Author's Note: Some small things were adjusted in the last chapter after it came out, as per advice from several sources. Nothing plot-significant was changed, mostly little details to correct tonal issues and close a few small plot holes. Anyway, on with what we're all here for!
Heather crouched low in the saddle as Einfari took up a place to the right of Toothless and Maour, high above the sea. Eldurberg and Fishlegs were below them, the Myrkur siblings and their riders were covering the other angles…
All of the riders were hunkering down, arranging their weapons on their backs, shifting armor, strapping themselves to the saddle with rarely-used tethers, and generally preparing to weather a violent storm. They had all volunteered for this task, and they knew the risks. They would be serving as Toothless's living shield should the need arise, positioned to take arrows and possibly die in order to keep him in the fight.
Such a risk was necessary, though. Everyone else was out of fire, but something was special about Toothless. A blue glow flickered between his scales, only visible up close, and he claimed he had enough fire to do whatever was needed. He was not glowing nearly as strongly as Togi had, or as the other Night Fury in the old story was said to have, but that didn't seem to affect his access to extra firepower, and they had devised their strategy around that.
Being the only one with fire made him valuable, and the centerpoint of their strategy. Heather hoped he really did have enough fire to do the job. A lot was riding on him, and he didn't look all-powerful, glowing faintly but otherwise unremarkable.
'You know I could set you down somewhere safe first.' Einfari offered. 'There's still time.'
"Same to you. You could have gone with the other group." She wasn't going to take that offer. This whole war was partly her fault, and she wasn't about to sit out the most risky part of ending it.
'Let's try this out,' Toothless said hesitantly. 'My left!'
Heather leaned to the left as Einfari did, mostly for her own balance, and the dragons all converged on that side of him. The movement itself wasn't as important as the underlying principle they were testing. Could Toothless command or influence them, like the Night Fury during Togi's captivity, or like Togi might have with Nóttreiði? Such an ability shouldn't be necessary, but it was something they had to determine before flying into danger so that Toothless knew what powers he had at his disposal lest he misuse them out of ignorance.
'Nothing,' Eldurberg reported. His voice was hoarse, though it was a mental voice, and he looked strained, as if he was struggling to hold himself together. Given he and his family had just burned the macabre helmet made out of Eldurvatn's head, he had a right to be shaken, but she hoped he would hold it together. Falling apart in the middle of a fight would get someone killed.
'Okay… This time, try to disobey,' Einfari proposed.
"We were born to disobey!" Ruffnut yelled. There was a dark edge to her voice, and she didn't sound quite as cheerful as she had before finding out the Myrkurs had lost one of their own. She was dealing with her loss in a different way than Eldurvatn, and one Heather considered, if not better, than at least safer. Anger was better than horrified grief, at least in the moment.
'Above me!' Toothless ordered.
Einfari dropped below him, and was met by the other Furies. If Heather had wanted, she could have untethered herself and leapt across to one of the Myrkurs. Not that she would; that wasn't the point of all of this.
'I guess I cannot order you around?' Toothless said, sounding confused and relieved. Heather sympathized; she didn't like seemingly arbitrary power that didn't follow consistent rules, or if it did, followed rules they didn't fully understand. That Toothless couldn't control others might be due to a variety of factors, and they didn't know which. Not knowing could come back to bite them later. 'I feel like I am missing something, like I am not doing what I am supposed to,' he admitted, craning his neck to look back at his admittedly dull, intermittent blue glow.
A roar resounded from nearby; the other group was ready.
'We don't need that anyway, all we need is your fire,' Boom offered. 'Let's go trash some ships!'
'Follow closely, stay between him and the target until you hear him preparing to fire, close ranks immediately, don't go where the others aren't distracting!' Einfari called out desperately.
"The Myrkurs do follow orders when it's important," Heather murmured, pressing her face to the leather of the saddle as Einfari drifted back to her original position, and the group picked up speed.
'I know,' Einfari hummed. 'See you on the other side of this insanity.'
"See you there." Heather accessed all of Einfari's senses except touch, that only because she wanted to ensure she noticed if she fell out of the saddle, and surveyed the rapidly nearing battlefield through her friend's eyes.
Their allies were still fighting bloody individual battles. Those would be mopped up last of all; they had bigger fish to fry. It was the reinforcements they were targeting now, the Berserkers who had yet to engage for whatever reason. The ones they couldn't normally assault because there were no distractions.
Eight Night Furies assaulted one such ship, swarming around it while staying just out of range, shrieking and howling wildly. Arrows flew up in frantic rains as the Berserkers on that one particular ship panicked, faced with what to them must seem like Ragnorok come early, and for them alone.
This first ship was on the outskirts of the battle, and Toothless dove early, approaching low and from the side facing away from the battle. Einfari and the others followed, forming a moving blockade between him and the ship he was approaching. Einfari flew above him, Elderburg a little in front, and the Myrkurs to his side. Their formation wasn't perfect, they moved relative to one another with every gust of wind or errant flap, but that worked to their advantage.
They neared the ship, Toothless began the telltale shriek, and Einfari swung to the side to allow the Myrkurs up.
They hadn't practiced, they weren't as coordinated as they could be; Toothless' shot barely missed clipping Blast on its way through their hastily disassembled defense. But they were Night Furies, fast and agile in the air, and that was enough. His shot struck just above the waterline of the ship and detonated with far more force than it should have, and water began gushing in-
'Back in formation!' Einfari barked, reminding them that they weren't even close to done. The Myrkurs flew down, Eldurberg forward, and they had formed the blockade again.
That had been easy. They couldn't count on them all being so simple, with not a single arrow fired their way in the confusion. There were more than a dozen Berserker ships left to target, and most were not in such easily approached positions. Most would notice the tactic within a couple of strikes. That was when they'd start taking arrows to protect Toothless, to protect their strongest weapon.
Heather wondered, in the few quiet moments required for the others to flock to the next ship and begin anew their all-out distraction campaign, why they hadn't tried something like this before. Obviously the idea of protecting one dragon at all costs didn't normally apply, but the general concept of swarming a ship with so many just out of range Furies that the enemy couldn't not be distracted, while a small strike team flew in to deliver the real blow, seemed sound.
Maybe they hadn't tried this before because it required more than half of their entire pack, all of the fighters, to put themselves very close to immense danger, all to destroy one ship. It was a risky move they couldn't have been confident of pulling off back when few of them even knew how to fight a Berserker warship, and even now, a single mistake could drop a Fury into easy firing range.
The fatigue the Berserkers had to be feeling by now probably also played a part in making this viable; they hadn't kept them all up at night for nothing, and dulled reflexes paired with even duller wits would buy them time before the Berserkers figured out the overall tactic at play.
Added to all of that was probably one less than complimentary factor; Skarpur, Einfari, and the rest of those who planned and strategized might not have thought of something like this until now. The pack's history, as far as Heather knew it, began with captivity and a narrow escape, and then consisted solely of fleeing and hiding before Maour came along. Night Furies they might be, but they weren't hardened warriors. Only Cloey and possibly Toothless could claim that distinction, and they had fought in what sounded like a wildly different sort of fight, one with different morals and priorities governing their actions.
Einfari turned toward another ship, this one far too close to a second warship for comfort, and Heather saw the flock assaulting it. They were closing in rapidly, still close to the water and moving almost as fast as Heather thought Einfari could go for any extended period of time.
Crossbow bolts whistled through the air as they shifted to allow Toothless a clean shot, but nobody called out in pain, and he fired without trouble. The noises of the pack harassing the ship were louder this time, as if they were trying to make up for the dissipating surprise by being too obnoxious to ignore.
'Forward!' Toothless called out, taking the lead of the group long enough to angle directly toward the thick of the ships. The pack was moving to one of the three ships in their path, but only because Toothless was going that way, there wouldn't be enough time to set up the distraction-
But, Heather reasoned, her heart pounding as Einfari pulled her shoulders a bit closer together and flew faster still, doing the Night Fury equivalent of an all-out sprint, there was no time to question orders in the moment, not without breaking the formation and throwing it all into shambles. They just had to trust Toothless, the one making the choices for them all.
The tightly-clustered group flew right between two Berserker ships, one engaged in combat and the other jockeying to get close and join the fight. Arrows shot past, Toothless fired, Boom cried out in pain-
'Fine, back leg,' Boom exclaimed loudly, punctuating her pain with a roar. 'This is great!'
'First blood!' Blast said without his usual enthusiasm. He might have said more, but they were hurtling around again, banking as tightly as they could at that speed to take another pass at the same ship.
Heather wondered whether there was anything unusual going on with how Einfari and the others so easily followed Toothless' lead in such maneuvers. Was it instinct, his power only now coming into play, or just good coordination? She couldn't tell.
Then something pinged off her back, and she was wrenched out of her thoughts and back into the flight on which she was mostly a human shield. Einfari was fine, she hadn't been struck in the wings, but that had been close, if it had struck from the right angle-
Einfari jerked in the air, convulsing in pain for a moment. 'Side,' she panted. 'Not deep. I think.'
'We're going in hard,' Toothless roared in response. 'Forward, twist to the left, then around. I'm hitting all five!'
'We're with you!' Berg panted, though there was a strong undertone of disbelief in his mental voice. Heather could scarcely believe it herself, they were outpacing the rest of the pack, taking on all the danger and striking half of the remaining targets in what would be a matter of seconds-
And totally outpacing the Berserker defenses. She saw the logic, she just didn't like it. Einfari flipped over to open a space for Toothless to fire, then flipped back, and then they were jackknifing to the side to avoid a small hail of arrows that would have struck, and the group was in disarray.
That lasted for a heartbeat, maybe two with how fast Heather's own heart was pounding, and then the group was back together, funneled between two hulls. She could hear the ragged breathing of the dragons even over the sounds of the wind and roaring, and Blast was trailing blood in the air behind him, Berg was sporting two arrows in the base of his tail-
Another shot, this one again almost hitting Berg, and then two more, and they were pulling up, out of danger, though they had only struck half the Berserker ships held in reserve.
Heather was thankful she was nothing but a passenger and human shield; she couldn't even keep up with all that had happened, and if she was like Maour, a vital part of the flight, she would have gotten them killed with her slow reactions. She didn't know how Maour did it.
'Why did we stop?' Berg asked. 'We have to hit them all!'
"Three of the pack are hurt, not counting any of us,' Einfari said tersely. 'Didn't you see? We hit enough, maybe, and we're taking way too many injuries.'
'We will go ask those who would know,' Toothless decided. 'Maybe our allies think they can win now. We still have to deal with the ones going for the Isle.' He and Maour pulled away, dropping in a dive so steep it seemed that they were falling as much as flying.
Einfari, in the meantime, pulled around to see the rest of the pack. There were two dragons missing from the group, though Heather couldn't tell who.
'They landed,' Einfari said, quelling her worries before they had time to properly form. 'No deaths, just hurt. There is a reason we did not do this to start with.'
"Figured there had to be," Heather gasped. Her breathing still wasn't under control, and her heart had not slowed.
They glided with the others for a few long moments as the pack approached. Heather quickly noticed that Cloey, as Maour called her, was among the missing, and was doubly glad that she was just injured. Toothless and Maour didn't deserve to lose her. Nobody deserved to lose anyone, but she felt especially strongly about them in particular, though she couldn't have said why.
'We did enough!' Toothless roared as he flew up toward the pack again. 'Maour says our allies think they can win this from here, if we stop the other group from attacking from behind.'
'They won't do that,' Einfari growled, looking out at the Berserker fleet, which was closing in on the Isle, and would make landfall very soon if not stopped. 'I hope we can stop them, though.'
"So do I," Heather whispered. She didn't want to see another home burned by reckless, pointless hate, and this was their last chance to stop it. Hopefully the other part of the plan would manage that.
Astrid stood at the center of a storm of emotions, each more potent than the last, and tried to make a decision despite it all.
The Night Furies were turning the battle, closing the gap between Dagur's forces and their cowardly allies, and she controlled the single largest portion of the fleet. They were not in battle, they had not been attacked since the rock-dropping campaign, and were sailing uncontested toward the lush green island. Toward the target.
But away from the target at the same time. The dragons were fighting to protect their miserable nests, she knew that, there was no other reason for them to still be here when they could fly and hide and make her life harder. The problem was, they weren't losing out there, and they weren't coming anywhere near her so she could kill them.
She sailed untouched though she had expected to be at the center of the battle once the idiots behind the Furies realized the plan. Dagur was supposed to be the quickly-abandoned distraction, not the real fight, though she had of course assured him otherwise in making the plan.
"Another ship down," Gobber reported soberly, lowering his spyglass prosthetic. "I don' know wha's goin' on with 'em, but the fight's gonna be over before we get to the island at this rate."
"Shut up." She gritted her teeth and focused on not picking up her ax and driving it into the bearer of bad news; that was acceptable with lesser messengers, but not this one. Not Gobber. She needed Gobber.
She needed control. There was a reason her ax was on the deck by her boots, not in her hand, not swinging for someone's neck. She needed to choose a course of action, one that would serve the hunt, and she needed to do it without falling victim to the failings Dagur had described for her, the ones that necessitated somebody like Gobber in the first place.
She wished the choices for the hunt weren't so hard. It felt like she was being forced to choose between two similar options without knowing which was better, and that bothered her immensely.
She could order her ships, a dozen in total after losing a few to boulder-inflicted damage, to turn around and return to the fray to buy her more time, but that would leave her more vulnerable if the dragons targeted her.
"It's like a swarm o' crows after a battle," Gobber mused, staring at the distant flock of dark dragons. "But wit' more self control. None o' them are takin' any serious hits."
"If they come here we'll destroy them." It wasn't a question, and she was confident that it wasn't overconfidence. Only in the chaos of battle would such a swarm be viable, when ships were isolated and beset from all sides. Her group sailed in tight formation, all weapons on the sky, and no enemy warships would reach them to force them to split their attention.
So long as they remained on their current course, that was. If they turned around she would be sailing them right into the madhouse that the dragons were dominating, and abandoning that advantage the moment the enemy warships were close enough to pose a threat.
"Looks like they're pullin' away for a breather," Gobber reported. "Yer 'usband might lose this one if we don' pitch in somehow."
"He knows what he's doing," she said coldly. Dagur was not on her mind right now, not really. If he lived, so be it, and if he died, all the better for her future plans.
But turning around would send her small fleet right into the fight. There were so many furies up there, waiting to be killed. As much as it killed her to turn her back on such an opportunity, she knew that those dragons were protecting something, their young, and she was on a course to reach the island and hunt down those young. Slaughter them, burn the forest, and then lay in wait for the battle-weary dragons to come back. Or, if the dragons came for them the moment they set foot on the shore, an open battle in which her people would have much less of an advantage.
She was torn, her desire to kill and ruin pulling her both ways, useless as a deciding factor. Her preference as to which she wanted to do kept changing, swinging with every mood, and it was only the fleet's steady forward motion, impossible to change without orders and clarification and a dozen other little things she would have to be fully committed to give, that kept her on a path toward one of those two options. Were is up to her, she would be going nowhere, paralyzed by indecision.
"What works better for us, Gobber?" she asked, giving in to the need to seek advice, though a white-hot rage flew through her at the mere thought of him defying her. It was gone as quickly as it had come, before she could do more than twitch her fingers in the general direction of her ax, but Gobber had come perilously close to being attacked in that moment. "Go back, or stick with the plan?"
"We'll be in the thick of it either way, I reckon," Gobber offered.
"But which is better?" she stressed, fighting the urge to do something, anything permanent. Her knuckles were turning white, she was gripping the ship's railing so hard.
"I'd say stick with the plan," Gobber decided, not even noticing her held-back rage, he was so focused on watching the battle. "Yep, looks like they're takin' a break. Must be nice."
"Landfall imminent!" a Berserker yelled from the prow of one of the other ships.
"Give the orders," Astrid decided, leaning on Gobber's decision and not allowing herself to second-guess it. "We're going in hard, following my lead. Everyone will have a torch and oil."
"Aye," Gobber agreed. "Not us, though. We gotta be quick on our feet."
"Not you or me," she agreed. They'd make landfall, forge a path through the forest to the mountain, where any nests would be, and burn the forest behind them. That was the plan, and they were sticking to it… Unless something better came along.
The crunch of wood on sand made audible Astrid's resolve; there would be no quick retreats. That wasn't just her way, it was the Berserker way when raiding, and it served well here. Her small fleet of warships ran aground on the pristine shore, and gangplanks thumped down immediately afterward.
"They're circlin' up," Gobber said warningly. "Not headin' over 'ere yet, but it won' be long if it'll happen at all."
Astrid ignored him. She'd listen if he announced an incoming strike, but for the moment there was a plan and it had to be carried out. She watched with bloodthirsty anticipation as Berserkers set foot on the dragons' precious island, weapons in their hands and unlit torches strapped to their backs, along with a leather skin of oil.
She briefly thought about whether it was wise to be bringing oil to raid a nest of fire-breathing dragons, but dismissed it as unimportant. At worst, the oil would ensure they didn't have to care for any wounded. It wasn't explosive, just highly flammable, and if a Berserker was getting hit with a blast of fire from a Night Fury, they were as good as dead anyway, oil or not.
Besides, Gobber had approved it, and it would be good for setting the forest on fire. She longed to see it burn, to see Hiccup's face as he lost everything-
"They're comin' this way," Gobber reported more urgently. He yanked his spyglass prosthetic off and hastily joined the flow of Berserkers trooping off their ship, twisting on his knife prosthetic as he did. "Incoming!"
Astrid followed the last of her men off the ship, abandoning it to the dragons. They wouldn't need it; this was it, the hunt at last, and she was planning for success. Dagur would win and come pick them up, if need be. Besides, they'd be keeping the Furies too busy for them to burn empty ships. Too busy, and soon too dead.
She found herself laughing madly, though the situation didn't call for that at all. None of the Berserkers around even noticed, or if they did, they were inured to such things.
Crossbows pointed to the sky, and the hardened warriors all around her braced for impact. She crouched behind one, keeping in mind that there was no point in looking fearless if a stray shot hit her head-on and killed her immediately, before she could even begin to hunt.
No fire came. There were no shrieks of impending doom, no fancy maneuvers. She looked to the sky and saw nothing, and thought for a moment that the Furies had fled to the mountain, to hold them off there.
"What're they doing?" the Berserker she was using as a shield asked in an awed whisper.
Upon looking out from behind her cover, she saw a group of Night Furies standing on the shore some distance away, within sight but not within range of either crossbow bolts or arrows. One paced in front of the others, reflecting light oddly, giving off the illusion that it was faintly glowing blue from within.
"Waitin'," another Berserker supplied, as the dragons failed to charge forward, or retreat, or do anything at all. Astrid could see Hiccup there, standing within the disorganized ranks of dark dragons, and she could see others, too. Two lanky forms, the twins. One bulky body, much more like a real Viking than any of the others.
The connection was easy to make; she had already been shocked to find the missing Thorstons within the ranks of the enemy, and they had disappeared with Fishlegs. All of which made the final human figure Heather.
He had brought people into his deceitful trickery, he had spread his cowardly ways. The rage running through her was at a peak, unwavering, and she held it back with a very tenuous grip on herself. She had been holding on for so long, it felt like ages since her weapons had tasted dragon blood, and now they were there, taunting her.
"We charge, or we stick to the plan," she murmured. Again, a choice where the right answer wasn't clear, a straight line of attack into what could be an ambush, or a plan that brought them into the forest and put them in a tough spot. She didn't know which to pick.
"Charge," Gobber advised, shaking his hook. "Charge!"
The Berserkers around her looked to her, uncertain, but those who couldn't see her assumed he was speaking for her and broke into a run, holding only loosely to their formations, shouldering or even dropping crossbows in favor of swords and spears-
"Charge!" she echoed, giving herself over to her trustworthy aid's judgement. Those around her belatedly joined the charge, providing her with cover even as they ran across the hot sand.
They were slower than she would have liked, hindered by the shifting sands and their own exhaustion, but nonetheless, it was a glorious charge. She-
The sound of an explosion preceded a plume of sand spraying up into the air, ahead of the charging Berserkers. Upwards of a dozen more shots followed, creating a haze of quickly dropping sand and far less quickly dispersing dust, the particles fine enough to hang in the air and create a haze.
Moments later, the screaming started. Astrid was still running when it began, stuck behind all these ungainly sacks of meat, much to her rage. She couldn't see what was happening, but she could guess for all the good it did her. A haze of sand and dust to hinder vision, followed by an all-out assault by dragons who could move faster than one would assume. The battle had joined, and she wasn't even in it yet!
She and her small group of bodyguards ran into the drifting haze of dust, and her eyes almost immediately began to water. She blinked rapidly and stumbled on a small dune, falling behind even more. The anger filling her was becoming harder and harder to control with every little obstacle she faced, every unavoidable thing holding her back from the fight, and she kicked the dune on her way over despite knowing such an act was a waste of precious energy.
A Night Fury, the edges blurred by the dissipating cloud, leaped across her field of view, dragging a Berserker with it. Said Berserker was almost certainly already dead, but that didn't stop the Fury from using his body to tangle up the spears of a trio who had managed to stay together-
Another blast impacted the sand between her and the scene, and she cried out in pain as sand filled her eyes, flung directly into her face. There was no fighting that, and she spent precious moments blinking, the little grains causing her to tear up.
She swung her new ax wildly while she was blinded, hit something solid, and viciously drove in the weapon, striking forward with all her might. Just as the body at the end of her ax twitched and lay still, one of her eyes became, if not clear and certainly not irritated, at least clear enough to see through her tears.
One of her own men lay at her feet. She growled in frustration and rubbed her hand against her face. The battle was still going, the dust cloud was only an irritation, her fatigue a distraction. She had dragons to kill, and she was going to kill them, even if Thor himself told her to stand down.
She stood straight and tried to get a sense of what was going on around her, through foggy vision and overwhelming frustration. The sand sloped up in all directions; she had stumbled forward into the depression created by the blast that had blinded her. All around her, death and blood reigned, dragons darting through the chaos. Explosions rang in her ears at regular intervals, peppering open spaces to throw up new plumes of sand and grit.
Berserker bodies littered the flatter spans of sand, bleeding out, ripped open, or motionless despite no visible reason, likely broken on the inside. A Night Fury-
She stumbled forward, bloodlust clouding her mind the moment she understood that the Night Fury lying among the fallen to her right was not yet dead, just wounded. A kill, any kill, was worth the effort, worth it all, worth the massacre this fight was rapidly turning into. The fight itself was drifting toward the tideline as her men desperately tried to get somewhere that wouldn't allow the enemy to use fire so readily, the dragons were all there, but this one was injured and she was here to execute it.
She got within three paces of the heaving body, its back to her, and she lifted her ax silently. Her hands trembled, her body quaked with anticipation-
No sign was given, no noise was made, but its ears perked up and it rolled over, exposing a mangled front paw and a mouth filled with a building blue glow.
Astrid dove for cover and didn't quite make it. The shot struck her in the back, blowing her forward and over a dune. She hit the ground and rolled to a hard stop, her blood rushing in her ears…
But she was not dead. The shot she had been struck with was small, weak, and she could hear the Night Fury coughing violently on the other side of the dune. Not a full shot, even, a desperate last-ditch effort. She knew some dragons could do that, it had happened before, but usually it was just a pathetic flicker, not a concussive impact akin to being punched by Stoick the Vast.
Something ached violently in her back, but she found she could roll to her knees and vomit. That accomplished, she sought out her ax and crawled to the crest of the sand dune.
Her hopes of another shot at the injured dragon were dashed by the second Fury standing beside it, glaring out at the battlefield suspiciously. Its flat, spade-shaped head let it see both her and the battle, though it didn't notice her peeking above the hill.
It likely assumed she was dead. She would love to disabuse it of that notion, but she needed a method of approach that didn't involve sprinting across open territory, which was a terrible plan so long as she lacked bodies to put between herself and it.
The injured Fury struggled to stand, and with help from the other, a shoulder pushing up their side, began to limp away from the fight, down the shore.
Astrid looked at the still wary, very much alert and only minimally distracted Night Fury helping the injured, and then at the messy bloodbath playing out by the water. She made her choice and began crawling between dunes, hiding from sight until she could get close to the main battle…
The battle that her side was losing. She could see it now, the way the dragons fought, the weariness and exhaustion and disorientation weighing her men down, the lack of reinforcements, the lack of clear sight to even line up a target from afar… If they hadn't rushed in, if they had taken a measured advance, things would have been different, but mayhem favored the dragons, who were faster and needed only a battlefield clear of arrows to lay waste to men.
They were losing, and somewhere in that mayhem was Hiccup, laughing at her defeat. She had come here to ruin all he had, to destroy the Night Furies, to stomp on eggs and burn the island to the ground, and she was failing. The hunt was failing.
Not acceptable! She shuffled around and turned her back on the dying Berserkers she had led this far, stopping only to scavenge a torch and oil pouch from the back of an upper torso of a Berserker. They might win the battle, but she would get what she had come for, and he would be left with as close to nothing as she could manage.
She reached the treeline without being noticed, and continued to crawl forward until she could crouch behind a particularly thick tree and stand, unseen by any-
A presence moved beside her, coming from elsewhere in the forest, not the shore, and she swung her ax.
"Oy!" Gobber hissed, leaping back with a spryness that defied his age. "It's me!"
"Don't get close," she warned, her entire body shaking with adrenaline. She knew her anger, her rage, and if he got within reach she would swing on the first whim that crossed her mind, trusted advisor or not. She still trusted him, but he would die if he came within reach.
"Sorry," Gobber grunted. "Where we goin'?"
"What were you doing here?" she asked suspiciously. He was not a coward, he should be in the thick of the fighting. That was where he would want to be.
"Lookin' for you," he said. "I knew ye'd see this as a lost cause. What are we gonna do now?" He tried to inch closer, and she swung her ax wildly.
"I'm going to kill anything I can reach," she said in way of warning. "We're going to ruin this island. Light this and follow me." She threw the torch and oil pouch at his feet and walked further into the forest without a second thought, her back complaining all the way.
The sounds of a flint striking were audible over the carnage going on behind her, and she laughed to herself, an unhinged giggle that Dagur would have been proud of. Lose the battle, throw away the help, but win the hunt. Burn the forest, find the nest, crush the eggs…
Gobber followed behind, keeping a safe distance. She hoped he had gotten the message; she had far too little control to waste any on keeping him alive if he put himself within reach. She was going to kill something the moment the opportunity presented itself.
Toothless coughed out another shot, sending a blast into the ground, and wished that he understood why he felt as if he was missing something vital. The feeling had not abated and just would not go away no matter how many times he fired, though his throat had gone raw from the many, many ignitions.
Whenever he tried to mentally take stock of how many shots he had left, feeling his chest and the ease with which he could go through the opening stages of firing, he failed to feel anything definite. It was not as if he had his full shot limit so much as he didn't have anything to build up. Fire came far too easily, and without the usual feeling of something exiting a pocket behind his chest, like it didn't come from there at all.
Fire wasn't the problem; he was no closer to running out of firepower, he still felt as if he could go until the need was fulfilled, but it felt like he wasn't doing something else entirely. Something important.
"Dust is dying down to the left," Maour observed, his voice a little hoarse. "Look for an opening there."
'I know,' Toothless said shortly. The dust was dying down there because most of the pack was fighting there, taking full advantage of the stupid, unhinged charge the Berserkers had made, and the half-blind mayhem that had followed. As it turned out, his people were much more effective on land with enemies who couldn't see properly.
He growled to himself, wondering why he had called them his people. It was unnerving, and they certainly weren't his if he couldn't even command them like he was supposed to be able to.
At the thought of commanding the feeling of missing something grew. He still didn't understand; the feeling had been there when he tried with all his might to force those around him to comply to his orders, and it hadn't helped.
An opening appeared as someone, he couldn't tell who in the haze, leaped away and engaged a cluster of coughing Berserkers, and he fired, pulling up a shot for what had to be the twentieth time since they had landed on the shore and planned to force the Berserkers to pursue them into the forest.
"Looks like it might finally be wrapping up," Maour said quietly as they watched the fight. They weren't participating because he was a valuable resource keeping the enemy half blind, and unlike a dragon, Maour lacked a transparent inner set of eyelids to endure the dust, or the ability to hold his breath and fight long enough to get anything done before having to dash out for fresh air. Not to mention Maour had taken a hit to his shoulder, though that didn't seem to be affecting him much. Toothless certainly wasn't staying out because of an injury; he felt fine, and the pain in his side from fighting Dagur was ignorable.
It still felt wrong to be standing on the outskirts when they were physically capable of leaping in, no matter the tactical reasons, but they were doing it anyway, and they were helping. He tried to keep that in mind.
'Yes,' Toothless sighed, replying to Maour. He didn't feel like things were winding down, but the fight was going solidly in their favor. Nobody had died, though there were some worrying injuries, and the enemy was still very much disorganized and fighting alone, though there were still substantial numbers of them littered across the scarred and bloody beach.
"Hey," Maour exclaimed.
Toothless looked over at him, and saw him pointing at the forest. A wisp of smoke came up from a laughably small fire, a single bush burning next to a tree. The flames licked the bark, but weren't catching yet.
'What is that for?' he asked, confused. There were hundreds of better places to start a real fire, many within eyesight of the burning bush. It was isolated, a little piece of shrubbery next to a lone tree, surrounded by a spit of sand that he vaguely remembered the Myrkurs arranging for some convoluted plot. It would take a long time to spread any further than that one lone tree – if it would spread at all – with the wind as nonexistent as it currently was, little more than a whisper of a breeze.
"Let's go find out, the cloud is doing fine," Maour said.
Toothless nodded in agreement and let Maour situate himself in the saddle. The bush, he saw as he came closer, had been burning for a while. Nobody had noticed, for obvious reasons.
There was also a little thing of metal lying beside the bush. He had seen such a thing before, curved metal attached to a wooden bowl, but he couldn't quite remember where-
"Gobber," Maour reasoned. "That's Gobber's hook prosthetic. He was here, he set the fire, and he wanted us to know."
'So that we understood that he meant it to be ineffective?' Toothless wondered. That didn't seem right.
"I don't know…" Maour said slowly. "But if he set it, he must not think it's safe to stop being a Berserker. Meaning someone was with him. Did you see Astrid in the fight?"
'No,' Toothless snarled, his heart jumping in alarm as Maour's meaning sunk in. 'I did not. She said she would burn our island and crush eggs.'
"It might not be her, but Gobber's with someone who plans on doing something in the forest," Maour reasoned. "Good thing we got everyone out."
'But they will burn the whole forest down!' Toothless objected. One of the reasons they had fought here was to prevent that sort of thing!
"Astrid or just vengeful Berserkers, we know where they'd go. The mountain."
'Let's go intercept them,' Toothless growled.
"After we tell at least one other person," Maour objected. "Going without anyone knowing is asking for trouble."
'Kappi!' Skarpur called out, her mental voice loud though she was not close by, standing just outside the hazy beginnings of the dust cloud. 'You're slacking off!'
'Sorry!' Toothless roared back. He leaped into the air and spotted an open space, firing another blast and remedying the situation before he even reached Skarpur. 'Maour and I got a sign from Gobber, we think there's a group of Berserkers heading for the caves. We're going to stop them.'
'Go, I will follow with help soon,' Skarpur agreed, looking back at the fight, which seemed to be dying down. 'Not immediately, but once this is over. Be careful.'
"We will be," Maour promised.
Toothless flew above the forest, ready for a fight. He headed directly for the mountain, reasoning that any humans forced to trek through the undergrowth would be too frustrated to circle around it unless they had to. With where the Berserker ships had landed, the mountain on this side of the island hosted the Myrkur side of the caverns, and he found himself heading almost directly toward their entrance.
"If they're looking for eggs, the cave is going to be the obvious first place to check," Maour mused as they flew. "It's even at ground level, so no climbing."
'I could have blasted them off the mountain if they tried to climb,' Toothless growled. He just wanted this to be over with.
He brought them in to land in the clearing in front of the Myrkur entrance, which proved clear of enemies.
"Now what?" Maour wondered aloud.
A faint noise in the forest answered him, like a branch being stepped on nearby. Toothless flinched, alerted by the noise, and bared his teeth. He wasn't going to fire around here, not when he wanted to stop the forest from burning down, not start it himself-
An oversized hammer hurtled out of the forest from the side, and he reared back to let it pass in front of him. A familiar battlecry rang out as Astrid charged, stumbling over shrubbery, followed by a mostly weaponless Gobber, who waved a prosthetic with a small blade.
"Careful, they might not be alone, try not to hurt Gobber," Maour whispered.
'Stay on my back,' Toothless retorted. He felt more comfortable without having to look out for Maour.
"Why?" Maour asked, but there was no time to answer. Toothless snarled at the duo and ran forward, closing the distance in a heartbeat. Astrid rolled to the side-
A wing out to the other side knocked Gobber on his large behind, leaving him with an excuse to sit out the next few moments of the fight. Toothless spun to face Astrid.
Astrid, who was slipping into the cave entrance, disappearing around the first corner. Going into an only barely lit cave.
"She's goin' after eggs and little ones," Gobber said in a low voice from where he sat. "Ye got any in there?"
"You know me, Gobber," Maour replied quietly. "No way. They're all nowhere near here."
"Ah, good," Gobber sighed. "Gonna smoke 'er out?"
'Yes,' Toothless growled. 'Maour, you can get off now.' Keeping Maour safe in a simple fight was one thing, but this would be a little bit tricky. He was going to flush Astrid out, but Maour, being smaller and thus more maneuverable in confined spaces, would do better on his feet.
"You know, we could just leave her in there until the pack comes to help," Maour offered. It didn't look like he wanted to do that, despite the offer. His scythe was held in steady hands, and his eyes were cold.
'We started this, we end it,' Toothless snarled, stalking up to the cave entrance. Astrid was theirs, the enemy they had made, and it felt right that they were going to take her down.
"She's not in 'er right mind," Gobber called out as they approached the cave. "Don' take anythin' for granted."
"I don't plan to let her start talking," Maour agreed. "What will you do?"
"Sit around 'ere unless somethin' else comes along," Gobber offered. "Keep watch in case she gets by you."
"There are four exits, but yeah, good plan," Maour agreed. "Let's go, Toothless. I'm right behind you."
'I wish she had gone into our section of the caves,' Toothless said silently as he crept into the dark, narrow corridor. He wouldn't like even the idea that she had entered their home, but at least he knew those caves. He'd never had reason to set foot in the Myrkurs' domain before today, and thus didn't know the exact layout. It was a branching path that led to the central chamber, with enough space for all the Myrkurs and possible future additions to their family, but that was all he knew.
The feeling of missing something was still strong, even now, where no ability he could remember from the story or Togi's account could possibly help. Here, he was no leader, had no subjects to command, and fire was not likely to be useful, but still, it felt like he could be doing more, like he was staring right at something and not seeing it.
Toothless ignored that feeling as best he could, and tried to concentrate on this hunt. One crazed human in unfamiliar territory, hindered by the lack of light aside from softly glowing moss denoting the general shape of the cave. Unlike in the Svartur section of the caves, the moss grew wildly, carpeting all but a few random patches of stone, and giving a fuzzy quality to even the sharpest of edges.
He crept forward, his claws and teeth ready, and reached the first opening in the cave system. It was a two-way split in the path, one leading to his left and the other to his right. Astrid was nowhere in sight.
'Stick behind me,' Toothless requested. He knew it would be more efficient to check both paths at once by splitting up, but that felt like a very bad idea for reasons he couldn't fully explain. Maour had to stay with him, just in case.
There was no discernable difference between left and right pathways, so Toothless took the right on a whim. He moved at a pace he would have found painfully slow in any other scenario, placing each paw with deliberate caution, his eyes always on the pathway ahead.
The tunnel curved out to the right and then back to the left. An archway became visible ahead, what looked like a deliberately blasted chamber. The moss had grown in on it, but not entirely, betraying its newness in patches of black that were being slowly enveloped by the moss.
Toothless halted just in front of the arch. A blast sent into the chamber beyond would work best if Astrid was in there, but if she wasn't it might give away their presence.
But she had to know they were pursuing, so that didn't matter. He inhaled and fired into the archway. The moment his shot landed was marked by a loud concussive noise and a flash of light. An instant later, he leaped into the chamber and spun around, ready with another shot.
Aside from a smouldering pile of cloth in one corner, there was nothing there. Maour followed him in and stamped out the flames, looking as tense as Toothless felt.
One chamber down… And an unknown amount of chambers to go. Toothless crept back out into the passageway and continued forward. There was another opening to his left almost immediately, this one too twisted to fire into with any accuracy, but he shot into it anyway. There was no reaction, though he couldn't see all the way in.
He was coming to expect the lack of Astrid. She wouldn't hide, she would be moving forward to kill, or at least to pursue the vulnerable dragons and eggs she thought were hidden somewhere within. She'd be further in, not here.
That in mind, he continued forward at a faster pace, and passed what he thought might be the other end of the left-facing passageway with only a cursory glance, expecting to see nothing. Sure enough, she wasn't there either.
Toothless kept moving. His tail was to the opening when he heard it.
A minute noise, a harsh, ragged exhalation, something that would never come from Maour but was right behind them, right where Maour would be.
Toothless turned to see Astrid, behind Maour, emerging from the opening with her ax already swinging. He tried to bark a warning, his eyes fixed on Maour, knowing he couldn't shoot when Maour was in the way-
The feeling of missing something rose up and attached itself to his unvocalized, pure need to warn Maour, to protect him, and he felt himself reaching out in a familiar way, though it would do nothing, and in the process not barking a warning as he intended, silently-
Toothless stumbled, his legs suddenly boneless, but he saw himself stand still, felt Astrid throw herself right over him in a lunge, saw but did not feel her ax strike his head at an odd angle as she stumbled over his own prone form-
Maour had no clue what had just happened, why he had stumbled and felt out of control for a split second, and he knew he had no time to think about it anyway. Toothless was unconscious, his blue glow gone, the connection snapped, and Astrid was reeling back, lifting her ax for another strike.
He wasn't fast enough to strike at her, but he managed to get his scythe up and hook her elbow with the inside of the blade. She whirled, scraped her bone armguards against the side of the narrow corridor, and yanked on his scythe so hard he almost lost it, his recently bandaged arrow wound and bruised knuckles aching as he held on.
There were no words in the heartbeat it took both of them to adjust to their new circumstances; only a mad glint in her eyes and a growl from him, though it was low and she didn't hear it. He tried to swing with his scythe, only to get the blade caught on the mossy wall.
Astrid took that as an opportunity to slash at his neck, but he ducked and yanked his scythe free in the same movement, turning it to stab at her like a spear with a peculiar tip. A strand of moss, ripped from the wall and hanging from the blade, flung off and hit her in the face as she blocked with the haft of her ax.
Maour, aware that he had to keep on the offensive to keep her mind off of Toothless, who was defenseless not a step behind her, didn't hesitate in scraping his blade down the ax handle and slashing across her fingers. She cried out and pulled back, before turning her pained cry into a scream of rage and smashing his scythe down to the floor.
He went with the motion rather than fighting it and swung the other end of his scythe around to counter her maddened charge, striking the blade of her ax and knocking it clean out of her hands.
Her ax struck the wall with a muted thump, and she struck him with a bloody clenched fist, aiming for his eyes and missing as her momentum carried her to the side, her hand skimming his head, glancing off his ear.
Maour yanked his scythe in and pulled his knee up at the same time, dragging her closer and jabbing her in the stomach with the same move. She grabbed at the haft of his scythe, and he let her have it, taking the opportunity to slam an armored elbow into her nose without even thinking about it, the motion an obvious follow-up in such a desperate, close-quarters fight. He felt her nose crunch under his arm, and she fell to the ground, grasping for her ax, still with one hand on his scythe to prevent him from swinging it at her.
He stepped on the blade of her ax with one foot, shifted his weight, and kicked her knee with the other. She grunted gutturally and yanked-
Maour fell flat on his back and lost his grip on his scythe. Astrid too fell back, holding both weapons. He was quicker to get to his feet, there was something wrong with her knee, something that slowed her as she rose, but she held both weapons.
She smiled maniacally at him and scrambled backward, over Toothless' prone form, intentionally dragging his scythe across Toothless' side and back, opening a shallow, intermittent gash along his length.
Maour knew it was dangerous to try and get at her while she had Toothless between them, but he didn't care. He ran forward, unarmed, and jumped onto Toothless' back, landing on his saddle.
Astrid swung at him, but she was slow and didn't have a handle on how his scythe was balanced, and the blade went high. He ducked it and rolled forward.
But she still had her ax, and he felt the bite of it digging into his shoulder, cleaving through the multiple layers of scales and digging into him, most but not all of its momentum already spent.
He yelled something incoherent and grabbed at her injured hand, wrenching it off her ax, which dangled loosely from his armor, stuck. She pulled his scythe back, but he was expecting that and lurched to the side, pinning it to the wall.
Astrid let go of his scythe and grabbed her ax, yanking it free with her uninjured hand. She took a few shaky, lopsided steps back, favoring her injured leg, and glared at him, her expression that of pure malicious glee, despite her injuries.
"You fight like a dirty coward," she spat in a high, singsong voice. Her hand oozed blood, shedding a slow, steady stream on the mossy floor. He felt a wetness spreading from his shoulder, undoubtedly on its way to adding his own blood to the mix. The pain was there too, strangely dull and ignorable.
"Fine by me," he retorted, bringing his scythe around to point at her once more, and charging forward. Now he was between her and Toothless, and he fully intended to drive her as far away as possible while they fought.
They clashed in a tightly-compressed swing of blades. Her strikes were less hindered than his, being made with a smaller weapon, but he had the advantage of distance and kept her just out of reach. They tangled their blades together once more, her using that to push closer, and him pushing her away-
Until she got close enough. He let go of his scythe with both hands, stepped back, braced himself, and struck out with both hands balled tightly into fists.
Astrid all but threw herself into his punch, her weapon still tangled and useless, and he slammed her broken nose so hard his arms rattled with the impact. She fell to the ground screaming.
He leaned forward to strike again-
A searing pain flashed through his left foot, and it was his turn to scream. She had driven the pointed top of her ax down through his boot, into his foot and from the feel of it, right out the bottom. He doubled over despite himself.
"Ha," she mumbled gutturally, crawling away. She stood and sneered, her face a broken, twisted mockery of what it once had been. "You lose… Suffer…"
With that, much to his surprise, she turned and ran, an awkward limping gait carrying her further into the cavern.
He groaned and braced himself to yank the ax out of his boot. She had left, but the fight wasn't over, and she was in worse shape than him, all things considered.
But he didn't have just himself to worry about. Toothless was still out cold behind him, bleeding heavily from the gouge she had carved in his back. She would be back, there was no way she would just leave like that. Not when there was an injured Night Fury right here.
Astrid's body was afire, every part of herself screaming with agony. Her face was a near-blinding mess of pain and blood, and her knee felt wrong in a way she had no words for, as if Maour had knocked it loose but not broken it, and it was now floating free under her skin. Her good hand clutched empty air, and her bad hand bled all over the place. She couldn't feel the tips of several of her fingers.
Still, she pressed forward, driven by the hunt. She had resolved to destroy and kill all Hiccup cared for before she ended him, that was the reason she fled, not because he had won. No, she still had eggs to smash and infants to slaughter and old dragons to put to the spear, an island to burn, a species to eradicate. Maour would live to see that, she had promised him as much.
So she pressed forward, though her weak body was failing her, seeking the vulnerable that had to be here. These caves housed dragons, they stank of it, and somewhere within-
She passed into a large open space, tall and only speckled in the moss that had lit her way, and stopped short, momentarily at a loss. She had a moment to think, Hiccup would not follow, he was too cowardly and she had hurt the Night Fury with him, but she could not waste time. Where were the Night Furies?
As if answering her question, a pair of grey eyes appeared in the dark, low to the ground and slitted pupils, the picture of fear. They didn't move, either to attack or to flee.
She chuckled, her voice a nasally ruin of its former self, blood dripping down the back of her throat and causing her to cough throughout her laugh. Her hands were empty, she was unarmed, but she would kill it anyway. Finally-
An agonizing pain erupted in her back and all the way through her chest, the tip of a knife pushing at her tunic. She sagged, her body held up by the knife and the fading strength in her good leg, nothing more.
"That's what ye get for trustin' me," Gobber whispered in her ear. "Stabbed in the back like ye did Stoick."