366 views…. Wow…. I can't even process this. Thank you all. I really appreciate the fact that you guys would read my story. I didn't expect this much of a turnout! and a shoutout to all my followers and favorites!. and a Thank You to Serenity Dragonrider for letting me use her characters!
As the new day dawned across the shivering sea, the viking gang and the inhabitants of Draconia were making sure they all had their gear checked. Astrid was sharpening her axe; Serenity was double checking her medical supplies to make sure they were all accounted for in her bag; Fishlegs was making sure that all of his dragon stat cards were in his pouch ( and had some extra materials to forge new ones for the dragons he was soon to meet!); and Hiccup made sure he had packed enough Zippleback gas ammo for his sword, Inferno.
After everybody was done and accounted for, they all mounted on their respective dragons. "Is everyone ready?", Hiccup asked his entourage. They all confirmed. "Good, now since they left Berk about 3 days ago, their scent will be faint, but Skullcrusher here can pick up any smell, no matter how faint it may be".
"Wait,um, how is he gonna lead us to anything if he has nothing to go on?", inquired Fishlegs, in his squeaky voice.
"Good question, Fishlegs. I put the map inside a chest, so in order to get to the map he had to touch the chest. Skullcrusher has already picked up the scent. We will follow his lead. Now with that said, I want all of us in a defense flying formation. We will make a 'V' with Eret in the front, and Re and Aurora at the ends. Everyone one else will fill in between", explained Hiccup. With that said, they all took to the skies towards foreign land.
They flew southwest of Berk. All they saw for hours was nothing but ocean. Blue, vacant ocean. They would change direction here and there as they followed Skullcrusher's nose, but they still went in the general direction, with nothing but the vast, deep water below them. They all flew in silence, with minor chit-chatting along the way. It seemed like a normal flight. Every viking and dragon were all flying comfortably with nothing at all bothering them, except for the Draconians. They all had troubled looks on their faces, with Re being the worst.
The Berkians noticed their behavior at some point, but were too uncomfortable to say anything. Valka noticed the tension, sighed, and broke the ice. "What troubles your mind, Re?".
Re looked at Valka timidly. "Nothing", he responded.
"No offense, but something does. You've had that look plastered on your face ever since we left Draconia. Not just you, but Aurora, Tenor, and Serenity, as well", Astrid interjected.
The Draconians looked at one another.
"They might as well know now", Aurora sighed.
"Know what?", Hiccup questioned suspiciously.
"We-we know who attacked your village Hiccup", Serenity solemnly stated.
"And you decided to share this with us now because?", Hiccup pressed sarcastically.
"Because he is our son!", Re bursted out roughly."Our son that, until a few days ago, we all thought was dead", he added.
Everyone was quiet for a few seconds.
"How can you guys have a human son, if you are dragons?", Snotlout asked dumbly.
"He is obviously adopted Snotlout", Hiccup replied annoyed.
Aurora sighed sadly. "Back when Re was crowned King and I the queen, one of our first priorities was to scout surrounding, foreign islands and check to see if the villagers there were of any threat to our nation. Well, Aurora and I came across a destroyed village. There was no remnants of life there. That is, until we heard a cry. A faint cry. We decided to see where it originated, and as we got closer, we realized it was a baby's cry. And to our shock we found a small baby boy, inside of a completely burned hut. We don't know how the baby survived but he did. There wasn't a single scratch on him".
Everybody was completely silent, listening to the Draconians' story.
Re continued,"We decided that he couldn't be left there, so we decided to take him other surrounding villages. But alas, they were either see us dragons coming their way as a threat and didn't give us enough time to drop off the baby, or the village life itself was too savage to begin with. We simply couldn't leave the baby there to die, so with no other choice, we took him back to Draconia with us and raised him as our own child".
"What did you name him?", Valka inquired.
"We didn't know what to call him. What we did know was that he was going to be different for the rest of his life, so we decided to go with something...different. Chris".
"Chris? And I thought Eret, son of Eret, was odd enough", Eret chimed in.
"You could not believe the reactions the kingdom had to this kid. A handful of them thought that he would be cruel like the rest of his kind. Re, Aurora, and me sought to prove them wrong. Even though I was the surrogate uncle, he even gave me gray scales. Man that kid could get into trouble! I mean, me and Re aren't good with kids, so you can imagine the struggle we endured with raising him, especially when he wasn't even our own species. He always kept pulling on my ear flaps!", Tenor groaned.
"It's because no male is naturally good at taking care of the young as females are. We still got him to behave eventually", Aurora chuckled, half-sadly.
"But still", Re added,"We cared for that kid as our own hatchling. We taught him how to speak both languages, which was a pain. We taught him to walk, don't get me started on that. We taught him a mixture of things young dragons and young humans need to know. Even though we didn't know much about human and their ways, he somehow was able to incorporate both cultures perfectly! The results were amazing! Everybody saw how different he was from the rest of his kind. They were all in shock and in awe! That's when they all realized that humans weren't so bad after all. He changed their paradigms entirely!"
"He was my first human friend ever. We meet when I first arrived at Draconia, and we became best friends. After that, we practically did everything together. Even though we were the only humans there at the time, we had so much fun!" Serenity reminisced. "And honestly, I kinda was the one that got him in all that trouble anyway", she embarrassingly laughed.
Everyone turned their heads to look at Serenity in surprise. "Really? How so?", Re asked the million dollar question.
"Most of those ideas we had were...mine. He said that he didn't want me to get in trouble, so he always took the blame. I tried to share the burden, but he wouldn't let me. We were just 6 at the time, what do you expect?", she retorted, uncomfortable with all the attention she was getting.
"Anyway", Re chuckled,"He pretty much changed everything after that. We decided that we shouldn't be afraid of humans and should try to make peace with them. And what other way to show cooperation and friendship between two species than to start a dragon riding institution".
"You mean-", Fishlegs started.
"He was the inspiration of the dragon riding institution back on Draconia. As we know of, he and Serenity were the first ones ever to ride dragons. Once more humans saw that us dragons were gentle creatures, they came to Draconia to learn how to ride a dragon and lived in the village near the institution. Everything else pretty much fell into place from there", Re finished.
Then as quickly as Re's mood was beaming with happiness from the distant memories, it shifted to darkness and despair.
"Then, one day, I...I…", Re's flight was starting to become weak as he could barely finish his sentence,"I lost him".
The only thing that could be heard was the dragons' wing beats at that point.
Astrid hated to be the one to say this, but she had to ask. "How did you lose him?", she voiced quietly.
The Draconians all tensed up. Re shuddered at having to recall the memory,"One day, Chris and I were on a scouting mission,checking out more potentially dangerous villages. He said that he wanted to tag along, but I denied him. After several long minutes of his pleas, I eventually let him accompany me. He was 12 at the time. I knew he could fend for himself, but a parent can never stop worrying, you know? Anyway, on the island we were at, we had to make camp there for the night as a thunderstorm forced us to stay on the island. It was nothing that I had experienced before. Well….. in the middle of the night, we were ambushed by the village that we were scouting. How they found us? I don't know, but we escaped and were forced to fly home through the storm. I had my armor on, so I had to fly low, to avoid attracting lightning. My main challenge was to avoid the dangerous waves, while balancing a human on me", he painfully explained.
"Then…. he, he fell off of me. The rain, plus my haphazard flying must have caused it. All I could remember that day was his screams, him calling for his dad, for me, as he fell off my saddle and into the ocean. I searched for hours, trying to find him. Even after the storm passed, I didn't stop looking. Then, I flew back to Draconia as fast as I could and gathered every able-bodied dragon and rider to help me search the ocean for any sign of Chris. We searched for weeks, before we had to call off the search. But when everyone else came to terms with the truth, I did not. I still kept searching, I still didn't give up!", Re choked out,"I finally had to stop when it was taking a toll on my health".
"...And now, you call on me to help you track down your attacker who is more than likely my son. It's just hard to process, what with all these overwhelming emotions and thoughts in my mind", Re concluded.
A few minutes of silence ensued. Then Hiccup was the one who broke the silence,"Well Re, I can assure you that no harm will come to your son from any of my people", Hiccup said firmly.
Re looked at Hiccup with sincerity,"Thank you", he replied, with a tone full of gratitude.
They flew until it was almost dark before they found an island that they could spend the night on. They immediately made camp, ate, and fell asleep. Then they would wake up right when the sun came up, pack up their things, and fly to wherever the scent came from. They kept on repeating this process for 6 more days before they came to a roadblock.
The moon was high in the sky when they landed on the beach of a jungly-looking landmass. They all dismounted as Skullcrusher was sniffing vigorously at every little thing his nose could get its hands on.
"What is the matter?", implored Tenor.
"His scent is here, but not here. It's...faint, for a lack of a better term. But there are also many, many dragon scents here as well", Skullcrusher responded. He then turned to regard Re, "My king, I don't really know how to explain this but… he was here. Now he's not. The scents from all the other dragons on this island are masking his scent".
"Then with that many dragons, one of them is bound to have seen Chris. We will continue our search tomorrow morning. Thank you for all of your efforts", Re replied. Skullcrusher bowed his head in gratitude.
"The scent is here, but faint. Many dragons are in this area, as I have been told by Skullcrusher. I believe one of them has to have seen Chris. We will continue first thing tomorrow", Re informed Hiccup.
"Sounds like a plan", Hiccup yawned out sleepily,"In the meantime, we should get some sleep".
"I couldn't agree with you more", Re asserted.
With that, all the dragons and vikings made their camp for what seemed like the final time and fell asleep. The next morning was as typical as any morning. The sun was casting the oranges and pinks of dawn, the birds were chirping, and the waves were rolling onto the beach. Hookfang woke up early and decided to go fishing. What caught him off guard was that, in the corner of his eye, he saw something long, thin, and black. As he turned his attention toward it, he realized it was the tail of a black dragon, a night fury, who was watching their whole group casually from one of the limbs of the many trees that composed that landmass. He snarled loudly at the night fury, and flamed up, which alerted the rest of the party from their slumber. They all looked to where Hookfang was snarling at and all were flabbergasted to see the female night fury there.
"It's about time that you all woke up!", Windwalker remarked.