~O~o~O~

Astrid had always disliked rainy days. The water got in her eyes, weighed her clothing down, dribbled distractingly across her face, made mud everywhere, and generally hindered everything she enjoyed doing. The worst of the dragon raids always came on stormy nights, and even her everyday training was made just a little bit worse.

As a dragon, though? None of that mattered.

She cut through the falling sheets of water like a blade through rotting wood, spraying it everywhere while totally unhindered herself. She had no clothing to weigh down, no hair to wet. Her eyes were hardy and had what seemed to be a clear inner eyelid that when closed removed the need to constantly blink the water away, just as they protected her from the whipping wind and other such irritants while flying. Best of all, she was in the air where no mud could dog her steps, and even in placid storms with no wind like this one the rain was no match for the strength that filled her wings.

Flying in the rain was more tiring, but she liked that. It had no downsides for her, and the warm storms that came on the tailwinds of Winter's departure were pleasant to begin with, water that might as well be hot compared to the previous weather, sluicing down over her without end. The wet, clean smell in the air, the patter of raindrops on the water…

She could grow to love storms, if they always came to warm the world after the miserable cold of Winter. If they were always so tolerable in the rugged body of a Night Fury.

So long as Thor chose not to strike her out of the sky. That was always a concern, though less so when she had yet to hear any thunder at all.

She whipped into a showy turn, savoring the feeling of little waves of collected raindrops sliding down the sensitive membrane of her outer wing as they were dragged off of her by the sharp change in direction. The lukewarm water cleaned even the most stubborn salt off of her, running over and between new scales in a miniature flood.

She turned to face the volcano, flying forward in a straight line to let the rain drum her back directly, then dropped into something far more risky, flapping and maneuvering so that she could pull her wings in, turn over, and then extend them again, gliding upside-down in the rain.

Above her – or was it below – the flat gray sky fell away, the clouds distant but reachable if she wished. Below – or was it above – the sea stacks towered, all the more obviously maze-like now that the fog covering them was the normal, lesser fog typical of rainy days. Rain splashed over her underside, and for a moment she was completely at ease.

If she were stupid, this would be the moment everything went wrong. Out in the open, alone, all but showing off and momentarily defenseless.

She was not stupid. Not when it came to matters of war, to ambush tactics. Anyone who sought to take advantage of her apparent lapse of awareness would die to a counter-ambush. Toothless was waiting, watching from a sea stack below. Out of sight, out of mind of anyone lured by her helplessness, but no less deadly for it.

Not that he knew she was using herself as bait. He would never have agreed to that. She was simply taking a relaxing flight, and he was simply watching because they never went anywhere alone. Not so long as his father lived and was expected to arrive at any time. If she happened to make herself more visible on occasion, flaunting her presence to anyone within eyeshot, then it was with the knowledge that she was protected. He could not complain.

She deftly flipped back to flying normally, feeling refreshed and minorly disappointed. Toothless' father needed to hurry up and come looking so they could skin him alive and be done with it. She still didn't know what she would do after they had dealt with the one who needed to die, her future was as unclear as ever, but one could not wait indefinitely for a battle without stressing out about it eventually. Stressed warriors were sloppy, ineffective warriors, meaning stress while preparing for battle was its own form of subtle sabotage.

Or so her own father had taught her. Wariness was good, but left too long without a release it turned into any number of less positive states of mind. Never let the former grow into the latter, he had said. Take time to decompress, just don't do it stupidly. It was good advice.

Fire flashed in the distance. Like a torch being lit, a red glow sparked and maintained itself out in the fog.

The time for relaxing was over.

"Fire," Toothless growled as he flew up behind her. She considered it a sign of how well they had prepared for an ambush that he could be right there within a few heartbeats of something happening.

They flew together, two silent wraiths in the fog, cautiously approaching the moving light. It couldn't be their quarry, the flying bundle of flames had to be a dragon that was capable of lighting himself or herself on fire. But the flaming beacon in the fog was not alone.

There were two dragons, one on fire and one not. The flaming one was a Monstrous Nightmare, but the other was no kind Astrid had ever seen or heard of. Large, with a truly impressive wingspan, two wings and no front legs like a Nightmare but flatter and with larger horns. Both dragons were shades of brown, but the big one sported swirls and highlights that made his scales look a little like the bark on a tree.

"A Blaze and a Spiral," Toothless hissed. "They're not from around here, they can't be."

"Spiral?" Astrid hissed back.

"Their fire marks their takeoff spots, spirals of ash," he quietly explained. They had moved into a position high above and behind the two oblivious dragons, able to hear but not be overheard so long as they refrained from roaring. "Also, I think their fire comes out in hollow cones of flame, but I'm not sure. Inferna never had any of them, so I only know from stories."

"Let's see if they say anything," Astrid huffed. These two weren't the ones she was hunting, but that didn't mean they were entirely unrelated. Few dragons would knowingly come here without a reason.

For a while the two dragons flew in silence, one flickering merrily while the other stoically bore the rain on his big wings. They approached the volcano, crossing over the bulk of the sea stack maze without comment.

Then the Nightmare's fire went out. "Time to turn back," he immediately announced. "Look at this dreary place, nobody lives here. Nobody would want to."

"We have not even looked yet, do you want to be bitten again?" the larger one asked. "You are always seeking your own comfort. Why did you even come?"

"I owe him for fighting off the Melts when they tried to take my island," the Nightmare growled. "Fine. One fly-through, maybe sniff around if there are any obvious signs, then we go back. I might not die of cold if we are quick."

"Do not whine," the Spiral snarled. "And do not make any noise. He said she would be skittish, and Bolts can outfly us both."

"That answers that," Toothless growled to her.

"Yes." Now, whether these two should die now or later… She had no sympathy for a pair of hapless fools helping return a victim to slavery. On the other paw, they might lead her right back to Toothless' father if left alive. But if she followed them, that would ruin the home-territory advantage she and Toothless had intended to capitalize on.

The Nightmare and Spiral – she still could not match his appearance to anything she remembered from the Book of Dragons – flew up to the volcano and circled it once, flapping their massive wings once for every two or three flaps she and Toothless took. Then they went into the volcano.

The interior was dark and the sulfurous fumes at the bottom were dim, only barely glowing. The ledges were all empty, of course. Neither Astrid nor Toothless followed them in – trailing two dragons in the fog was one thing, staying out of sight in a clear, confined space quite another. They didn't know what was going on in there.

But they didn't need to know. Not really. "I have a plan," Astrid announced. "When they come out, I will let myself be seen. Then I'll disappear."

"That… You want to lure him here?" Toothless was quick on the uptake. "He might not come if his minions say there were no signs of her, and he won't come if we follow them to him and attack there."

"Exactly." She angled herself down toward the shore. "Go fly somewhere out of sight but within firing distance in case this goes wrong."

She landed on the shore, right by the tideline, and waited with one eye on the top of the volcano. It didn't take long.

The Nightmare and Spiral flew up into view, out of the volcano, and flew a lackluster circle around the peak, probably arguing about something. Then the Spiral noticed the black shape by the water. He tried to hide it, but the way he stiffened and flew back and forth to keep her in view said he had noticed.

She took to the air and darted into the sea stacks before they could properly react to her presence. A few sharp turns put her out of line of sight for anyone following, and then she made straight for a sea stack she knew well, one with a shallow ledge that she could land on and press herself up against.

She waited, ready to flee if she was seen, but the first dragon to come into view was Toothless. He knew about her hiding place – she had surprised him from it often enough for him to know – and he didn't look worried about being followed.

She hopped out into the open and rejoined him. "So?"

"They didn't even try to chase you," he reported. "They went to tell him."

"So he can come get me himself." Oh, he didn't know he was coming for her specifically yet, he thought his former slave was here, but it worked out the same. "We are going to kill him the moment he shows his ugly face, right?"

"No," Toothless huffed. "If he tries to do anything to you or me, yes, but if he just talks… I do not know. Do not do anything until I do?"

"Sit around and wait for you to work up the courage to kill him?" she snorted. "No. Not happening. You know what he has done." Maybe she would be the one hesitating to do what was right if the one to be killed was her father… But her father would never have done such horrible things so it would never have happened.

Still, it was his father. His fight, his revenge. She wasn't here to steal that from him. "I will not play the docile, unassuming female for you," she growled, "but so long as he sticks to words I will do the same. Not a moment longer."

"That is good," Toothless sighed.

Astrid didn't have the heart to inform him that she fully intended to provoke his father into displaying his vile nature for the world – and more importantly, Toothless – to see until it inevitably came to blows. He could find that out when the time came.

There would be no slithering away from the consequences of his past actions with false words and lies. She would not allow it.

~O~o~O~

Usually, Astrid and Toothless slept in alternating shifts, one keeping watch over the interior of the volcano while the other rested. On this night, neither of them slept. They waited together in an alcove across the volcano from their usual spot, one on a ledge with no tunnel leading away from it. There was only one way to reach them, and it involved flying in full view from the moment one entered the volcano, equally as exposing whether the intruder came from one of the tunnels or down through the top of the mountain.

Astrid still expected them to try and sneak in; surprise ambushes were the most cowardly form of combat, and would fit in well with everything she had heard and seen of the soon-to-be-dead Night Fury come chasing a past victim. She expected him to have red eyes and tattered wings and sharp fangs, to be large and imposing but ultimately a cowardly sneak.

Instead, the Night Fury that flew down from volcano's peak was an unassuming creature. She felt Toothless stiffen beside her, but she had no such adverse reaction. The Fury wore charcoal-gray scales like an ill-fitted cloak, his skin moving oddly over his body as he flapped down toward one of the topmost ledges. He was not fat or thin, bulky or decrepit… He was average in appearance, save for the odd looseness that reminded her of how some people looked after a particularly tight Winter with not enough to eat. Too much skin to cover his reduced form, left flapping around the neck and stomach in particular. He didn't even have any interesting scars.

This was the one who had done so many horrible things in the past and who had almost certainly come here to pick up where he left off? She was unimpressed. Maybe he loomed larger in Toothless' view, with bad memories to back up his current lackluster presence. Maybe he was some sort of smooth-talking orator or possessed a shrewd mind for tactics. Or maybe he was just an average, unimpressive person to begin with and anyone who said otherwise was deluded.

Astrid was confident she could out-fly, out-fight, and out-intimidate that sad sack of scales and stupidity if need be. She wouldn't let her guard down, but even if he was hiding some skill he wasn't physically fit enough to take advantage of it. She could take him.

But this wasn't about her. She looked over at Toothless. "Well?" There would probably be death before dawn broke, but it didn't have to start violent. Toothless had wanted to speak to his miserable excuse for a father first. She would honor that request.

"He looks so old," Toothless muttered as he leaped off the ledge. She wasn't sure she agreed; she couldn't see any visible signs of age, unless the loose skin was something that happened to Night Furies as they aged, in which case she hoped Toothless' ideal female didn't suffer from such things.

She followed Toothless' multi-colored tailfin up through the air, across the volcano and onto the ledge the other dragons had staked out before they could properly react. The Blaze and the Spiral both jumped when Toothless came into view, and the Night Fury…

His wings dropped to his sides. Dull gray-green irises were eclipsed by widening black pupils as his eyes widened. He didn't even acknowledge Astrid when she landed beside Toothless, though that suited her just fine.

"After all these seasons…" he said, his voice low and wavering with emotion. "You are exactly as I hoped you would be."

"I thought we were here looking for his mate," the Spiral muttered to the Nightmare.

"You are… thinner," Toothless said slowly. "Older. Smaller." Vulnerable went unsaid, and 'not a threat' had better not have ever crossed his mind. Astrid hoped Toothless wasn't going to let the physical weakness of the Night Fury in front of them cloud his judgment. A thin, scrawny Viking could plant a knife in someone's back just as effectively as a larger Viking. More so, if his enemies underestimated him because of his size.

"My son!" the Night Fury cried out, stepping forward. Toothless stepped back at the same time, keeping the distance between him. Astrid bared her teeth and growled. "Son?" he asked. He still wasn't even looking at her! She could lunge forward and carve a bloody chasm in the side of his neck if she pleased, but he didn't even seem to notice the danger.

His bodyguards, though? "Back off, your mate will get to you soon," the Nightmare growled at her.

"He is not my mate," Astrid said plainly.

Finally the Night Fury seemed to notice her. "Of course not, my mate is… smaller." He looked Astrid up and down. His eyes lingered in a way she was familiar with, though on unfamiliar parts of her – she didn't want to know what sort of interest he might have in her wings – and not for long. "Yours?" he asked Toothless. "Or… the egg?"

"Neither," Toothless growled.

"Well… Good." Such a statement might have precluded any manner of things, several of which Astrid was ready to respond to with lethal force, but the Night Fury simply shook his head and turned back to Toothless. "No egg of mine would be so disappointing."

"I don't get it," the Nightmare grumbled to the Spiral. "Why would he be disappointed? She looks perfectly fine to me. Intimidating, even."

"Why are you asking me?" the Spiral hissed back.

"Quiet back there, I didn't bring you to do the Flicker commentary on my life," the Night Fury snarled. Both of his increasingly foolish-sounding lackeys immediately shut up.

Astrid was growing to detest the surreal stupidity of this entire encounter. Her claws itched from the inaction. But Toothless wanted to talk, and she was going to let that explode in his face before she started killing. It definitely would, once he and his miserable excuse for a father got past the basic pleasantries.

"My mother is not here," Toothless said, apparently thinking along the same lines as Astid and deciding to bite the arrow. "She has been dead for seasons."

"Oh, I didn't really come for her," the Night Fury huffed. His frills and ears all drooped slightly, belying the belligerent casualness he spoke with. "That's… disappointing. But not unexpected. I came for you, and for the egg… My other son, now."

"The egg didn't make it, either," Toothless informed him. "And I want nothing to do with you."

"Disappointing," was the other Night Fury's response. Astrid ground her teeth together. She was really starting to hate that word, and her own inaction. He was so mild, infuriatingly so. She knew what he had done, she had heard with her own ears his dismissal of her, but so long as he was talking like this it would seem unreasonable to just up and kill him.

"Not my problem," Toothless shot back. He at least was not at ease, speaking with a low undertone of threat backed up by subtly arched wings and a general air of readiness. "If she were here, I would fight you to keep you away. But she's not."

"I would not fight you, my dear offspring," the Night Fury said sincerely. "Though I would convince you to hear my side of things… But as you say, it is irrelevant. I assume my… friends… saw," he nodded to Astrid. "Your female?"

"I am not his," Astrid barked.

The Night Fury ignored her. He continued to look to Toothless.

Astrid snapped. She lunged forward exactly as she had contemplated doing a few moments ago. The Nightmare and Spiral both reacted, but they were behind the Night Fury and he was a few moments too slow to stop her himself, rearing back but completely off-balance and incapable of redirecting the pawful of claws she dragged across the side of his head. She yanked down when her claws caught, and when they pulled out of his face down by his jaw two large scales came with them.

Then the Spiral clocked her over the head with his ridiculously large wing, and the Nightmare bodily knocked her off the Night Fury and out into the volcano. The Night Fury's pained screech followed her as she fell, though she easily caught herself in the air and came back up to the ledge, ready to finish what she had started. They were fools for not hitting her harder while they had the chance… And she was a fool for getting into a position where they could both hit her, but she wouldn't make that mistake again.

"Control your female!" she heard the Night Fury hiss at Toothless. Somehow, he was still using words instead of claws and flame despite the bloody chunk she had torn from his face. "This is ridiculous!"

"It is!" Toothless snarled back. "It is ridiculous! She's not mine, she's not under anyone's control but her own. How do you actually survive from season to season with this stupid attitude?" He sounded genuinely bewildered, and upset besides.

"I'll show you how," the Night Fury growled. Astrid flew over him, and he looked up, his sagging skin casting shadows across his eyes in the dim light. "Bring her down!"

The Nightmare and the Spiral leaped off the ledge, dogs heading their master's orders. Down on the ledge, Toothless fired on his father and then leaped off the ledge himself.

He was coming to help her, but she needed no help. A Monstrous Nightmare and a larger, unknown dragon… It would have been lethally dangerous were she human, or a new dragon still struggling to learn how her body worked.

She was neither and they lived only so long as they could keep her away from their long, vulnerable-looking necks and big, clawable wings. Given they were flying right for her they wouldn't live long.

"If you land we won't hurt you!" the Spiral called out to her.

"I won't promise the same for you!" she roared. Her wings folded in, and she let her fire bubble up into her throat as she stooped toward them. Down at an angle, aiming for the Nightmare's wings–

A bolt of blue fire detonated right in front of her and she twirled to the side to avoid the fiery mass. Her own shot didn't miss, but she did end up hitting the Nightmare's back instead of his vulnerable wing. This also served to remind her which of the three dragons she most wanted to maim, but then she was streaking past the Nightmare and the Spiral was blowing out a huge torrent of flame and she was too busy artfully dodging the plumes of bright fire to care.

She saw, in small flashes as she ducked and dodged, that Toothless was fighting his father, back on the ledge. The two clawed at each other, though every time she caught a glimpse of them Toothless was on the attack.

That was the fight she wanted to be having, and as she dove down the hollow center of one of the Spiral's latest torrents of flame she struck to end this farce of a fight. One small bolt down the center and into his mouth, the bolt bursting violently in the enclosed space that was his throat. She deftly flicked herself up and over his body as he choked on the smoke, flames, and potentially bloodied or outright ruined throat she had given him, then twisted to the side to avoid the grasping talons of the Nightmare. He had tried to grab her from above, so she had a few heartbeats to curve around behind him while he was distracted by the falling body of his friend.

She put a built-up blast into the middle of his wing like she had intended from the start, and he fell with an agonized shriek. His Spiral friend was apparently not dead of an exploded throat and was even now gliding for the nearest ledge, hacking up blood, but the Nightmare wasn't so fortunate. He disappeared into the dark fog below.

They were minor distractions, and now they were dead or badly wounded. Their own fault for obeying the Night Fury's orders, and doubly so for attacking her.

She would have liked to blindside Toothless' father, but the agonized screeching had caught his attention even as he continued to fend off Toothless' probing assaults. Deprived of her violent entrance, she instead chose to be dramatic and flew down to them, landing beside Toothless with perfect grace.

"The Spiral?" Toothless asked, not taking his eyes off his father, who he was steadily backing towards the wall.

"Dealt with." She bared her teeth at Toothless' father. "Are you going to acknowledge me now?"

She saw fear in his dull green eyes, fear and pain and anger. But that might have been Toothless' doing, not hers. "Well?" she hissed.

"I have nothing to say to… you." His ears twitched, and he flinched, the raw spot she had torn scales off of still seeping blood. There were a few less obvious wounds marring his shoulders and chest too, Toothless' work no doubt.

"Good." He had spoken directly to her. That was all she had wanted for herself. "Your move," she told Toothless. "Kill him, ground him and leave him, berate him and then kill him or ground him… Whatever you like." So long as it wasn't more awkward 'pretend it's fine' small talk, but she was pretty sure they were past that.

"You would not," Toothless' sire said worriedly.

"How would you know?" Toothless snorted. "I've not seen you in many seasons and all the things you tried to teach me were knocked out of my head long ago by more reasonable flames."

"I won't let you," the Night Fury exclaimed. His tail lashed the wall he had been backed up against. Astrid was blocking any escape to the right, Toothless to the left, going between them was suicide, and going up would see his wings turned to crispy shreds by two well-aimed bolts of blue fire. He had no way out, and he had to know it.

"You…" Toothless shook his head. "You're so miserable. How could I ever have admired you, even as a fledgling?"

"You are mine," the male tried. It didn't sound like he believed it.

"No, and we both know it." Toothless stared into the eyes of his father. "All that you did to me, all the things you tried to have me believe, the person you tried to make me into… I rejected it."

Astrid didn't like the way Toothless said that. Like it was over and done with. But she held her tongue. She knew how she would do this, but it wasn't her father, it wasn't her past.

"You can do as you wish," Toothless' father offered.

"If it was just me, just what you tried to make me, then that would be it. I'd watch you fly away and wonder how long until some violent female decided to rid the world of your stupidity after you revealed it to them." Toothless shook his head and inhaled, a deep, long breath. "But it wasn't just me."

Toothless and his father moved at the same time, the latter catching on to Toothless' intent a heartbeat before Astrid. The ragged older Fury tried to leap out of the way.

That proved to be a mistake.

Toothless caught him mid-leap, tackled him into the wall, and jabbed his paws against soft, exposed stomach skin just below the ribs. His claws pierced, and when he dragged his paws down they came down with him with a noise not unlike soft leather ripping.

Astrid had seen many things in her time on Berk and a few more as a dragon. She was no stranger to violence or gore, the inevitable byproduct of the Viking – or dragon for that matter – ways of life.

Still, she would never forget seeing a Night Fury go from trying to get away to trying to keep his insides inside, and failing.

"If it was just me, I might have let you go," Toothless said as he moved away from the thrashing, keening mess he had made of his father. "But it wasn't just me, and you did worse to her. So… die."

Astrid was genuinely impressed.

She was less impressed when he fled the ledge and flew out of the volcano, but she suspected she would have mixed feelings about killing her own father no matter how many horrible things he had done, so she didn't think too badly of him.

She winced as a particularly tortured screech made its way from the dying Night Fury's throat to her ears. As much as she hated him, by reputation and by how he had treated her… She still didn't like hurting someone who wasn't actively in her way or attacking her. Not even by inaction.

She walked over to the Night Fury, ignoring his attempts to hold his guts in with his paws and tail, and built up a powerful blast in the back of her throat. Then she let it out.

That was the end of that.

~O~o~O~

Neither of them returned to the volcano that night, though realistically they probably could have slept in their usual spot without ever seeing or smelling the corpse. Astrid washed her paws – and at some point she had begun to think of them as paws – in the surf to be rid of the blood, then remembered exactly how close she had been when she explosively put the Night Fury out of his misery and rolled around in the water for a while just to be sure she got everything.

While she was cleaning herself a lone dragon fled the volcano, his overly large wings a visible blot in the sky that caught her attention even from afar. The Spiral had survived, it seemed. He was flying away at a decent speed, so she let him go.

Toothless didn't return until well after she had finished washing herself and sprawled out on his rock on the shore. He smelled faintly of fish and bile, and he walked like he was exhausted.

"Don't want to go back in there?" she asked, flicking her tail back toward the volcano.

"No," Toothless said tiredly.

"Me neither."

"Good." He stopped just short of joining her on the rock. "I think… I owe you an apology."

"For what?" She stretched her wings and pulled them back to her body, something he had taught her was the equivalent of a shrug. "He was vile. I knew that. I didn't expect him to be polite."

"Not that." Toothless paced around the rock and hopped up to sit by her, within reach but not touching. "Well… yes, that. He was so… Small. Petty. Disappointing. I was disappointed! It doesn't make sense but I was. I wanted to hurt him, I wanted to fight the monster from my time as a fledgling, but he showed up and it turned out he was a pathetic idiot who I now think chose to use his Solar fire to get a mate because that was the only way he could possibly have the upper paw." He let out a low, confused groan. "I don't know. We waited all this time… for that."

"He still did the things you remember," Astrid offered. "And it's not like you or your mother were in a position to fight him."

"I know, and I killed him for it," Toothless growled. "But that's… Not really what I wanted to say to you." He shook his head. "It's not about him. I've been thinking. About a lot of things, but this in particular, especially now. I didn't do right by you."

She tilted her head curiously and waited for him to explain.

"After I changed you," he continued. "Mentor helped you and taught you, but he shouldn't have had to do that. I should have helped you. Maybe we wouldn't have gotten you flying soon enough to escape Inferna's notice, but there was a chance. It could have happened. And even if we couldn't do that… I avoided you. I didn't offer help, I didn't try to make your life easier, I just avoided you and did nothing."

She did think that her – rightful – rage and disdain would have hamstrung any of his efforts to make her life easier, but other than that he was right. He should have tried. "That wasn't great," she agreed.

"I am not going to be like him," Toothless huffed. "I wasn't like him. But I shouldn't have been like her, either. And I know I've done better since then, since you reached out, but I realized tonight that I never apologized. So… I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted." She didn't feel particularly wronged by his lack of an apology up until now. Really, it hadn't crossed her mind. "Just don't do it again."

They both snorted wryly at that.

"Also," Toothless added, "I want to thank you. You didn't stay here with me just to kill him. You would have done it immediately."

"I stayed to make sure he died, but also to make sure you got to end it how you wanted," she agreed. And she had killed him in the end, so there was also that.

"You've done more to help me than I ever did to help you," he huffed. "So thank you."

"I didn't need as much help," she objected. "Besides. You gave me… this." She flicked her wings out and slapped her tail on the rock. "I like being a Bolt." Everything else aside, the consequences and implications and complications ignored, she liked being fast. She loved flying. She enjoyed having accurate, destructive explosions at her beck and call. She appreciated being able to see in the dark and not having to eat very often and all of the other little life changes her new body provided.

She liked being a Night Fury, and every day it was becoming less of a new thing and more just how her life was. She suspected that at some point over the last few months if she had flamed someone with her Solar fire and tried to make them like her, they would have come out the other side as a Bolt instead of a human. This was what she was now.

"So do I," Toothless huffed.

They sat in silence for a while, watching the star-studded sky.

"I don't want to stay here now," Toothless said, breaking the silence. "I was thinking of going around… Not to join any of the new packs, but to find them all so I know where they are for the future."

"Sounds like a plan." There was no question as to whether she would be going with him. They were not mates, and she felt no different about him now than when she had told him as much after fixing his tail, but there didn't need to be attraction to keep them together. They were Bolts, they were friends, and neither of them had anything else to hold on to. Nowhere they really wanted to settle down, nothing they wanted to do with the rest of their lives…

That would change at some point, but for now their futures were alike, shrouded in the unknown.

Unknown… except for one thing. "But there's one more thing I want to do before we go," Astrid said, a low, satisfied purr rumbling in her chest. An idea that made her laugh and fulfilled a promise she had given up on a while back. It would be messy and annoying, but the end result would be worth it.

~O~o~O~

Some time later, long after the Nest was abandoned by its last two living occupants, a ragged, warlike fleet of ships approached the sea stack maze. They came prepared for the latest futile struggle in fog and flame, ready to breach the maze and sail to their likely dooms. They came ready to struggle and die and kill.

They found a staggeringly large and strangely unobscured forest of stone pillars, empty and lit by sunlight. The fog was mostly gone, and the dragons were nowhere to be seen.

Confused muttering underlined the eerie silence as the fleet painstakingly navigated through the sea stack forest, ready at all times to be ambushed with more ferocity than ever before. Stoick the Vast stood at the front of the lead vessel, his resolution unwavering, but even he wondered at the absence.

The Berkians waited for the other shoe to drop. But there was no other shoe. They found the volcanic inner island without ever seeing a dragon, and Vikings set foot on the shore of the Nest for the first time since before it had become a Nest in the first place.

They ventured out in war parties to explore, to find the dragons they knew to be there. They found nothing.

Nothing living.

The only landmark on the desolate, uninhabited island lay in the sharp rubble of pebbles and shells that made up the shore, a dessicated old corpse and a flat stone with angular, intentional runes carved into it by an unsteady hand with a rough blade.

'For Snotlout,' the runes read. 'From Astrid. In memory of Hiccup.'

Of all the Vikings who saw the monument, who argued and gossiped and spread the tale, only one knew something close to the truth. He pleaded ignorance when questioned, he guessed and theorized as to why the body of an unknown kind of dragon had been left for him in particular, but he never spoke the strange truth.

He knew Astrid had kept her promise, and he knew she was out there somewhere, enjoying a life he neither understood nor desired. He kept her secrets, most of all that she was no longer a human unwillingly trapped in the body of a dragon, though she might have started out that way.

~O~o~O~

Author's Note: And thus ends Unwilling Flame. I really need to stay away from relative-enemies for a bit; between this and the IHTR universe that source of interesting antagonists is all tapped out for a while. It was a struggle to keep this conflict thematically distinct from the other ones.

For the readers who may never have noticed this: check out the chapter titles of this story. Read them all together, each one as its own line. There's a little mini-summary and poem about this story there! I had a lot of fun coming up with it. (Here it is for anybody who might be reading in some format that precludes easily looking at all the chapter titles at once):

A Fury once stood

New and confused

Angry she would

Refuse to be used

A choice demanded

She would learn and tell

Body commanded

Her mind unquelled

But all was not right

Her enemy cruel

Dragons made to fight

Flames to be but tools

Allies found in some

Old wrongs addressed

Knowledge taken from

Secrets expressed

Ultimatum set

No plan to deny

To live or to bet

To solve on the fly

The enemy's pyre

Left all but one free

She gave of her fire

No longer to be

The Unwilling Flame

On another note: potential for sequel. Thing is, this story was originally as you read it here. Then I got an idea for a sequel midway through writing it, and decided I could combine them into one two-part story. Then I wrote them, up to two thirds of the way through the second part. But as I was preparing this for publishing (and thus rereading and polishing) I first decided to cut them apart again, and then later realized that I… didn't actually like where the sequel went. Sure, it was what I had planned, and the writing quality itself was okay, but it didn't feel that good and even retroactively undermined the first part's themes. (No, I'm not trying to make an on-the-nose allusion to HTTYD3, this actually happened, but I would like to think I learned from the mistakes made in canon.) I didn't notice it at the time of writing, and the sequel would have made an okay story on its own, but given the context the first part lends… It just wasn't what I in retrospect would have wanted to see as a reader.

So I've decided to drop all of that. The plotline itself isn't going to be revised and improved, it's just not good enough to put that enormous amount of effort into (a lesson I learned from Living Anonymously and Living Freely, which were good enough but taught me exactly how colossal an endeavor such a thing is). The 'original' sequel this story might have gotten is not going to exist. Some of the better ideas may migrate (Snotlout and Tuffnut: IOU one interesting positive character arc each. Stoick: IOU one interesting negative character arc) but they will not be preserved as they were originally presented here.

This does not block the possibility of a new sequel I come up with and write later. This is an interesting universe, more so with the larger implications of the changes Astrid has made to the setting, not all of which were particularly positive or thought through. However, as with Taking Up the Mantle, I'm lacking a good independent spark of inspiration I can fit into the framework this story provides. So for now, this will stand on its own with no promise of a continuation. (Thus why we didn't end right after Inferna's death; Astrid and Toothless both needed to continue on a bit to resolve their personal problems. I probably could have done it better structurally, though. Something to consider for next time.)

What's next? A lot of things. In HTTYD terms, though? I don't have any more fully written stories waiting in the wings; Living Freely and college teamed up to stall new long-form writing for a good portion of six months. And I have some small things to do in other fandoms, plus one big thing that really isn't going to wait (has anyone noticed that the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom is weirdly lacking in quality long-form stories of any kind? And totally lacking exploration of a whole bunch of fun, obvious AU fodder? Because I certainly have!). But I've got some things for this fandom lined up too; two HTTYD1 AUs with mystery and fairy-tale leanings, respectively, and a much shorter but still multi-chapter thing that's going to be fun. Expect to see those, as well as some smaller things, once I've written them out… So months from now, probably.