XX.
The croons of sleeping dragons echoed infinitely through the mountain cliffs, echoing, echoing, echoing, each repetition contributing to a strange musical hum. The drone collided with the clash of a dozen waterfalls splashing torrents of water down into the warm sauna below. Only that water stirred, nothing else. None of the dragons moved. The Bewilderbeast rested like a dormant volcano at the center of the fortress, while other scaly forms stacked themselves along the cliff sides. Not even nanodragons buzzed around at this time of night. So far as Hiccup could tell, the only dragon awake was Toothless, and even he moved little more than his eyelids, each blink drooping more and more heavily. Hiccup lay down beside him. He rested on his back, resenting the smattering of rocks that still jabbed into his back, but feeling too tired to actual move himself and try to shift into a more comfortable position. Chances were, even if he could find the perfect resting position, his mind would keep him awake anyway.
"What do you think, Toothless?" he asked, his voice halfway between a whisper and full voicing. The result was an uncertain inflection, cracking slightly, disturbing the musical draconic hum in the background. "Did I make the right decision?"
Toothless let out an enormous huff, then elaborated his opinion with a few growls and smacking, gummy lips. Just enough moonlight filtered in through the icy mountain rooftop that Hiccup could make out the expression on his dragon's face.
Hiccup shrugged and shifted his eyes downward. "Yeah. Me, too."
Finally deciding to find a more comfortable position, Hiccup resituated himself to rest his back against Toothless' side. From this position he could feel the steady, slow rise and fall of the Night Fury's chest as the dragon breathed, and could gaze out at the darkened, blue-tinged landscape around him.
"Still don't have to follow through with it," Hiccup pointed out. He knew at this point he was talking to himself as much as the dragon, yet he hardly cared. Just so long as no one else eavesdropped on his commentary. Glancing to the side, where his breastplate, flight suit, and vambraces lay in a heap, Hiccup continued, "We could always just leave."
Toothless let out a small groan, followed by a somehow indignant yawn.
"I know, I know, I would rather get some sleep, too. But we can't do it in the morning when the Vigilante is awake. Haven't you been paying attention, you ignorant reptile? She's watching us more intently than Snotlout after a plate of mutton. If we're going to get out of here, it has to be now."
Hiccup abruptly realized the manner in which he had been speaking suggested he would indeed fall through with the plan to try escape. Somehow he had already secured his position before talking through all the details.
"Alright then, bud, let's go." He turned to put on his armor again.
Toothless' tail drooped, and he moaned pitifully as he rose to his feet.
"You'll thank me later. Now come on," he whispered.
Hiccup dared not fly through the Vigilante's fortress. Though the enormous, cliff-covered clearing in which he and Toothless currently resided could have housed every building in Berk, Hiccup recalled that the outer rings of the fortress were tight, maze-like tunnels hardly conducive for flight. Smaller dragons might have been able to stretch their full wingspan, but not Toothless. Thus, the black dragon and his rider cautiously sneaked away from the cliff and headed toward the nearest cave entrance. The soft luminescence from the ice above abruptly died as walls transformed to stone.
"I can't see a thing. A little help, bud?" Hiccup whispered. He placed his hand on Toothless' shoulder blade, allowing the dragon to lead the way. Despite trying to study Toothless, Hiccup could never pinpoint exactly how the Night Fury navigated in complete darkness; somehow, after emitting a purplish plasma blast, Toothless could step forward, completely confidently, through even the darkest and most complicated of paths.
And thus the world consisted of the echo of a foot slowly followed by the light click of a metal leg, of a dragon's deep breaths and a young man's lighter ones, of the strange whispers of drafts leaking through winding corridors. Occasionally Toothless would emit a soft murmur to warn Hiccup of a rocky step upward or downward, and Hiccup would carefully lean in on Toothless before proceeding forward. He still found himself stumbling frequently, cursing equally about the dark and his peg leg. The lack of an ankle joint on his left side always made for trickier footing on rough pathways, for no amount of practice on a prosthetic could replace the adroitness of a flesh-and-blood foot.
"For the love of – Toothless, wait," Hiccup muttered, nearly falling on his face as he felt his left leg hook on some unseen obstacle. He staggered forward, hands crashing on the ground in front of him – and still his leg remained firm, locked in place. "I'm caught on something." He wiggled for a little, cursed, then suggested, "Toothless, a little light?"
A light plasma blast shot quickly illuminated the cavern in an unearthly bright blue glow before everything reverted to its natural black state. However, that brief glimpse of light had been enough for Hiccup to see how his peg leg had been wedged between two rocks. He pulled carefully upward, breathed in relief when his full leg and prosthetic followed, then gently straightened himself to full height. "Alright. Let's keep going."
Forward again. Dragon inhale. Exhale. Footsteps, one at a time. The whistle of moving air – was it becoming louder? Did that indicate they were nearing an exit?
Hiccup's palm suddenly sensed a steady rumble shaking the scaly skin on Toothless' shoulder. The dragon's body vibrated as Toothless growled, nearly inaudible even in this quiet cave. Hiccup, following the Night Fury's lead, stepped slowly backwards and pressed himself against the cavern wall. The stone felt incredibly cold against his neck.
What's going on?
The sound of wings flapping, and then the grumble of an insomniac dragon followed. The scrape of a tail against the bottom of the cavern. Hiccup could not gauge the size of the dragon, nor its distance from him and Toothless when it passed, but he could feel an increase in temperature and the movement of air as it passed them by. Hiccup automatically fumbled at his right thigh, only to remember yet again his sword Inferno was missing.
Indefinite time lapsed.
I think it's gone.
And Toothless again stepped forward.
They suddenly approached blue-tinged light, and stepped into a room about a third the size of Berk's Great Hall, and with much a lower ceiling. Holes broke the uniformity of silver stone, letting in the blinding moon's glow. Spotlights cast lights on peculiar forms resting motionless on the stone floor. Hiccup approached cautiously.
The entire room resonated in an abstract painting of limited colors, circular splotches of reds, tans, and blues glowing underneath the moonbeams. These bright patches contrasted with the ominous grays and blacks cloaking the rest of the chamber. Unearthly, the room both glowed from the moon and swarmed with darkness. A tapestry crafted from the brightest dyes could not have captured the strange mottled mix of obscuring shadows and sudden spots of color.
Something underneath Hiccup's foot crunched, and he retaliated, disgusted, when he recognized what he stepped on. Though partially blackened, elsewhere painted red, the shape of a human foot was unmistakable. A half-frostbitten, severed human foot, lying several feet away from the rest of its frozen corpse. Hiccup felt thankful for shadows hiding details, though he had the queasy suspicion those dark patches of black on the floor would actually turn out to be the stains of blood in brighter light. Stepping sideways, Hiccup slowly distanced himself from the body, angling left toward the exit of the chamber.
This time, his prosthetic almost landed on a femur. An old bone, but not entirely devoid of meat. Something – probably a dragon – had clearly gnawed on it, leaving strands of muscles and ruptured blood vessels like tangled twine to twist around the white rod at center. A half-fresh skull, still somehow sporting one gawking eye and half a face of ice-frozen skin, gaped nearby, just as shocked to see a live human being as Hiccup was to see a dead one. They competed in a staring match until a small, slimy worm-like creature, wiggling through the remainder of the face's left nostril, dropped to the floor and made Hiccup turn away, nauseated.
A dozen and a half men must have rested here, unburied, left to freeze, half-preserved, greatly deformed, on unforgiving stone. Some faces appeared clearly chewed on by dragons, peculiar holes driving through taught-drawn cheekbones, or scratch marks marring the reddened backs of downward-facing victims. All around them, bows, arrows, and shields lay useless. One sword, a simple, slightly-bent mass of metal, dedicatedly guarded the side of a man whose ribs formed a shelter for a nest of miserable rodents.
Though Hiccup wished simply to dart across the room with Toothless and leave all the shadowed images behind, he noticed nonetheless that these men died on different days. Different years. Perhaps even decades. A parched white skeleton reclined against the walls in one corner of the room, while other corpses clearly boasted a more recent demise – some perhaps only two days old.
"Careful, Toothless," Hiccup murmured. "Be on the lookout for traps."
His eyes scanned the room, taking in the grinning blue half-face of what might have been a middle aged woman – she still sported raggedy clumps of long whitish hair – and swept his gaze thoroughly through the chamber, seeking out any explanation for the deaths here. "It seems like they were all attacked. Killed by… something." He could not tell if it were dragon or human.
Either way, he felt very suspicious that the deaths pertained directly to the Vigilante.
Is this what would have happened had I outright refused her offer? Hiccup deliberated, cringing as he stepped over a particularly freshly ripped hand and a mushy roundish object that might have been half a human heart. Shredded, red-splattered clothes lay like a memorial underneath part of the display. Then again, I never really accepted her offer, either. Is this what's going to happen to me if I don't get out of here?
Shadows of skeletal hands reached forward to grab him. Eyes from the fresh bodies and eye sockets from the old watched him, judgingly.
And then something moved.
Toothless let out a horrified screech.
"Don't shoot!" a woman's voice shouted out. Black, colloidal shapes resolved themselves into the solid form of a Viking warrior. The Vigilante.
She stepped forward, staff in hand. "Were you trying to escape?"
"Just… exploring," Hiccup ventured, "at night. Yeah…" His voice trailed off. Everyone in the chamber – everyone living, anyhow – knew precisely what Hiccup and Toothless had intended.
The woman stepped past the bodies, even prodding one of them with her foot as she made her way up to Hiccup's face. "You didn't need to see this," she said.
And because he had no better question to ask, Hiccup found himself saying, "What happened here?"
"These," she gestured with her rod, "are some of the men and women who paid the price for taking arms against dragons."
"You killed them," Hiccup guessed.
"They killed themselves by coming here."
Hiccup tried not to gape, to show disgust. His nose might have wrinkled and his eyebrows furrowed despite his best efforts.
"This is proof that the world of man and the world of dragons must be separated. It is a world of violence," she said, and the young Hooligan forced himself to look upon the nearest corpse to his right. "A world in which I was forced to kill men because they assaulted my sanctuary."
"Did all of them come here by choice? Or did you kidnap some of them like you kidnapped me?"
An incredibly brash comment, something Hiccup normally would not have ever stated aloud, but in this period of shock he found the words shooting out of his mouth before he even consciously registered those thoughts. Perhaps the Vigilante was right, and that the deaths were caused purely from self-defense. Perhaps they had been unavoidable, and truly were a tragedy to the war between humans and dragons. But in the midst of his frustration and exhaustion, of watching a war progress between two forces which both antagonized the other side to further action, Hiccup needed to snap back at something. A snide remark, a pointed comment, an accusation. And then, because he had already begun, he continued spouting out words, each one tumbling over the last before the previous syllable had been completed.
"Is that what you're going to do to me, then, because I'm not going to join your cause to attack dragon trappers? Even if I'm someone who doesn't want war, but peace? Someone who loves dragons, just as you do? Are you going to kill me right now? Is that it?"
"No," she said, and that was all.
"No," she said again, and this time continued to another sentence. "I could never do that." Another pause. Another sentence. "Not kill you."
Uneasy, knees bent, Hiccup inquired very hesitantly, "What makes me different?"
An uncanny chuckle ripped from her throat. "Of all times to tell you, this would be the worst."
"Uh, okay." Hiccup shifted uncomfortably. How to respond to that? He found his voice becoming edgier, inserting in a little bit of acerbity. "But I really think that clearing issues up would be… ah…"
"Very well then." She cleared her throat. Suddenly appeared… was that guilt in her pursed lips? Discomfort? Regret? In an instant, the emotions disappeared, obscured by shadow as she stepped away from a spotlight of moonbeams.
"I would have you know, before I say anything more, that I do care about the fate of men. I fight for the dragons, yes, and always will. This does not mean I want the world to end in blood. Rather, I want to prevent the needless bloodshed that I saw all around me as I was taken by dragons away from my village." She paused, definitely appeared uncertain this time. "Away from my husband." Further hesitation. "Away from you… my…" She choked on her own vocal cords. "My son," she said. "For a mother never forgets."