XI.
Darkness. Taste of blood. Darkness.
Awake. Wind on cheeks. Fluttering eyelids. Painful lights, irises seared. Darkness.
Awake. Open eyes. Squint. Bright white world. Too bright. Sharp whiteness drilling tunnels into pupils. Squint. Damp, sweat-soaked forehead. Something whimpered. Darkness.
Awake. The sensation of legs dangling midair. Shoulders squeezed tight by a painful overhead grip. Open eyes, stare downward, see foot and prosthetic floating far above the surface of a great blue blur. Look upward. Two dragons, or one, four feet, or two, vision departing and coalescing and diverging again. Dizziness. Squeeze eyes tight shut, shake head, try to clear a numbness that crushed the skull from every angle. Look upward again. Double vision cleared. Dragon talons clinging onto shoulders, one foot for each arm. Secure. Will not fall in this journey. Darkness.
Awake. The sound of ice chunks ramming up one against the other, as though challenging the other floe to a dominance battle. The call of Terrible Terrors or some other small species. Dragons, dragons everywhere, above, below, behind, before, an enormous cluster all migrating together toward a spiky prism in the distance. Eyes strain, seek to focus. Dragon shapes waver. Something familiar… its color… form… cannot identify the feature with sluggish thoughts. Large black shape ahead, hanging limp, long black and red string dangling inanimately downward.
Should… be… concerned…
Feel that wetness on the forehead again. When lean downward, watch a colloidal scarlet raindrop slip over eyelids and nose-dive toward the earth. A second small droplet falls afterward, leaking from the same location. Dulled but aching skull. Must have head injury.
Darkness.
Awake. No longer flying, the first observation. Second: head resting on moss, eyes pointed upward to a stiff, rising, rock cliff. More moss climbed up the slopes; no other living creature would be able to scale it. A sense of coolness in the air, moisture, humidity. But temperature overall comfortable. Still feeling nauseated, though by now vision had settled and was only slightly blurry, providing sufficient detail to the threadlike miniature stems and bumpy textures of the moss around him. Feel something in the stomach – hunger. A rumble. Groan. Try to shift weight. Lying on back on uncomfortable ground, rocks digging into side. While readjusting position, notice a ripe, well-washed fruit resting within arm's reach.
No sight of anything large and black. Where's Toothless? Weakly grab at apple, take a bite, resolve to endlessly search for the dragon. While still holding apple in one hand, try to stand. Immediately dizzy. World spins, colors fade. About to faint. Sit back down. Drowsiness overpowers the eyes, and darkness formed. Right before shutting eyes, see the upright silhouette of an armored human approaching.
Awake. He immediately noticed – to his relief – the shape of a black dragon hunched in corner, body pressed up against the ledge, so far as he could tell completely unharmed. To his other side sat a brown and white haired woman, eyes lightly crinkled in the early signs of middle age. Between the two new arrivals, only the woman was awake; the dragon, back half-plastered against the cliff side, inhaled and exhaled the familiar, slow breaths of slumber.
The woman held up a hand containing graceful but heavily calloused fingers, then reached up toward his chin. What is she doing? Stupefied, he watched her arm pause mid-air before her fingernails lightly swiped his skin, and as soon as she did so, murmured something indistinct, perhaps, "Could it be?" She followed the self-directed question with a subsequent self-directed comment, still at low volumes. Something about the passing of many years.
He still felt groggy, yet he believed he felt awake enough to finally confront and puzzle out his indistinct memories of the past – he paused – however long it had been since the dragon attack.
He decided to begin by croaking out a simple three word question. "Who are you?"
White-teethed smile. No spoken words. She continued to stare, not making direct eye contact, but fastened to a point just below his pupils. Her eyebrows scrunched up, puzzled, as she examined some apparently peculiar observation.
Slow thoughts finally concurred, Must be the scar on my chin.
But it's not that interesting or unusual.
The woman's eyes were green and stared with the intensity of a cat or a Strike Class dragon. Yet while initially something about them seemed curious or open, a hardness also lingered inside, an animalistic wariness, always on poise for some attack. And there something else… something else in the eyes, too. Bafflement, perhaps. Maybe even… wonder.
Something doesn't add up.
What are you rambling about, Hiccup? Nothing adds up. What is going on? What am I doing here? Where even is here?
He tried to sit up, groaned as lower back muscles refused to flex, cringed his shoulders and pulled up equally stiff arms. He must not have been dazed or unconscious for too long if his muscles still ached from the battle in the skies – at the most, he estimated, a day out of commission. Still, that hardly explained what was happening now. He slowly, stiffly, agonizingly positioned himself cross-legged, right across from this dragon rider, two pairs of green eyes staring one at the other.
"Who are you?" he tried asking again. "The dragon rider? The Vigilante?" When the sharp-jawed woman once more failed to provide a response, even with those suggested prompts, he tersely followed up with another second question: "Do you even understand what I'm saying?"
Still she said nothing, shirked away.
"Thank you so much for answering all my questions so thoroughly," Hiccup bit sarcastically as she continued backing up. "No really, you're quite the engaging conversationalist." And then she turned to run off out of sight. She looked more like a dragon scuttling away than a human being. Grumbling under his breath, Hiccup tried once more to stand so he could follow after her, but his head yet again nauseously swam. Stars and swirling colors greeted his vision. There would be no way he could catch up in his current state of dizziness.
He threw himself back to the ground with frustration. Nothing to do now but try to sleep. Hopefully by morning his concussion – he assumed that was what his head injury was, or something like it – would be settled enough that he could pursue after the strange woman and demand some answers to his questions. If this woman truly were the Vigilante, the armored figure who captured Toothless and him in the sky, then they needed to speak in depth.
And though the world faded yet once more into darkness, his ears still remained sharp, and he could hear the low hum of a woman's voice echoing from somewhere on the cliff side. Though he did not recognize the tune, its gentle, rising-falling melody sounded precisely like a lullaby.