a means to an end, something to be used and kept and otherwise ignored. He actually wanted me. I was not ill-treated, neglected, or anything like that." His words rolled with a low, disgusted growl.
"You're telling me," she said slowly, "that he was good to you."
"I'm telling you that he was as good to me as he was capable of being," the Night Fury confirmed. "I am not saying he was a good person, he was not. But even the worst people might treat well the things they value."
She could believe that. She didn't like it, and she wasn't sure how anyone could grow up into a functional, decent person while raised like that, but she believed it had happened.
"I grew up, somewhat," he continued, a distant look on his face. He broke eye contact with her and looked out over her head, presumably at the featureless fog behind her. "I could fly and run and hunt and talk, just like him. My mother could say simple things, and walk, and fly if she really had to, but with none of the simple ease I had without even trying, and never in his presence. The first time he heard her speak, he told her that he liked her better mute."
"And here I was, thinking I had good excuse to hate you," Astrid blurted out. Her claws were flexing of their own accord, digging little trenches in the ground as she imagined ripping out a certain male's tongue, and then other parts of him...
"He did not treat her well, but she had nowhere to go," the Night Fury continued, ignoring her comment. "Nobody to escape to, not even among the dragons. He kept them from meeting her, which makes me think that what he was doing to her was not acceptable even out there, where they do not have the same close-knit gathering that exists here because of Inferna."
"It had better not be, or I swear I'm going back to my dreams of killing all dragons," Astrid said seriously. If that was how women were treated by all dragons outside of this nest, then they could all die painfully.
"It was not acceptable, and he knew it, so he kept her away from others," the Night Fury assured her. "I was allowed to play with other fledglings on occasion, and I noticed that their Dams were active and involved and equals, but I didn't say anything. I was young and stupid."
She certainly didn't intend to disagree with him there.
"Through all of this, though I did not know it at the time, she harbored a deep hate for him," the Night Fury explained. He did not sound at all enthusiastic about what Astrid considered a very promising sign, which made her less hopeful for a castration-themed uprising in the near future of his retelling. "For obvious reasons. She wanted, I think, to take from him everything that he valued, everything that he had used her to get. But she was not capable of fighting him, not then and not even as the seasons passed and I grew up. He taught me to fight far away from her, because by that point he knew very well that she was learning from watching me learn."
"Of course, he had to keep the slave defenseless," Astrid said bitterly.
"Replace 'slave' with 'dutiful mate' and you have what he told me outright," the Night Fury said coldly. "He taught me to fight and told me how the world was supposed to work at the same time. I was getting older, not old enough to go out and find a mate of my own but old enough to think about it, and he had opinions on how I was to do it when the time came. Advice."
"Advice that was so horrible it made you realize that he was a monster?" Astrid asked hopefully. "Advice that prompted you to wait until he was asleep and then gut him like a fish?"
"Advice I listened to," the Night Fury said bluntly. "I didn't know any better. I even started repeating some of it to my mother when she tried to get me to show her how to fight."
Astrid glared at the Night Fury.
"I was a yearling," he stressed, his lopsided tail swishing restlessly back and forth behind him. "I know very well now that I was wrong to do so, but at the time it felt good to act like him. It was either be like him or be like her, and she was helpless. In the end, it was probably better that I so quickly began to treat her badly. I think it spurred her to action."
"What did she do?" Astrid asked eagerly. She wanted this story to have a happy ending, or even just an appropriately bloody ending for the male, whatever came afterward. She knew such an ending was almost impossible, given where they had all ended up, but the way he told his story, she could believe it would end differently.
"She wanted to take from him everything he desired," the Night Fury recounted. "When I started acting like a miniature version of him in the making, she must have known that she needed to act soon. He had me, the egg–"
"What egg?" Astrid interrupted.
"The egg, sorry, I told it out of order," the Night Fury huffed. "I was getting old enough to look after myself, so he had recently decided to start another egg. He didn't just want one offspring, he wanted as many as he could have while making sure we all ended up like him. He forced himself on her, and she laid another egg. This happened at about the same time as our fighting lessons and his lectures on how I was supposed to think, so she had a lot of reasons to stop biding her time and strike at him."
"And she did what?" Astrid prompted.
"The egg was soon to hatch," the Night Fury said in a low voice. "I was acting more and more like him. She still couldn't fight… but she could fly, and he had never lost the habit of talking at her whenever he felt like having a rant. He let slip something he shouldn't have, though he didn't know it at the time, and she had a plan that didn't involve fighting."
Astrid leaned forward, fervently hoping the plan involved unexpected mutilation.
"He left for the afternoon to go circle his territory a few times and check for intruders," he said quietly. "I had spent the morning asleep, and she woke me seemingly in a panic. He wanted me, she said in the few words she knew, me and the egg, beyond his territory. I asked why, and she said it was a test, and that I had to get there by sundown. I asked why he let her deliver the message, instead of telling me herself, and she said that I had slept in and he was impatient."
"So you took the egg out of his territory?" Astrid guessed.
"I took the egg out of his territory and waited where she had said," he confirmed. "I waited until well after sundown. He didn't come, but she did, and she took the egg while I asked her where he was. Then she fled. I followed, because by then I'd figured out something wasn't right, but I couldn't bring her down without killing the egg, and he would hate me if I did that, or if I took his mate away from him."
"So…" She didn't see how this equaled a successful rebellion. The rebelling woman would inevitably be caught once her misled son realized that he could go back and get his father to come catch her.
"She flew us right into Inferna's territory," the Night Fury said bluntly. "He'd ranted about Inferna, about how she had taken territory and nobody could go in, because they'd be caught, taken over, and never allowed to leave. I don't know exactly what she expected to happen when she led me right into a big group of Inferna's thralls. She never told me. But what ended up happening was that we were forced to fly all the way here, I was added to the growing group of flames who literally could not leave Inferna's territory, and she stayed of her own accord, even though Inferna quickly realized she was not originally a flame and thus not directly under control."
"And your father couldn't follow, because he feared Inferna taking control of him?" Astrid guessed.
"He still fears it to this day, so far as I know," the Night Fury said solemnly, his tail thumping down to the stone. "He must have really gone on at length about how horrible it would be to be caught by her, because my mother had heard enough to guess that he feared that more than he feared losing everything he had ever wanted."
"She stole the egg, herself… and you," Astrid said slowly. "But…"
"I think I can guess what you are about to ask," the Night Fury said bitterly. "What happened to the egg? The only thing I know is that somewhere between us getting caught on the outskirts of her territory, and us being presented to Inferna, she 'lost' it. Lost to the waves the moment she did not need it to lure me, probably."
"No, that's not what I was going to ask," Astrid objected. Though she had wondered… It didn't matter. "What about you? He went on and on about how horrible it would be to be stuck with Inferna, and I can maybe understand that she was already in a horrible position so it couldn't be any worse, but she took you with her?"
"She stole his perfect offspring and made sure he could never get me back, yes," the Night Fury said dispassionately. "Like I said, I never found out what, exactly, she thought she was bringing me into. She didn't talk to me once she wasn't forced to be around me."
"But she knew it was horrible!" Astrid objected. Bratty or not, unwanted or not, he hadn't deserved to be tricked into what was basically a lifetime of slavery. That was exactly what his mother had hated so much, just under a different captor!
"I don't think she cared," he said coldly. "I am not sure she expected either of us to survive her escape. She did her best to pretend I did not exist once we were stuck with Inferna. I tried to pretend the same, at first. I was mad. But my attitude was too offensively obnoxious for the other flames of the nest to ignore, and many of them took it upon themselves to correct me."
"As they should," Astrid agreed absently. "At least they got that right."
"It took far too long, but they managed to teach me better," he agreed with an unamused huff. "I don't really like thinking about that time, it was confusing and scary and everyone kept making me feel bad about everything. Or so it seemed at the time. I needed it, though they could have been more tactful."
"And your mother?" Astrid asked.
"She didn't improve," he said sadly, looking down at the ground. "She lived and learned to survive in this place, but she never really became anything more than what he had made her. She was broken, sad, and could not stand the sight of me once I was fully grown. She hid from me. Eventually, she got hurt in an accident I am half-sure she brought upon herself, was grounded, and made Inferna so mad she was eaten for it." He looked up, eyes filled with old pain. "End of story."
Now Astrid understood. And as she stared into those pained eyes, she reevaluated her opinion of him. With context, his actions took on a new light, if only because he could have done so much worse than changing her to save her life and refusing to do anything else. His own father had done so much worse, and he was the result. He was the son of a human and an abusive, manipulative creature, and now following in his own father's pawprints despite not wanting to.
"So?" he asked. "Have anything to say about all of that? I've heard it all by now. Condolences, pity, disinterest, even amusement."
"Why would I have an opinion on your past?" she asked. "It happened. I'm glad to know, it explains some things I've been noticing, but it isn't my place to have an opinion about it. You don't want pity," or at least it seemed like he did not, "and I'm not about to laugh or mock you for it."
"Surely you must think something," he pressed.
"I think that your father ought to be pounded into a thick paste of blood and guts, and then fed to sharks," she said, "and I think your mother didn't treat you right even considering her circumstances. Is that enough of an opinion?"
"Is… What?" he shook his head. "No, I was not hoping to hear anything. It is just that everyone I have told this to directly has something to say afterward. You don't have to tell me what you think I want to hear."
"I was not, I do actually believe those things, I just didn't intend to say them until you insisted," she huffed.
He stared at her for a while. She stared right back, defiant and mildly annoyed.
"I feel like I will never know what goes on behind those eyes," he remarked, stretching as if they had sat there for days on end, instead of the mere moments Astrid was sure had passed.
"Sometimes I do not know either." She extended her tail, poking at the ground with it. "We are allies. Nothing more. I do not hate you so much," or at all, but she wasn't quite ready to admit that, "but that is as far as it goes. I am never going to give Inferna what she wants."
"I know, and I totally agree." He pawed at his rock. "We can be allies. But I am not like you. Inferna can ask the truth of me, and I must give it. Keep that in mind."
Astrid nodded in understanding. "Oh, I know." She knew what he meant. She could not tell him anything she did not want Inferna knowing. "That is fine. I cannot keep anything from her anyway."
"I suppose not," he agreed. "You need only bring me three shells of water a day, you know."
"Liar," she growled. "I am going to drink from that shell myself and determine how much is needed, then bring you exactly that much if not more." She had little to do with her days as they were, so it was not like she would be short on time to make as many water runs as necessary.
"You do that," he agreed. "And in the meantime we do nothing, because there is nothing we can do." His voice dropped. "Nothing at all."
"Survive and wait for a chance to change the situation," Astrid corrected. "That is all anyone can do." Or, it was all they could do about Inferna.
There was one other thing she was going to do. She was going to treat the people stuck here with her under the tyrant as she would want to be treated. If the Night Fury's depressing story had any moral at all, it was that one.
She would not be the woman so wrapped up in her own suffering that she blamed others for it when they were mostly innocent. Not any longer. The Night Fury already had far too much experience being blamed for circumstances mostly beyond his control.
Author's note: You know, there's a lot going on in this chapter. And yet, I'm almost certain the questions I'm going to get will be disproportionately focused on one minor thing, so here, let me answer preemptively: I intentionally left the identity of Toothless' mother unknown. Whether she was Valka or not is up to reader interpretation, and I won't be giving evidence for or against. There is no canon answer to that question, and never will be.