Chapter 8: Flight
Part 1: Upstroke
Hiccup was flying. His vision was obscured by thick grey fog, but his wings beat the air with confident, easy strokes. The wind parted over his snout and flowed smoothly over the contours of his body, almost caressing his scales.
Suddenly he burst through the wall of fog into clear air. The sun gleamed off the gently rolling sea far below him. He stilled his wings, soaring on thermals rising from a sharp, mountainous island that jutted from the waves. He felt a fierce surge of joy at the sheer freedom of flight, and let out an exultant roar that echoed back to him of the rocks far below.
Hiccup angled slightly, circling around the peak at the centre of the island. His gaze fell upon a plume of smoke rising from a narrow vent near the summit. It wasn't an ordinary peak, he realised, it was a fire-mountain; gateway to Surtr's realm.
The whispering of the wind across his ear-plates seemed to twist into words, resolving into the sibilant voice of the Night Fury. "I offer you the gift of the Night Furies' dominion" she whispered. Her voice swirled around his head, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. "Find me and I shall bequeath this to you."
Hiccup's eyes focused on a larger rent in the mountainside, a dull red glow shone from within. He readied himself to dive.
"Hiccup?"
He blinked his eyes open. He was still in the cove. He was still grounded. It had all been a dream, again.
With a groan he pulled himself out from his hollow beneath the roots of the pine. His prison was dimly lit by the dawn sky; it couldn't have been more than a few hours since he'd closed his eyes to rest. Peering around the cove, he spotted Astrid waiting expectantly a few paces away. Yawning toothlessly he padded over towards her.
'MORNING ASTRID' he scrawled. 'WHY ARE YOU HERE?'
"I flew with Stormfly!" she burst out.
Hiccup blinked several times, part of his mind was still circling around the mountain from his dream.
'WHO?'
"The Nadder from the ring, I... Uh..." She looked down at the ground, a hand unconsciously going to her fringe. "I named her."
Hiccup stared at her dumbly; he couldn't have heard that right.
'YOU FLEW WITH THE NADDER FROM THE RING?'
"Yes," she replied eagerly. "I persuaded Gobber to let me feed the training dragons, so I could see Stormfly again. I took the stitches out of her wing, and then she asked me to get on her back, and, Hiccup, it was amazing..."
Hiccup listened in silent wonderment as Astrid proceeded to wax lyrical about her ride with Stormfly. He'd never seen her like this before; even when she'd spoken of fighting dragons in years past, there had been a sense of almost businesslike detachment, not this raw, gushing enthusiasm.
Her words brought the images from his dream swimming back into his mind. The sensation of the air filling his wing-sails had filled him with a primal sense of power and freedom unlike anything he'd experienced before; while he was flying he felt like he could do anything.
Astrid trailed off mid-sentence. "... Hiccup? What are you doing?"
He jerked in surprise; he hadn't realised he'd unconsciously began to spread his wings.
'I WANT TO TRY FLYING AGAIN.' He wrote hurriedly.
"Are you sure?" Astrid asked, concern creeping into her tone.
In lieu of a reply, he spun around and bounded towards his boulder. With a quick scrabbling of claws, he was on top and turning to face the cove, his wings spread to their fullest extent.
He took in a deep breath and launched himself forwards. The air was forced from his chest a second later as once more he crashed heavily to earth. He lay there for barely a moment, before he rolled to his feet and made his way back to the boulder.
Again he launched himself into space, and again nature won the battle of wills.
"Hiccup," Astrid began, extending a worried hand towards him. "It's okay, you don't have to-"
"No," Hiccup cut her off with a growl, turning back towards the stone. "This time, this time for sure."
With a roar born of equal parts fury and determination, Hiccup threw himself into the air. With all his might, he drove his wings down, causing him to lurch upwards unevenly. Feeling himself beginning to skew in the air, he flapped hard again, trying to control his trajectory through sheer power. However, his balance was already too far off-centre and his motion caused him to flip out of control, sending him tumbling heavily to the ground.
Something in him snapped, and Hiccup saw red.
Not feeling the pain of his landing, the boy-turned-Night-Fury flipped upright and shot a scorching fireball at the taunting cliffs around him. As the sound of his shot reverberated around the cove, he drew in breath and followed it with a bellow of pure rage. Why did the Night Fury bother turning him into a dragon if he was just going to spend the rest of his days in this forsaken pit!?
"Hiccup?"
He spun towards the sound, teeth bared, a low growl rumbling in his throat, he would-
"Hiccup," Astrid asked, "are you okay?"
Hiccup blinked and sat down heavily on his haunches; he'd been a moment away from leaping and tearing into her with his claws out of sheer frustrated anger.
He realised that he'd been feeling it since his encounter with the Queen; a subtle itch at the back of his mind, a part of him that needed to fly. He stood up and began to pace back and forth across the cove. It wasn't just the claustrophobia of being stuck in the cove - although that was certainly part of it - the very idea of being confined to the ground, of being subjected to the terrain's arbitrary changes in elevation was suddenly oppressive to him.
"Hiccup," Astrid repeated, "You're scaring me."
He looked over at her; she had backed up several paces and her hand was poised at her waist, ready to draw her dagger if needed. With an effort of will, Hiccup forced himself to stop pacing and turn to face her.
'I'M SORRY' he wrote, then let out an apprehensive sigh. He knew how she would interpret his next words, and feared how she would react. For all you know, her reaction might be entirely justified, a voice within him whispered. With a heavy paw he began to scratch in the dirt.
'THERE'S SOMETHING IN ME THAT NEEDS TO FLY'
Astrid felt her heart suddenly leap into her throat. All her fears from when she'd first found him in the cove surged back into her mind - what if it was just a matter of time before the boy she'd come to know was completely subsumed by his draconic instincts and replaced with a feral Night Fury?
Dammit, she thought. Why did this have to happen now when she'd learnt so much about him, and through him, the dragons?
She stepped up to him and knelt, placing her hands on either side of his head. "Hiccup," she breathed. "Don't give up. it's still you in there, you can fight this." She desperately hoped her words were true, but they sounded pitifully hollow even to her ears.
Hiccup crooned appreciatively, she had to fight the urge to flinch away from him at the flash of teeth. She stood up as he raised his paw and began to scratch a message in the dirt.
'DON'T WORRY' he wrote. 'I'LL BE OKAY'. He spread his lips in a draconic approximation of a smile and she forced her lips to return the gesture, although she knew his efforts to reassure her were as empty as her own.
Astrid stared down at him, and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out; her burning desire to tell someone about her experience with Stormfly had dried up, replaced only with a numbing sense of dread.
The bright trill of a songbird cut through the sudden silence, drawing Astrid's eyes to the sky. The pale grey of dawn was brightening into the blue of daytime; she needed to get back to Berk before her absence was noticed.
"Hiccup," she began awkwardly, turning her gaze back to the Night Fury in front of her. "I'm sorry, but I've got to get back to the village before somebody misses me."
'GO' Hiccup wrote. 'I'LL BE FINE.'
She hesitated. "Hiccup, I..."
He grunted and jerked his head towards the gap in the cliffs.
"Okay," she took in a breath, "I'll come back as soon as I can, I promise."
Astrid took a final look at the boy-turned-Night-Fury then forced herself to keep looking forwards as she passed between the walls of stone and headed for Berk, trying to ignore the muffled scrapes of claws on stone that seemed to follow her.
The knife slipped in Astrid's hand, slicing outwards through the scales of the fish she was gutting and biting deep into the palm of her opposite hand.
"Ow! Son of a half-troll!"
Balder Hofferson looked up sharply at her cry of pain. "Astrid! Are you okay?"
"I'm fine dad," she said through gritted teeth, dropping the blade and cradling her injured hand. "The stupid knife slipped, that's all."
Her father's eyes widened in concern and he circled around the long worktable towards her. "Let me see."
"I'm fine dad." The cut barely even pained her; she'd taken far worse on fire duty during raids. "There's no need to-"
"Let me see," Balder repeated.
Astrid sighed inwardly and held out her hand. Sometimes she wished her father wasn't such a fine example of Viking persistence.
Balder gripped her left wrist and turned her palm upwards. She tried not to wince at the stark red line across her hand and the crimson dripping down her forearm and staining her wraps.
"What's the matter?" he asked softly. "It's been years since you last cut yourself with the fish knife."
It was true; almost as soon as she could be trusted to not take someone's eye out with the knife, she'd been put to work helping to process the fish brought back on the Sjóknapa.
"Nothing," she lied.
Balder's eyes narrowed fractionally. "We both know that's not true." He paused, then continued in a softer tone, "Your mother told me you've been ...distant for the last few days, what's wrong?"
Astrid sighed noisily. "I've just had a lot on my mind recently." Her brief encounter with Hiccup had been lurking in her thoughts all day, and she'd barely paid any attention to her hands as they made the repetitive moves of gutting the fish for storage.
A sharp rip caught her attention, and she looked up as her father ripped a length of cloth from the sleeve of his tunic and roughly bound her hand. "There," he said, tying off the makeshift bandage. "Now you'd better go see Gothi, you don't want that getting infected."
Astrid grumbled under her breath, but dutifully left the warehouse and began the long trek up the ramps towards the elder's house; she'd been a warrior-in-training long enough to know to always treat injuries seriously, no matter how embarrassing their cause.
Half an hour later, she stood on the cliffs overlooking the docks, her hand washed and freshly bandaged.
She let out a long breath and sat down, legs hanging over the edge, watching as the sun crept towards the horizon. The elder had forbidden her from putting any strain on her hand for the rest of the day, so she couldn't return to her family, and she couldn't go walking in the forest as she normally would either, as she knew that her feet would inevitably carry her to Hiccup's cove, and she wasn't ready to deal with him again.
Her gaze drifted along Berk's coastline until she spied the distant headland that held the dragon arena. Perhaps spending some time with the other dragon under her care would take her mind off Hiccup for a bit. She knew that she'd fed the dragons just the day before, but there were buckets of fish scraps accumulating on the docks that would otherwise end up chumming the waters of the harbour.
Her mind made up, she got to her feet and wound her way down the ramps towards the docks.
Sól's chariot was kissing the crests of the waves far below by the time she reached the promontory and set down her basket of fish scraps - careful to take the weight with her uninjured right hand.
She cranked open the arena gate and quickly made her rounds of the cages, shovelling a portion of fish guts through each door, and finishing in front of Stormfly's alcove. This time, she didn't hesitate in opening her cage. The Nadder squawked in surprise, but midway through it morphed into a soft coo of recognition.
Astrid raised her hand as the Nadder stepped out of the cage, and Stormfly bent her neck, pressing her muzzle into her palm, purring softly.
"Hey girl," Astrid greeted warmly.
Stormfly purred louder. Suddenly, she pulled away and began sniffing at her other hand.
"Stormfly, what's-"
The Nadder crooned softly and gently nosed her left hand; her bandaged hand.
"Oh..." She was forcibly struck by the vast gap between the Viking idea of dragons, and the creature looking up at her with concerned eyes. "We really don't know anything about you guys, do we?" She breathed.
Stormfly chirped and tilted her head questioningly.
"It's nothing," she replied. "I was being careless and I cut myself, I'll be fine."
The dragon cooed again, then snaked her tongue out of her mouth and ran it over her palm.
Astrid opened her mouth to complain, then stopped as she felt the stinging pain of her wound suddenly fade. "That actually feels better, thanks."
The Nadder chirped happily, and Astrid raised her other hand to stroke the side of her jaw appreciatively.
"Come on," she said, picking up the remaining scraps and heading for the gate. Stormfly followed along behind her, her claws clicking on the stone.
Astrid dropped the basket on the cliff outside the ring - where they had taken off from the day before - and flipped off the lid. "There you go."
Stormfly immediately stuck her head inside and in a few seconds slurped up her meal.
"Hey girl," she called as the Nadder raised her head, licking the last drops of blood and juices from her neck. "I got you something." She reached into the bag she'd tied to the Basket's straps and pulled out three small fish she'd filched from the Sjóknapa's nets. She felt a brief flicker of guilt, but it vanished as soon as Stormfly's nostrils widened and she let out an excited trill.
Astrid held up one of the fish, and Stormfly crouched, her hips wiggling in excitement. Astrid felt a smile tug at the corners of her lips as she tossed the fish to the Nadder one by one, chuckling to herself as Stormfly snatched them out of the air.
As the last fish vanished down the dragon's gullet, she turned away with a soft sigh and sat down on the cliff edge, staring out across the dark ocean.
She stiffened reflexively at the sound of movement behind her, then nearly fell forwards in shock as Stormfly curled around her, her head resting on the ground on her right, and her tail hanging over the cliff to her left. She gently lent back against the Nadder's flank, and rested a hand on the back of her neck, slowly caressing the scales beneath her fingers.
Inevitably, her thoughts turned to Hiccup's predicament. Gobber always said that 'A downed dragon is a dead dragon' and she'd assumed he meant that a flightless dragon couldn't escape from a Viking warrior; perhaps there was more to it than that? She thought again of Hiccup's cove, while it was as picturesque a place as any on Berk, she knew she'd be going stir-crazy if she'd been stuck in it for almost a week.
She sighed in frustration; Hiccup needed to get out of the cove, she already knew that. However, the rock walls were too soft to allow a creature of his size to climb out, and it was obvious that he wasn't going to learn to fly by himself.
"What am I going to do, Stormfly?" she whispered.
Astrid was nearly knocked off the cliff as Stormfly suddenly surged to her feet. A moment later she recovered and scrambled into a ready crouch, hand on her knife. "What is it, Stormfly?" She asked in an urgent whisper, glancing up at the dragon stood over her; The Nadder's wings were half-opened in alarm, and her gaze was fixed on a point on the horizon.
She followed Stormfly's stare. Against the last, dying lights of the day she could make out several dark silhouettes moving over the ocean. Her heart froze in her chest. It couldn't be, not so soon...
"Stormfly," she began breathlessly, "Are those-"
The raid horn rang out from the village.
Astrid swore, cursing herself for leaving her armour and weapons back in the village. She stepped out from under Stormfly and turned to face the dragon. "Stormfly, you need to- AHHH!" She cried out in shock as Stormfly suddenly loomed over her and gripped the scruff of her tunic in her jaws. Her limbs swung uselessly as she was swiftly lifted into the air, and deposited on the Dragon's back.
She barely had time to register her contact with the scales before Stormfly lurched forwards over the cliff edge.
Stormfly shot upwards and turned sharply - banking so hard her wings were momentarily perpendicular to the ocean - all in the space of a few terrifying heartbeats. Even after they leveled out, her wings kept up the same frantic pace. Astrid suddenly realised she had been holding back on their first flight.
"Stormfly!" She yelled over the rushing wind.
If the Nadder heard her, she didn't show it.
She freed one of her hands from its death-grip on the dragon's neck and pounded on her flank. "What are you doing!? I need to get back there!"
Stormfly growled harshly and tossed her head, only narrowly avoiding goring Astrid with her horns.
Astrid got the message and subsided, crouching low against Stormfly's back as the battle cries of men and dragons rang out behind them.
Mythology:
Surtr - Norse god of fire and ruler/guardian of Muspelheim, the realm of fire.
Sól - Goddess that drives the chariot of the sun in Norse mythology.
Author's Notes:
Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted an update here, hasn't it?
I sincerely apologize for the delay, and I know that this meagre 3,000 word update isn't what you've come to expect, but I thought it was better if I at least posted something, to let you know I'm still alive and the end of this extract was a pretty good break-point.
There are a couple reasons for this long delay: First of all, the month of November and the first weeks of December are very busy periods for me, and there were several periods where I had barely any time to do anything other than University work. Although, to be truthful, most of what's above was written months ago, and the real reason for the delay is that I ran into major writer's block later on in this chapter, and I ended up getting so frustrated that I had to step away from the story and take some time off.
Anyway, I'm feeling refreshed enough to come back to this story, so hopefully I'll be able to work through my block and get the next part out to you in less than 3 months! I know what it's like to get engaged with a story only to find out that the author's abandoned it, so I swear to you that no matter how long it takes, I will eventually finish this tale.
On a happier note, my fanfic recommendation for you this time is Learning Curve and A Dragon's Gift by Anhedral. Learning Curve is a short story about Hiccup and Toothless learning to fly together, and the formation of a telepathic bond between them. A Dragon's Gift is a unique take on the transformation genre that follows on from Learning Curve; after the defeat of the Red Death, Astrid and her Nadder form their own bond, however something goes wrong in the bonding process and they end up stuck in each other's bodies.
The story isn't without problems - the pacing in A Dragon's Gift is a bit off, for one - but the genuine affection between partners that Anhedral portrays, and the obvious thought and attention to detail put into the dragons' backstories, and the little details of life on a northern island, mark this out as something special.
Finally, if you're reading this, thank you for sticking with me, and, as always, please leave your thoughts on the chapter in a review!
~Superbun
Review Responses:
QuiteARandomFan - You raised several interesting questions in your review, which I'm not going to answer because... well, wait and see! :P
I don't want to spend all of my notes talking about a different story, but yes, OTN:CC&F was amazing, and it's a tragedy that the author felt he had to abandon it (although at least he gave us some measure of closure...)
On a final note: Please keep up with the recommendations as I'm always on the lookout for new stories to read.
Noctus Fury - Thank you, I do try my best to include little bits of historical Viking life and culture, where I can and it doesn't get in the way of the story. Although I'm not a historian, so most of my information comes from Wikipedia...
On the subject of 'Toothcup': This is a whole moral can o' worms, and if you're just not into it, that's cool, but given that Hiccup and Toothless are both sentient beings of responsible age, and are capable of communicating consent, can you really call it 'beastiality'?