~O~o~O~
Light flickered, beams of sunlight poking through the fog as it swirled, curiously patchy and incomplete on this particular morning. The waves washed up against the many sea stacks with subdued splashes. The sea was calm and the air was cold, stirred by a constant wind from the North.
Astrid's ears perked up as she heard a low, almost inaudible whooshing off to her left. She carefully placed her feet on the most stable parts of the crumbling sea stack and leapt off with as little force as possible, holding her wings out and barely beating them enough to stay up above the water.
When hunting and being hunted in an environment that restricted sight, it was important to make as little noise as possible and to minimize the noises that were unavoidable. Both so that she could better hear the subtle sounds of the enemy, and so that they would fail to hear her in turn.
She let herself glide down so low she could have skimmed the water, then pumped her wings just enough to maintain her distance from the ocean's surface. So low down, the sea stacks were a hazard entirely capable of sending her splashing to her death if she so much as clipped one, but she navigated between them with ease, taking a looping, unpredictable path vaguely Eastward. She was not going anywhere, she was hunting, so the direction did not matter. Only that she avoided staying in the same place for too long. Her prey – the one hunting her in turn – was almost certainly doing the same.
She had obtained these instincts from him, after all, and he was helping her sharpen them with reason and tactics. It would do neither of them any good for him to go easy on her, and he had never given any indication that he would. He respected her enough to know that if he wasn't at the top of his game she would catch him with ease.
Two rocks clacked together in the distance, echoing faintly. She curved around, adjusting her route to take her by the source of the noise. Not close, only into the same area; one could drop a rock from above to create a false noise and lure an unwary hunter in. She would not go directly to the source. Whether it was a genuine mistake or a trick, she wouldn't find him there. He might find her, though. If she was not careful.
She flew a little higher as she got closer, so as to better move above the sea stacks if she needed to. Flying low made her harder to spot but restricted her movements, a tradeoff only worth it when she was seeking, not being sought.
Another rock clattered to the right of the first noise, and she entirely ignored it, instead flying around to the left, her eyes straining to make anything out between the patchy fog and intermittently blinding beams of sunlight. The sea stacks exposed to the light were bright blotches of color in an otherwise colorless fog. Easier to hide around, but also liable to draw a searcher's eye.
Wings beat against air and they were not her own. Close, behind–
"Two," Toothless called out from just above her. "That makes it two to one."
"You win," she conceded with as much grace as she could muster, considering her heart was trying to thump its way up her throat and out of her body. Stalking was enjoyable, but being surprised out of nowhere was not. Especially when it meant that she had lost.
"I thought we agreed on first to three?" Toothless asked, falling in to fly directly above her.
"Best of three, I said," she corrected. Perhaps he didn't remember, or perhaps he was offering her a way to possibly come back and win after all, but either way she wasn't interested in taking the chance. She had lost under the rules she set, and it had been a fair loss. "You won. I'll get you next time."
"You do not seem to mind my victory," he commented.
Astrid rose up above the top of the highest sea stacks and continued to power up through the fog, seeking the sun. Toothless followed, his wings perfectly mimicking hers with every move.
"Why would I mind?" She had tried her hardest, come close to winning, and then been bested. "It is not as though you cheated."
"I was never under the impression that you would take losing gracefully," he admitted. "Not even in play or practice."
"I don't enjoy it, if that's what you mean." But it was better when she knew she had lost for a reason, and when she knew what that reason was. Here it was simple; she had instinctive, incomplete tactics copied off of his complete, conscious skills. Of course, he would be capable of defeating her until she perfected and improved upon what he had given her. Resenting that would be stupid, just as stupid as him resenting her if she ever improved to the point where she was flat-out superior in some way.
She purred quietly as they emerged from the patchy fog, savoring the fleeting warmth soaking into her scales. She had found that though she was hardier than a human and took a lot more to be truly cold to the point of it being dangerous, little chills lingered and were much harder to be rid of. Perhaps it was the lack of extra layers that did it, or that her body simply preferred to be warmer, on average. Whatever the cause, the few sources of genuine warmth available were all to be savored.
"Are you nervous?" he asked, now flying off to the side so as to not shade her from the sun. His colored tailfin all but glowed in its light as he pulled ahead, the little blood veins running a web through it.
"About your father?" She snorted indelicately, trying her best to convey her utmost disdain in a single sound. "No. We are two and he is one. We are prepared and he is not. We know the environment and he does not. He will not even be trying to kill me." The advantages were all on her side. It would not be a fight, it would be a long-awaited execution. When the lecherous old monster finally deigned to show up, that was. The start of Spring, the life-season, was still a ways off. The other dragons had yet to return from the egg island, and that was supposed to happen before the weather got too rough to safely travel.
"I wish that comforted me as much as it does you," Toothless sighed. "I am probably thinking too much of it, but this particular game reminded me…"
"I will not be hunted," Astrid huffed. "I will not be preyed upon. Worry for yourself, not for me, and then do not worry for yourself." She did not even see it as a possibility; anything that miserable old dragon might want to do to her would require body contact, and that would allow her to bite, claw, or flame. She had fought dragons as a human, she had fought a monster as a dragon, and she was occasionally wrestling with Toothless specifically to grow accustomed to fighting other Night Furies up close and personal. All of which he knew.
Then again, worry did not have to be reasonable to eat at someone. She remembered worrying that her family's home would burn down. Every raid, whether or not there were dragons nearby, whether or not the fight was going well. It was part of why she had no problem with joining the fire crew before she was old enough to be a warrior.
Then again, her home had burned with dragon fire in the end. So maybe even that stupid worry had merit to it.
She let herself linger on the thought of her parents for a moment. They were gone, but they would be proud of her. She had avenged them. She had ended the war that took their lives and so many others. They were still gone, it hadn't brought them back, but she had never expected it to.
"I won't let him do anything to you… but it is good to know you are far from helpless," Toothless huffed. "I think I need to be reminded of that more than is strictly necessary."
She was at relative peace with the loss of her parents. She had avenged them. He could claim neither of those things for himself.
She was going to enjoy helping him put his lingering issues in the ground. By force. Until then…
"Race you to the volcano," she proposed.
"Interference or not?" he asked.
"Full interference." Biting at tails, thumping each other with wings, and any grounding or lethal attack would be feigned and if not blocked mean the attacker immediately wins. Her kind of game.
"You're on." He tumbled tail over head in the air, twisted and smacked her in the side with a wing, and somehow ended up flying the opposite direction in a heartbeat, albeit with much less speed. She recovered, did exactly the same thing minus the tail slap, and grinned toothily.
She had finally found a worthy rival.
~O~o~O~
"Now, I know sticking one's head between the necks of a Blast is vulgar, so you can– stop laughing!" Astrid protested. Her annoyed growl did nothing to stop Toothless from chuckling, so she thumped him with her paw.
"It's not that bad," he weakly assured her, pawing at the small bruise she had probably left. "But that is a great example of why you must learn from them, not me. I didn't know that, I simply do not interact with them much. I can only really teach you about our own kind and the absolute basics of the others, and I thought Mentor taught you the latter already."
"Our kind, then," she huffed. A chill breeze ghosted over her tail and she pulled it in close, sparing a moment to glare balefully at the dully glowing yellow depths of the volcano. It was not just her imagination, even the ambient heat rising from below did not completely negate the cold outside. And Toothless said he thought it might be cooling down inside the volcano now, too…
She wanted to be done with the cold. She also wanted to be done with uncertainty when it came to how she interacted with other dragons. It seemed she would be getting neither today.
"Okay, teach me," she sighed. "What do I need to know about Night Fury body language? Sorry, Bolt body language."
"Well, first that you seem to have using your ears and frills all wrong," he suggested. "When they lay flat that means you're irritated, angry, tired, or just not feeling well. Up means curious, interested, anything like that."
"By flat you mean flat against my head?" She flicked her ears up, then let them fall at ease again.
"Yes, exactly." His ear and stub twitched, drawing her attention to the latter. "The same goes for your tail, in some ways. Just… do not hold it all the way up. Ever. Keep it level with the ground."
She didn't need to ask why that was. "Understood. And–"
A dragon roared in the distance. It was a light, happy roar, and several more echoed it moments later.
Astrid noticed that Toothless had his teeth out and his ears flat. "What?"
"It's nothing." He shook his head and sheathed his teeth. "I though that it was someone else for a moment. But it sounds like the pack has returned."
"It's fine." Astrid looked around at the empty volcano. "They must be close…" She would have expected the entire pack to be funneling down from the top of the volcano by now, if they were close enough to roar. "How much longer until they get here?"
"Not long, though Mentor usually has them stop on the shore to be counted so he knows nobody was left behind." Toothless had adopted Astrid's names for Mentor and Stormfly, mostly for ease of communication. He was the only dragon Astrid knew to consider names a good idea. She wasn't sure whether to attribute that to Hiccup, who Toothless couldn't understand, or his mother, who didn't seem likely to have passed anything on to her unwanted offspring.
The rest of the nest would be here soon. "So, any ideas as to how you want to reveal what I did?" His new tailfin was obvious, especially the membranes which glowed cobalt and brownish-red whenever light hit them from behind.
"It is not such important news that it needs to be announced," Toothless chuffed. "They will notice sooner or later, but the initial return to the volcano is always–"
A Nadder dropped in from above, squawking loudly, and rushed to the nearest tunnel, for some reason running in as fast as he could move, totally ignoring the both of them.
"–Hectic," Toothless finished with a wry purr. "I think we should get out of the way."
Astrid followed him to the nearest ledge that lacked a tunnel. As they went the same Nadder pranced back out of the tunnel, a trio of smaller Nadders and another adult in tow.
Toothless eyed the smaller Nadders approvingly. "This is always nice to watch. It is good to see new life here, especially now that there's no danger of it being eaten alive if it annoys the wrong person."
Astrid nodded in agreement. "Why are they walking in?" They could fly, they had flown all the way here. Surely it would be trivial to fly down into the volcano with their newest children.
"It is something left over from Inferna," Toothless grumbled. "She threatened anyone who let their hatchlings drop waste on her with a horrible death."
"I see." They didn't have to do it any more, but most of them had probably done it their entire lives and there was no obvious downside to continuing the tradition now, so nobody had thought to change it.
That did have the side effect of making it an almost orderly procession, as dragons could not squeeze past each other in the narrow tunnels leading into the volcano. Astrid wasn't really watching the antics of most of the dragons, who were slowly spreading out to take their old places all over the volcano; she didn't know most of them well enough care. She was only looking for a few specific pairs.
"Where is Mentor?" she asked as the progression continued without him.
"He'll be last, though his mate will probably be in here soon if they have hatchlings." Toothless barked in laughter. "And there is Stormfly, with her little ones. She may be the best Flare Dam to ever live."
Astrid followed his gaze, and saw Stormfly, her green-colored mate, and two smaller Nadders who were small enough to ride in their parents' mouths, which was exactly where they were. "I see nothing unusual."
"I meant in the long run, she is doing nothing special now," Toothless clarified. "If she is kind and considerate, her children will copy her. They may not get along with other Flares all that much, but the rest of whatever nest they reside in will love them."
"And they are coming this way," Astrid noted. "Save your tail for when we need to escape. Seeing you fly away might shock her long enough for us to get away."
Toothless chuckled dryly.
"I was being serious." Though it did sound funny, now that she thought about it.
Stormfly and her mate landed right in front of Astrid, and promptly bent over to let two tiny Nadders hop out of their open beaks. The two Nadders, both apparently female, were blue and teal, respectively. Both hopped over to Astrid and Toothless, squawked at them, and then fled to hide behind Stormfly's legs.
"They are quite beautiful," Toothless praised, nodding to Stormfly's mate. "You must be proud."
"I am!" He looked over at his two daughters. "Did you get a good look before they fled? I can get them out in the open again if not."
"No, we got a very good look." Astrid purred politely. "Did you have a good trip?"
"Oh, yes," Stormfly hummed, "but we are cold and tired. We will catch up later?"
"Very tired, I see," Astrid remarked, surprised. If Stormfly wanted to talk later, she must be truly exhausted now. "Go get some rest."
Once the two Nadders and their offspring had left, Toothless grunted. "That was pleasant. Hopefully they will run her ragged for a while."
"If you are speaking of the blue Flare, we all prefer her tired," two voices announced in unison. Astrid turned to see the female Zippleback who had once been a Terror with a single Zippleback male on her back, a tiny purple hatchling.
"Where did you come from?" Astrid was not used to being snuck up on by anyone less stealthy than a Night Fury.
"You were distracted," the female said condescendingly. "I may not be a Flicker any more, but I can still sneak around."
"I have a better question," Toothless interrupted, walking forward to nose at the hatchling, who hissed at him. "Who's this?"
"Oh, him." She shrugged, her heads shaking. "I accepted an offer from the male Blast who studies Solar flame. He is aggravating, but he knows that, and as I do not really care for having a mate we were able to come to an arrangement. He helps me with eggs and pampers me while I carry them, and I raise the hatchling until it is a yearling. Then, he will see if they can be his new assistant. If not, no harm done, and we will try again next Winter. I don't have to be around him all that much, he gets an assistant, and I get to do something with my life."
"Unusual, but if it works for you both, so much the better," Toothless agreed.
"I am glad this one is his," the female Zippleback agreed, both heads still speaking in unison. "Annoying he may be, but he is highly intelligent, and I want the best for my children." One head twisted around to nudge the little Zippleback, while the other continued. "And we need a breeding pair for the new flock come this life-season. He and I cover the Blasts."
"New flock?" This was news to Astrid.
"Oh, you were not there. The short version is that we are splitting up into three groups, all with breeding pairs, and going our separate ways once it is safe to fly," she explained. "The Flickers and their friends are almost all going as one group, and we're getting the leader Blaze, too."
That was... interesting. Astrid wasn't sure how she felt about that idea. She was also pretty certain there was more to it. Something to ask Mentor about once she caught up with him at some point.
Some point soon, perhaps. "How long until they can fly?" she asked, pointing at the now sleeping hatchling Zippleback with her tail.
"Not long. The life-season is coming, and they will all be up in the air by then." She walked over to a shadowed corner, and turned around, one head still looking back at them. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to introduce my son to the tunnels and teach him that he is not to go in them, no matter what his Flicker friends do. He might get stuck."
She hurried away, one head looking forward while the other's long neck twisted around to watch her hatchling.
Astrid looked out over the volcano, eyeing the crowded ledges. She caught sight of Mentor, his mate leading around a little gray Nightmare. She was too far away to say whether Mentor's youngest child was male or female, but she could tell he was ecstatic either way.
The important questions could wait. They weren't leaving tomorrow, or anytime soon. There was an entire cold-season to get through first. "Let's go congratulate them on their new hatchling," she suggested.
~O~o~O~
Ice coated the sea stacks. The wind whipped around them and through the air, howling eerie dirges to the unhearing skies. Snow cut through the air in clumps so large flying was uncomfortable to the point of being painful, icing the sensitive membranes of her wings within moments of takeoff. Devastating Winter had come and being anywhere other than the interior of the volcano was torture.
But fish did not swim in solid stone or molten magma, so every so often Astrid had to brave the deathly cold long enough to fill her stomach. She didn't often see anyone else on her desperately rushed flights.
That didn't stop dragons from seeking her out, though. "Female Bolt," a familiar Nightmare called out to her one dreary evening as she forced herself to scoop fish from the freezing cold but not yet solid waves just beyond the sea stack maze.
"Alpha," she replied deferentially.
"I will bite the next flame to call me that while I desperately attempt to get my own daughter to listen to me," he rumbled. "It sounds especially mocking coming from you."
"I don't mean to mock you," she assured him, snatching two fat fish from where they had floated to the surface. "If I did I would not call you that at all, I would think of something else." One did not make fun of an authority figure by calling them by the name that indicated their authority, she knew that much just from being forced to interact with the twins. Insulting nicknames had to be nicknames, not official titles.
"Perhaps I took it wrong," he admitted. He flamed the sea close to where she had sent down her concussive blasts and circled over it, waiting. "None of this feels real. Not yet."
"Hope it feels real by the life-season," she suggested. "Because if it does not you will have a hard time leading. How many packs will there be when everyone splits up?"
"At last count three," he answered. "Mine and two others. Mine will be the largest by number, though probably not by fighting power."
"You get all the Flickers, of course." She dove again for a few more fish, having hastily gulped down the last two at the first opportunity. She didn't even remember tasting them, she was in such a hurry. At least talking to Mentor made the unavoidable waits more tolerable.
"You say that as if it is obvious why, but I only just recently found out about their secret organization," Mentor growled. He dove a moment after her, swooping low to drag his talons through the water and spear an impressively large fish. "I was not to know because Inferna interacted with me so often and might ask me at any time. Now, though…"
"Now… they're still active, right?" She assumed that was why the Flickers and their allies among the larger dragons were all apparently going with one pack. "How many flames with your group are not on their side when it comes to the use of Solar fire?"
"Few," Mentor growled. "And I suspect my first real challenge as alpha will stem from that in one way or another. Nobody likes to be excluded."
"I'm sure the Flickers will have approached everyone going with you before you leave," she suggested. "If not, tell them to do it. Weed out the ones who would disagree with the Flickers before you go. It'll be easier to tell them to go with one of the other packs while everybody is still in the same place." Better he be selective about those founding his pack, if it was a choice between that and internal strife or even exiling members later.
"That is not a bad plan," Mentor admitted. The large fish dangled from his clutches flopped once in protest, then fell still. "It is too bad I will not have you advising me after this cold-season. Your perspective must allow for different ways of looking at us and how we behave."
"Will you not?" she asked.
"I can no more predict what you will do than I can predict the weather, but something tells me you are not yet ready to settle into any kind of normal life," Mentor admitted.
"If I was, it would probably be with your pack," she said, though she knew he was right. Her future was unclear, but it did not involve her leaving with his pack when the cold-season ended and beyond that she might never see them again. "For what it is worth, I appreciate what you've done for me since I met you."
"I can say the same," he rumbled. "More so. I did not accomplish the impossible on your behalf and what I did do was partially out of guilt over another."
"Didn't make it any less meaningful for me." She ate her catch, mentally gauged her remaining hunger and the numbness spreading through her paws, and decided she could afford to flee back to the relative warmth of the volcano. "If you want to say anything else, you know where to find me."
"I do, for now," he agreed. "Until the cold wanes. Then it is anyone's guess where the winds will take us."
~O~o~O~
The snow piled up on the shores of the nest. Most days a plume of snow to rain to steam existed down the center of the volcano, an unending cycle constantly fed new water to melt and then turn to vapor by the weather. Sleep took over most days, along with just enough exercise to stay fit and just enough fishing to not starve.
The dragons saddled with new hatchlings were the most active of the nest, always flying around with them or feeding them or teaching them to glide. Those dragons got little to no sleep, and it was anyone's guess how much any given hatchling slept, but the rest of the nest slumbered through the majority of the season.
Astrid was no exception. She slept in the smallest alcove that could fit her and Toothless, because the bone-aching cold would have killed and buried any reluctance to embrace that particular dragon custom if she had not already rid herself of it. He did his best not to make it awkward, and for the most part succeeded admirably.
She ended up spending most of her time with him in one way or another, though certainly not all of it. They were among the few adults who didn't have hatchlings running them ragged. He helped out with that from time to time, mostly by pitching in with whatever set of hatchlings looked most likely to kill themselves out of pure ignorance. She had tried to do the same… once. Once was enough to convince her that she had neither the temperament nor the patience to do anything of the sort.
Instead, she passed the time not spent drowsing by flying in the volcano, keeping one eye out for imminent disasters, and waiting. Examining every unconscious move she made on even the simplest of flights and tweaking it, learning her own reactions inside and out. The concept of diminishing returns was not a foreign one to her, and all her effort had a negligible effect on how she flew, but she had nothing better to do.
Everyone was waiting with bated breath and an unshakeable chill for the cold to break. Astrid suspected that the cold-season was only so anticipated by this nest because of Inferna; it seemed like the most miserable possible time of year to her. But she could at least fully understand why Toothless had been so certain his Sire would not dare fly to the nest until it ended.
The days dragged and flew in the way that Devastating Winter always did, the individually slow days all wrapped into one season that was always just one more storm away from potentially being over. It was faster as a dragon, but only because there were few chores to do and she was able to sleep more than she ever could have managed as a human.
Fast or not, the end of the season did come. It came on the heels of a snowstorm that was more hail than snow, a break in the clouds directly above the nest.
At first Astrid thought the awed roars and shrieks were normal for the end of the season.
"Finally, some light we don't have to fly above the clouds to get," she grumbled to Toothless as she stood and stretched. "Think this means it won't be tail-freezingly cold soon?"
"The sun…" he murmured, staring at the wide shaft of light that plunged through the volcano. Some of the other dragons were flying up to it, circling around the clearly defined beam of light.
"The warmth," she agreed. Next cold season, she was finding somewhere less drafty and with an indoor supply of food. A deep cave with its own pool or river, maybe. She remembered hearing tales of the terrifying dragons that lived in such places, but she was a terrifying dragon herself and they might not be so terrifying to her.
"No, it's not just that," Toothless said, coming out onto the ledge to stare more directly at the light. "The sun never shines here. Not at the volcano. But the fog is lifting and the volcano's heat is dying and now the light can reach us."
"Inferna is gone." It was as simple as that, though Astrid hadn't anticipated the very world around the tyrant improving once she was destroyed.
"And with her goes any reason to stay here," Toothless observed. "If the volcano goes cold this place will be nearly impossible to survive during the cold season. If the fog lifts it will no longer be defended so well against Flightless. There is nothing here to encourage flames to nest, nothing at all."
"Good." There was no monstrosity here, no reason for Vikings to attack. They still would, so it would be better if there were no dragons to slaughter when they arrived.
~O~o~O~
The day the other dragons left came soon after, once the slowly warming weather was sure to be an ongoing trend and not just a cruel trick before a final resurgence of the cold season's icy rule.
They grouped up in the air above the volcano first, brought there by the summons of their newly chosen alphas. Two were Monstrous Nightmares, Mentor and a pale green Nightmare Astrid didn't know. One was a very stressed-looking Gronckle, the same female who had taken vengeance on the Outcasts after being freed from the arena. Astrid had no idea how that had happened, but then again she had mostly ignored the ongoing negotiations and debate surrounding the new packs.
Dragons flew together in smaller groups, many with young fledglings flying beside them or old hatchlings hitching rides on their backs. The volcano gradually emptied, and in the light the swarming mass of dragons looked larger than any Astrid had ever seen before. Only two dragons were left behind, and both by choice.
She and Toothless perched on the rim of the volcano, looking up at the departing chaos. They watched, silent, as the dragons gradually arranged themselves into three unequal groups. All of the Flickers and their staunchest supporters went with Mentor, forming the physically smallest group. The majority of the Gronckles followed the Gronckle alpha, along with a good portion of most of the other kinds of dragon. Stormfly, her mate, and her fledglings were with them, one of the few Nadder pairs who joined the mostly Gronckle contingent. The other Nightmare alpha led the remainder, a well-balanced group of dragons save for having no Flickers and only four Gronckles.
The alphas flew out from their new packs and met in the air one last time. Words were exchanged, though Astrid was too far away to hear. They would be reaffirming the agreements they had come to over the course of the cold season, over territory and how they intended to solve disputes, all of which would have gone right over Astrid's head even if she could hear them. It had when Mentor asked her advice about it.
She trusted Mentor and perhaps the Gronckle alpha to have figured out a workable set of agreements. The other Nightmare alpha was more questionable; she knew next to nothing about him, but he seemed perpetually displeased with something.
It wouldn't matter in the long run. These new dragon tribes would fight or coexist depending on years of interactions; a bad attitude now meant nothing. None of the dragons above the volcano on this day had the stomach for more fighting, let alone for killing their own.
The alphas returned to their respective packs, roared a few orders, and then all of the dragons were moving. Mentor's people went to the South, seeking warmer climates. The Gronckles went Northeast, because apparently one of them had heard tales of a haven for their kind somewhere in that direction. Or so Toothless told her. The surly Nightmare's people went West, which from what Astrid remembered would lead them toward the more populated parts of the archipelago, where humans were more plentiful.
She stayed and watched until the groups were obscured by lingering clouds.
"This is it," Toothless rumbled. "It's just us."
"Us and the one who will come looking." She dug her claws into the crumbling stone beneath her, imagining that they were cutting through flesh instead of gouging rock. "Let's see how long it takes him to get here." And how long it would take him to die once he arrived. The hunt was on.