Renamed from 'Adventures in Berksitting.' The next chapter will likely be longer than this. I might have taken some scientific liberties here but I figure when you're writing about a mythical creature you're not exactly bound by convention. Comments are always welcomed.
Minding the Fort
Chapter Three: The Mind's Eye, Part I
Below them the waves tossed, angrily churning up white foam that sprayed up to meet them. They flew a hundred yards above the water, fighting the wind that seemed to change direction continuously. One moment it was at their backs, propelling them forward too quickly; then it buffeted them so that Toothless fought to keep his wings flapping.
Riding a dragon in perfect weather took balance and surety; in such stormy conditions, none other than Hiccup had the mastery to chance it. The boy kept his knees tight, body pitched forward to avoid getting tossed off by the gusts. It was not out of bravado that they dared to fly in this weather. They were on the hunt.
Nearly a week had passed since the Viking chieftain had left the village; temporarily, Toothless was given to understand, leaving his son in charge. This was evident by the (occasionally grudging) deference shown to him by the others in the village, not unlike the manner in which dragons submitted to the authority of the only resident Night Fury. Although Toothless could sense the boy's discomfort, Hiccup hid it well.
That morning a Viking spearman burst into the shop where Hiccup frequently worked when not attending to his new responsibilities. Once any startlement from a human would have sent the Fury into hackles; now, he simply watched bemused as the Viking told Hiccup of a ship spotted a few miles off the island coast. Now that dragons had been fully integrated into the human society, they conducted daily "sweeps" of the surrounding waters to keep an advanced eye out for unfriendly parties.
This ship, said the spearman, was fully wrecked and half-submerged, the ruins barely staying afloat. From what he could discern by the tattered sails and shape of the boat, it did not belong to any Viking tribe. The weather had forced him to abort the flight before he could investigate for survivors. Before leaving, however, he noted something odd about the wreckage.
Hiccup was not one to abandon a hapless sailor to the sea, so he and Toothless had set off without delay. Astrid and Fishlegs had tried to talk them out of it, but no matter how he denied it Hiccup was incurably heroic and it had rubbed off on his dragon.
But even Toothless's excellent vision was having difficulty spotting a ship. They would have to rely on the specific directions given to them by the spearman, and Vikings were such precise navigators that they ought to be exact.
Just where the spearman said it would, a hulking mass of splintered wood and whipping rags for sails emerged into sight shortly ahead. Hiccup adjusted the tail fin minutely and they circled around the ship. The wind screamed at them.
There was definitely something odd about the wreckage. It clearly had not been the victim of an attack from another ship. Rather, the boat looked as though it had been the unlucky recipient of an enormous, crushing hug around the middle. It had been snapped in half, and only one side jutted above the water like a wooden iceberg.
"Okay, buddy," said his human. Toothless more felt the tiny vibrations from his speech than heard the words themselves, so greatly did the wind and waves work to drown them out.
They set down on what had been the bow, wobbling slightly as Toothless gripped for a solid perch. Hiccup cupped his hands around his mouth.
"Hello?" he hollered. "Anybody here?"
If anybody heard that over the noise, they did not respond so the two could hear. His boy slid off the saddle carefully, keeping his hands clenched on a leather strap to steady himself on the rocking mess. Toothless grumbled a little worriedly, but Hiccup reassured him with a hand. But the small slides he took were anything but confident. The pitching wreck would be difficult for anyone to stay upright on but a prosthesis was a further hindrance to balance.
Hiccup maneuvered until he reached the ruined cabin, and stuck his head through the door. Toothless watched anxiously as his human disappeared inside. No life was visible around them. Anybody still in the water would have drowned by this point. If any survivors lingered, they would have had to reach the cabin for limited shelter.
After a few minutes Hiccup reemerged, shaking his head. He held a sopping, bulging bag that Toothless percieved to be full of books.
"Everybody's gone," his human said in disappointment, and began to make his way back to Toothless.
The Fury's sharp hearing discerned the crack of wood as what remained of the mast gave up its fight against the gale. Hiccup would not have heard it, but the dragon's sudden reaction to the noise tipped him off and he pressed against the cabin.
With a hideous groan the mast tipped over. Fast as Toothless was, he just had time to see the horror in Hiccup's eyes, and his mouth forming Toothless's name, as the timber came crashing down on the Night Fury. He barely registered the blow, so quickly did it daze him.
Hiccup abandoned caution and fought his way back, shouting the dragon's name all the while.
After that things became hazy and uncertain. Sensations came and went. The dragon was vaguely aware of weight pressing against him, then being rolled off with an effort. His head felt funny, like it wasn't attached to the rest of him. The roar of the maddened ocean reached him from a great distance, the smell of salt a faint aroma, the soft, pink hands on his head smoothing the skin of a different creature.
"Oh, Toothless, buddy," came a sound. Toothless couldn't think what it meant. Another faraway feeling as his wings were lifted and prodded, and one of those pink hands ran along the length of them. His wings didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. The hands poked and pressed at him, at his ribs and back and tail.
"We gotta get out of here, buddy." That sound again. Toothless sensed a small weight easing onto his back. A click. The balance in his tail shifted; a fin that seemed to adjust of its own accord. He tried to move the fin and couldn't.
A slight pull at his neck. Instinctively he stretched his wings. Why it was instinctive he couldn't imagine. His legs bent as he fell into a crouch, a split second before launching into the sky and into the storm. The gale's force was shocking. Click. The fin moved. He steered away from the place he'd been before, the wind at his back, pushing and carrying him. Carrying was good. He felt heavy; his wings beat slowly. Why couldn't he control that fin?
Rain, wind, the slight burden on his back. All far away.
He floated along in a dreamlike state, watching from outside himself as he sluggishly flew over foam and wreckage. Where had that come from? His curiosity was blunted, like it had run short into a wall, and he was continuing beyond it.
It might have been seconds or minutes or hours later that he was guided by some unseen force to land again. He was too tired to wonder at it. Ground wasn't there and then it was. Rock. Grass. The weight slid off his back and then the hands were there again, stroking his head.
"Buddy," came the sound, accompanied by others. Into his line of heavy-lidded vision came a pair of eyes, green staring things that made him uneasy. Then they were gone again and he felt himself being steered. He came along docilely. More sounds came, different pitches and tones, highs and lows. He heard "Toothless" a few times, weird un-animal noises that didn't make sense.
Rain stopped. No, not stopped. He was inside. It was warm. The hands guided him just far enough indoors so that all of the dragon was sheltered from the rain. Suddenly his legs felt too leaden, his head too unable to stay up, for him to take another step.
He collapsed with a thud, and was aware no longer.
…
Pictures whirled through his head, strange and impossible things that came from nowhere. Humans. An enormous dragon. Flying. Fire, and those green eyes again.
He became aware. He lay on dirt. Something blocked the sun; he sensed that though his eyes were closed. Smells and sounds began to register, and then the pain. It made him cringe and snarl, the ache in his head.
Eventually he felt well enough to open his eyes. He had to, the smells and sounds were nonsensical; surely they were mistakes. First he saw only shapes and colors that took time to resolve into things. When they did, he was as confused as before.
He recognized the objects he saw, but he had never seen them so close up—only from far above, just before he scorched them with a powerful blast. Wood hacked and reattached to form unnatural shapes. Clay molded into hollow forms. Animal hair woven into thin stretched hides spread over pieces of the odd things fashioned from wood. Nothing was in its natural, original form.
Humans did things like that.
Alarm deafened the thudding in his head, and the dragon shot up, suddenly awake. He was inside. Not inside a cave, as he had sheltered in before, but a place with no exits. Wait! There, a little square of light through which he could see open sky. But it was so small. He could not have possibly come in through that. This place was backwards and alien, and it stank of humans.
What was he doing there? Had he been captured? The last thing he'd known... a dark night, lit only by stars and dragonsbreath, human dwellings aflame. And then—some devilish thing come whipping from below, twin stones spiraling around each other and searching for him in the sky to wrap around his body and bind his wings tight.
A low, dark growl started deep within his throat. He began to search for an exit, to get away and collect himself before the humans could find and destroy him. Well and in his element, nobody stood to match him, but in his weakened state he did not want to risk a confrontation before he was ready. The dragon knew they feared him here; "Night Fury" was a human noise he knew well, from the times he had unleashed his wrath upon the—village, it was called. Humans lived in villages.
Something in his tail didn't feel right. The dragon arced his neck and stared at his fins. They were the same size, same shape and same weight, but one was his and one was not. A panic edged his consciousness.
When he had begun to consider throwing himself against one of the too-small holes, a rectangle improbably opened in the side of the dwelling, revealing the frame of a human. The Fury flattened the plates on his head and hissed, throwing his face into a contortion of rage. Unexpectedly, the human gave a sound of joy and rushed forward.
"Toothless!"
Outsized and outpowered by a dragon, the Fury had not expected the human—a boy, he saw—to attack. It threw him off and he drew back in surprise before he could unleash a jet of flame. The boy ran forward awkwardly and threw its arms around his neck. The dragon bellowed and pushed the human back with a mighty swipe of his foreleg.
The human went sprawling and its happy noises faded to silence. Those green eyes. They were wide and staring in astonishment. The boy breathed hard.
"Toothless?"
The same sound, but a different inflection that changed the meaning. How could the same noise mean two different things? The Fury nearly forgot himself in wonder before he remembered that a human was there, right there, in front of him, and it had had the gall to be unafraid and rush to him. He bared his teeth, and was satisfied to see the human scoot back a foot.
Suddenly he knew. The boy had done this to him. It had captured him somehow and brought him here. It had done... this to his tail. It had broken him!
The Fury grew wild with hate and darted forward, slamming the human's chest with a foreleg and pinning it to the ground. The boy went down hard and gasped. Pink, pathetic hands scrabbled at his leg futilely. He pressed down harder.
"Toothless!" A third meaning. First, this sound had been joyful, and then incredulous, and now it had a pleading note. The dragon hesitated, and did not breathe death. For an eternal moment they stayed there, luminous yellow eyes boring into green.
"Don't you remember me?" The boy's fear had become fringed with inexplicable hurt. The Fury could smell both of those emotions; the two made a confusing blend. "Toothless... buddy..." It raised its hand now to his face. That was much too impudent and the dragon growled. The hand dropped.
Another eternity. Still the Fury made no move to kill it, and the human boy stared up with those eyes that said so much. Blood had drained from its face, a dragon had it by the chest, and still some other emotion outweighed the fear.
Familiarity. That was what he'd seen in the human's face when it appeared in the doorway. It shocked him.
Eventually he had to move. That, or kill it. He stood poised, nose to nose with the frail creature, but he could not do it. Would not. Knowing that, there was nothing to do but leave this place.
The Fury released his hold on the boy and rounded for the rectangle of light that opened to the outdoors. It was a tight fit but he squeezed out, bolting in a full run to stretch his wings. The wind caught them, lifted him up—and then his world whirled, and he fell. The fin on his tail that was not his flapped uselessly, failing to catch the air correctly. The dragon nosedived into dirt.
Upon raising his head the first thing he saw was more humans. And... dragons!
Was it a raid? No, it was daytime, and nothing was on fire. The dragons were simply there, cavorting around and clearly having a good time. Sheep were grazing unmolested.
Happy sounds. A few of the humans turned to him and began trotting forward. Typically, they carried their instruments of war. Long metal claws, hooked or straight or serrated, they call caught the light wickedly. Now this was more like it. This, he understood. The Fury crouched and snarled, drawing upon the furnace burning ever brightly within him. The humans would know just who they had brought down, and the wrath that they would face for it.
He opened his jaws.
"No!" shouted the boy he'd left behind. Its hands pushed at his head, laughably weak, but the surprise of it succeeded in misdirecting his flame and it burst harmlessly against the ground. The human's arrogance nearly took his breath away.
Letting the boy live had been a mistake. The Fury would not make it twice.