Onyx sighed and he sat down. [Please, sit all of you.]
Hiccup jerked, his focus returning to the room. The fact that most of those lines could be about him, and given everyone's reactions, were, had left him numb. Possibly for the first time in his life, he did not have a sarcastic response to something that threw him off. He actually could not form words. His mind forgot how as it process what Gyda had recited.
Without much thought, Hiccup sat down where he stood. He barely noticed the others following his lead and the dragons laying as they could around them. His entire focus remained upon Onyx, though his mind still felt as if he was wading through the mud in the Northern Swamp on a bad day.
[I cannot explain it all. My rider requested that we don't. He wants to meet you, Hiccup, when he is free of the duty he is performing right now. He wants to tell you the full story, about everything. I will not deny him that.]
Hiccup took a deep breath through his nose. "I understand. Tell us what you can, please."
Onyx looked to Fishlegs. [The reason your kind's alpha had to be under a healer's care that time was because he was attacked on his mission.]
"Hiccup the Second?"
[Aye.] Onyx looked down at the tablet then back to Hiccup. [Your ancestor knew of myself and my rider's existence.]
"He knew of you? How?"
[It was not intentional. Your kind have always been exceedingly curious. Your bloodline even more so, if I were to be honest about it. Myself and my rider would often take flights away from the nest we formed. Your ancestor saw us on one of those flights.]
"Okay," Hiccup said, continuing the sound of the word. "Was this before or after that fallen queen began the war?"
[Before. Trust me had we not been unable to act, that queen would have been stopped before she ever began."
"How about you start at the beginning," Astrid suggested, her tone slightly sharper than Meatlug's.
Onyxwing chuckled and shook his head in a very human-like manner. Something Hiccup did not know a Night Fury could do, but this one had been the bonded dragon to a human for much of its life. It was conceivable the dragon had learned human traits. Shadowfire showed and taught many after all.
[Hiccup the Second, as you called him, had been out to a meeting with other alphas. I am unaware of the term. My rider's flock had similar ones until we became a nest of humans and dragons and many of the other human flocks rejected ours.]
"The Thing," Hiccup supplied. "A meeting of all the chiefs of various Viking tribes to discuss matters that affect all the tribes in an area. My dad said before the war they happened every year, but as the war progressed they grew less important to have."
[Yes, that. Anyway, your ancestor was returning home, if I recall correctly. Don't you say it, Sunburn.]
[Aw, brother dear, I wasn't going to say anything.]
[Sure, and I'm an oversized Tiny-fang, no offense Sharpshot and Sneaky.]
[Eh, you can be an oversized hatchling at times,] Sunburn commented before Sharpshot or Sneaky could speak.
Sharpshot did climb over Hiccup's shoulder so he could sit in Hiccup's lap. Sneaky did similar to Astrid as she now took to holding onto Astrid's back like Sharpshot did Hiccup's. Both dragons looked at each other and snorted before looking up at Silent who sat behind Onyx.
[We feel for you, honored Way-guard,] Sharpshot said.
Hiccup saw the three Night Fury's lobes lift. Onyx grunted and stared at Silent, looking for all the world like the dragon had said something teasing. Hiccup looked to Toothless.
[He accepted Sharpshot's words and said it was a great deal of hassle,] Toothless said. [And then something about dealing with them being similar to herding lizards.]
Gyda and Shadowfire snorted. Hiccup shifted, staring at both with a lifted eyebrow.
"We have a comparable saying back home," Gyda said. "But ours is 'like herding cats'."
Hiccup shuddered. He had been around cats before. The Meatheads had several tribes of them it seemed. Or did when he was there last. The blacksmith had said it kept something called a rat out of the village. Given the description, Hiccup gathered the animal was a bigger version of the voles native to Berk.
Apparently, before Johann, a seafaring merchant had brought more than just goods for sale. That merchant had been near the mainland in the south and had gained more passengers than he knew about. Thankful for all islands in the Archipelago, the Meatheads had been his first stop and his inept crew had scared the rats onto their docks. The merchant did make good on his mistake. He brought cats the next time, saying they would deal with the rats.
The blacksmith did say the plan had worked, not completely, but enough. The only problem was many cats had been brought and were now all but taking over. Seeing them that one time his dad took him and nothing bad happened, since Thuggory was off the island for something and Hiccup was not actively trying to avoid the heir and his friends, Hiccup could well understand why Gyda's time chose them for that saying.
"Please continue," Astrid said, pulling Hiccup from his thoughts.
He caught her eye and smiled. She gave him a half-smile in return. He knew he was not the cause of her annoyance making her smile like that. She squeezed his hands and began running her thumb over his knuckles to silently tell him. He appreciated that and her no-nonsense attitude. She was also right. It was time for Onyx to finish his duty so he could return to his rider. Hiccup could well believe the absence was beginning to be painful for the dragon. He could only imagine how painful for him it would be to be separate from Toothless for as long and as far as it seemed it was for Onyx and his rider.
Onyx chuckled again. [Your ancestor saw us flying in the distance and sought us out many seasons later. He was very persistent and stubborn.]
[Not surprised,] Toothless muttered.
Hiccup shot his brother a half-heated glare that only caused Toothless to laugh until Moondust lightly poked him with her muzzle.
[Let Onyx finish, dear.]
[And you're doomed now, Toothless,] Onyx said only to get wing slapped by Silent. [Okay, okay. I'll finish. Gah. Anyway, the mission your ancestor took that ended him in a healer's care was to aid myself and my rider free some dragons from a trapper and keep that trapper from finding the nest myself and my rider formed.] Onyx's sensing lobes fell and his muzzle dipped. [Your ancestor was badly injured. My rider feared he would die. For reasons I can't go into, we knew dragon souls, if given up willingly, could somehow be fused with a human's soul. I don't know the whole process as that was a master magic thing and my rider's explanation made me fall asleep, but my son,] Onyx's voice cracked and his wings hunched in against his body. [My son, who was also injured, chose to die so your ancestor could live. My son's soul fusing to his kept him alive.]
Hiccup blinked as every human except Gyda gave varying sounds of surprise. The dragons, funny enough did not seem all that shocked. Hiccup turned to Toothless, who shrugged.
[I had heard of things like this happening before, but I thought they were tales to entertain. I see now they were real, but my aunt played them off as entertainment instead of history.] Toothless sighed. [I wonder now what other lies she has fed to the nest.]
[I am sorry,] Onyx whispered, his gaze still lowered. [My rider and the other mages that helped Hiccup the Second, they were so weak, so frail afterwards. We barely got them back to our nest and your ancestor back to his.] Onyx paused and his throat spasmed. When he spoke again, Hiccup could hear the tears in his voice. [When my rider could move again, when he recovered as much as he was able to after, we-] Onyx took a deep breath. [That false queen had already started her war. It was many seasons into it when we could finally leave our nest. We tried, Hiccup. I promise you that we offered aid, but the alpha at the time only wanted our deaths. The healer, still a mage of that bloodline, said it would be best for all involved if we never returned.]
"So, why didn't you and your rider kill that queen before she got so power hungry?" Snotlout demanded. "He was this all-powerful mage and you had this weird blue thingy to your scales that the other Night Furies find so great. Why did you let her ravage us all?"
[The rider's bond,] Onyx whispered, still looking at the stone floor. [When a dragon fully bonds with a human who has magical abilities, the combine magic of both causes a reaction. It fuses our souls without either of us dying to put in the simplest of terms. It also shortens the dragon's life by many seasons so that our human can live longer. We can still die before we reach the full end of our lives, but a dragon and human pair bonded in this fashion can, well, you see me and Sunburn and you get the idea.]
Hiccup tilted his head. "What about dragons who bond with a human that does not have magic?"
[The human will still live longer just not as long as those who have magic. We have lost many dragon/human pairs over the seasons due to that.]
"So why did this prevent you from doing as Snotlout so rudely asked?" Fishlegs questioned.
"Hey, it's not rude. It's the truth and all of you were thinking it as well. Don't lie."
[After weakening themselves to enact the barrier Gyda encountered, my rider and the other mages he trusted the most, further weakened themselves to keep your ancestor alive. Neither he, nor Sunburn's rider, have fully recovered. Their magic is not as it once was.]
Gyda gave a choked gasp. Hiccup saw both of her hands covering her mouth and tears in her eyes when he turned to her.
"What?" he asked.
She lowered her hands and Hiccup felt an urge to hug her in comfort as the tears pooling in her eyes fell.
"They are slowly dying," she whispered. "They are at the point that rest will never restore them and they will get weaker and weaker with each spell they use until their bodies completely fail them."
[And as they slowly die,] Sunburn whispered. [We slowly die.]
SnowBriar: Rocking right along, ain't ya? Hehe. I'm glad you are enjoying the story, my friend. And yours sounds very interesting. I look forward to reading it. As Hiccup says often, Astrid is his equal in everything. And yes, there is a reason that I will not spoil. Yes, they will be in the next book when we have the Thing. At the time I wrote that I had not read the books. I just knew of Thuggory's existence. Still, this Thuggory is as he is for a reason. Eh, life is life and it has all moments, from love to hate, birth to death. A story to be alive should include life. At least that's my view on it. Thank you, my friend.