Chapter One: Flying Too High
The cave was barely more than a crude semi-circle in the rock, recessed enough to preserve those seeking safety from baking sunlight and brutal winds but too shallow to offer sanctuary from predators and interlopers. No outcroppings or holes to squeeze behind or into. Thankfully, the environment was lacking in the predator department, though it was also lacking in the anything-edible department as well. Sand and sand and more sand, the color of decaying steel, some loose and flowing, some compact and stable, with only small smatterings of rock breaking up the monotony.
The floor of the cave had one spoil: a natural spring slowly bubbling up from the giving earth, nothing more grand than a puddle on the ground, a holdover from the great floods or rains that had shaped this desolate land so long ago. Toothless had lapped it up greedily upon finding the cave, already parched and overheated in this new land. He was a cold-weather dragon and he found the hot air and sand-whipping wind quite displeasing. Perhaps night would make the atmosphere tolerable, but for now hunkering down in the cave to ride out the day was the best option.
He also needed time to heal up. His right rear leg was tender when weight was applied, and he had numerous scratches on his belly from two consecutive bad landings. Not as bad as the time he lost half his tail rudder, but he was far from fighting shape. A few days of rest would mend him nicely, but only if he had a healthy supply of fish to keep his strength up. Toothless could already tell that this land bore no fish.
Hungry as he was and disappointed that the puddle had nothing living in it that he could snack on, Toothless kept a vigil around his rider, who was still lying on his side in the sand and staring out at the other crude rock formations near the entrance of their cave. He lived; Toothless was certain of that. But his eyes bore no life or luster, his arms hugging his chest and his legs drawn up in a near-fetal position. He'd managed to get his riding armor off, throwing it dispassionately to the side as if it was a sack of garbage, but that was the one action he'd taken in hours. He hadn't even approached the puddle to drink of it.
Toothless had gently nudged Hiccup a few times to get his attention, even going so far as to carefully grab Hiccup's leg in his mouth and drag him toward the puddle. The boy had to be thirsty, he needed to keep his strength up so that he could get to fixing the dragon's saddle and rudder and then get them away from this horrid land. But with surprising ferocity, Hiccup managed to yank his leg out of the dragon's mouth and quietly ordered the dragon to leave him be, he was okay, he wasn't thirsty at all.
Toothless didn't believe one word of it.
The dragon understood Hiccup's behavior, instinctively if not intellectually. Wounded animals, dragons included, often found dark places to mend their injuries, hoping that time would fix their bodies before hunger, thirst, or an opportunistic adversary claimed them. Hiccup was physically fine; his wound was within his mind, and thus much more serious.
The dragon knew they both needed sustenance, but the surrounding land had nothing to offer. He didn't like dining on rodents or birds, but they were palatable in a pinch. Yet neither a single bird song, nor one random scurry of rodent feet, came to the dragon's ears. Flight was required for finding food. Flight was required for survival.
Even if he couldn't fly, he could still perform very short glide-jumps. He could travel some distance that way, even though it would exhaust him quickly. It would be painful with his twisted leg, but it could be done. But that meant leaving Hiccup alone for a long time. Too long a time in such a barren land… and especially with Hiccup in the state he was in.
There was no alternative, certainly not one that the loyal dragon thought of entertaining. He had to wait with Hiccup, wait for his rider to come alive again.
So Toothless sat and waited, alternating between watching the wind sandblast the world outside the cave and watching his rider for positive signs of life. The only one he saw that first long day in the desert was to see Hiccup's eyes close shortly before sundown, the boy mercifully going to sleep. Perhaps slumber would make some difference… any difference.
Night came swiftly once the sun had departed, the desert heat yielding to its polar opposite. The stars were thick and illuminating, tempting the Night Fury with their incessant twinkle. Toothless knew he could be using the night and its cooler air to forage for food, but he still couldn't bring himself to leave Hiccup alone. Toothless was used to this kind of harsh survival situation, having spent a fair leg of his life as a solitary nocturnal hunter, but not Hiccup. He wasn't in the best of hunting shape, either. He felt drained, weary from his numerous crash-related bruises. He had not allowed himself sleep while standing watch around Hiccup, but he couldn't stay awake indefinitely.
He approached Hiccup and surrounded the boy's still form with his larger body, positioning his tail rudder as an impromptu blanket for the boy, sharing his body heat with his beloved rider. Hiccup rustled in his sleep, grabbing Toothless's tail and pulling it closer, snuggling in for warmth. Toothless felt a smidgen of contentment. He could not heal his rider's wounds, and it pained him that he could do so little, but he could keep him company until Hiccup found the strength to rise once more.
The winds howled their continuous cries outside the cave as Toothless tried to sleep with one eye propped open, waiting to see if the nightlife was as dead as the daylife. Eventually the tedium of uneventful guard duty overwhelmed his fears of any lurking dangers, and he joined Hiccup in true slumber, hoping the morning brought more than just heat and heartache.
For Hiccup, that one terrible day could be summed up in one word: blurry.
He remembered the battle in the Repository. The frantic insanity of flying half-metal dragons, flashing myssteel weapons, lava columns that rose up like living tentacles - hard to forget all that.
He remembered how things had gone from desperate to triumphant to desperate to horrific in very short order. One minute, Hiccup and his friends had the Alchemist on the ropes. The next minute, the ceiling was collapsing on their heads, the ocean pouring in like the world's biggest waterfall. A frantic bid for survival, a desperate attempt by a valued friend to save the day, and Astrid…
Astrid was gone.
It kept coming back to him, replaying in his mind like a band of minstrels paid to reenact the saddest part of a tragic play over and over. Astrid, hanging by a sliver of broken bridge with the Alchemist grappled to her legs. A widening waterfall poised to break open and wash her away. Hiccup, desperately reaching out to her, his arms too short and the path too narrow to allow him to get close enough.
The final look in her eyes, as if she had known how this would end.
Then the terrible moment when the girl he loved fell away, along with everything that might have been, disappearing into the soup-thick steam cloud below.
That's where his memory stopped. After that, things got hazy and confusing, almost blessedly so. He had experienced the surreal trip through time and space, weird yellow flickering things surrounding him and carrying him through a bright realm of nothingness. But it was as fleeting as a dream and less substantial. He didn't remember the point where he felt corporal again. He must have passed out during the teleportation – that was the word for it, a magic word that you heard in fairy tales but never in real life. He had awakened briefly on top of Toothless, the dragon gingerly carrying him through blinding winds, before an unnatural fatigue drew him back into unconsciousness.
He eventually fought off the fatigue and became aware of his new and ugly surroundings. He assumed it was Toothless responsible for tucking him in a cave. He knew Toothless was watching over him as he always did when things went sour. He knew they were in a bad place, knew Toothless needed him for something rudder-related, knew his friends were all missing, knew that Nestor shouldn't be missing…
But it was all just… knowing. It was his conscious mind trying to butt in on his pain, trying to get him past that one horrible moment in time when Astrid fell. All that day, it tried and tried and tried. Every time a morsel of reality filtered in, that one horrible moment flicked it away. His mind couldn't shake the agonizing memory.
Astrid was gone.
It was unbelievable… but it had happened.
Stuck in an endless cycle of grief, a second Red Death could've stopped in for a visit and he wouldn't have reacted. Worse, he might have asked it if it wanted seasoning with its Hiccup-sized meal.
Despite a young life with more than its fair share of lonely stretches, Hiccup felt more alone than anytime prior. Yes, Toothless was there, watching over him. Toothless, always trying to help. Toothless, a comfort in the darkest of times… but not this time. The void that occupied Hiccup's soul was not dragon-shaped. For once, Toothless's warm and loving presence could do nothing for him.
As the long, agonizing hours rolled on and the daylight began to fade from this corner of the world, his conscious mind decided to end the ordeal for now, retreat from the losing battle, and mercifully put him out. Hiccup didn't fight it. What did being awake do for him, anyway?
No dreams came to him that night. A mercy, as none of them would have done him any favors.
The faint bluish glow of the dawning sky roused him a good twelve hours later. The gentle light managed to pierce the dark morass he'd fallen into, prompting him to remember that, for better or for worse, he was still alive, and that life had its requirements.
He resisted waking up at first, hoping that this might all be a bad dream. Maybe if he stayed asleep a little longer, the bad dream would change to something like showing up to a dragon training session in his underpants. That would be tolerable.
But the painful scorched feeling down his throat ruined that idea. He felt too miserable to be dreaming. And when he opened his eyes to survey the world, he found the same depressing landscape and sorry-looking cave as when he fell asleep.
Hiccup pushed aside the tail-for-a-blanket that Toothless had draped over him and sat up enough to stretch his sore limbs. His body complained about the lack of movement, and now his stomach was complaining about the lack of food. Even better, his throat felt like a dragon had launched a fireball down it. The body had its requirements, and it couldn't wait for his mental outlook to improve.
His buddy's warm presence had softened the night for him, and he felt somewhat better in body if not in spirit. He gave his sleeping friend's scaly side a grateful rubbing, a sliver of light slipping into his shadowed soul.
Good ol' Toothless. The dragon hadn't left his side the whole time. He continued to slumber, his breathing easy and comforting to listen to, and Hiccup patted him lightly on the head. Toothless stirred slightly at his touch but didn't rouse, though his paws twitched occasionally in that rustling-in-your-sleep kind of way. Hopefully he was dreaming about something pleasant, like an early morning flight through the crisp air above Berk or dive-bombing a school of cod.
A pang of guilt crept in. Good ol' Toothless, indeed. The dragon's rudder was still out of whack. He couldn't forage for himself. The poor guy was probably starving.
Still, matters of thirst came first. Hiccup got up and went to the spring-fed puddle, cupping his hands and drinking until his throat felt moist again. The water had a gritty taste, like it had a little too much rock in it, but it did the trick. He was surprised how much a slated thirst could affect his mood. Gods, how stupid he'd been not to drink anything, especially in this dry climate.
Quenched for now, Hiccup tried walking around to get the kinks out of his bones, but found a new kink instead. His spring-loaded false foot made scraping, grinding sounds with each step, and didn't bounce as efficiently as it should. Sand in the springs, most likely. A good cleaning would fix that… and how far away was he from the nearest smithy, exactly?
Toothless's saddle had a special pouch that contained a small selection of blacksmith tools, mostly tiny wrenches and a curved bar used for prying. You never knew when a rudder breakdown could occur, after all. Good for short repair jobs and jury-rigging, but not much else.
He looked out at the desert and sighed. As fixes went, he was in a pretty big one, but standing around and feeling sorry for himself wasn't going to undo the fix. He'd done too much of that already.
Because the pouch was situated underneath the saddle, there was no way to get to it without jostling Toothless here and there to get off the saddle. By the time Hiccup had retrieved the pouch and was placing its contents on a nearby stone for easy access, he became aware of Toothless's big reptilian eyes staring at him, sleepy and yet keenly scrutinizing his rider. No boisterous good-morning dragon greeting this time, only a tired expression conveying unmistakable concern.
Hiccup found himself staring back at his dragon pal, the inertia of his bout of problem solving arrested by those caring eyes. He wanted to talk, say to Toothless that he was okay now and that he didn't have to worry and stand guard anymore, that he was past the worst of his misery. But he said nothing of the sort. He had a bond with Toothless that went deeper than rider and mount, or master and pet. Years of relying on each other in the sky and in life did that kind of thing. Toothless knew his moods, and he knew when he was lying. There was no point saying he was okay when it was the furthest thing from the truth.
To prove it, his thoughts quickly switched to a darker tone. Robbed of the distraction that fixing Toothless's rudder had brought, that old cycle of loss returned, biting at his will once more. But this time, his buddy's steadfast loyalty, apparent in those dragon eyes of his, made it less overwhelming. As much as it hurt, Hiccup couldn't deny the world once more. There was more than just his messed-up life at stake.
Hiccup placed the tools in his hands down by the others, crept in close to Toothless's neck, and wrapped his arms around the black dragon. Toothless leaned his head into the hug as Hiccup closed his eyes and felt the sobs well up inside him. He squeezed harder as the sobs became vocal, his tears sliding off his face and onto the dragon's scales. Toothless bore the young man's grief patiently and lovingly, letting the boy openly grieve for as long as needed.
It took the better part of the morning.
Two pieces of good news were found as Hiccup restarted his repairs. One was a rogue piece of jerky that had made its way into the tool pouch on Toothless's saddle. Covered in lint, stuck with sand or dirt or something else best left unidentified, Hiccup cleaned it off as best he could and offered it to the dragon. Toothless refused it at first, a mysterious reaction as he liked the stuff well enough to eat it, until Hiccup realized the dragon wanted him to have it instead. They compromised by splitting it in half, which barely made it a morsel for the dragon but helped settled Hiccup's stomach for now.
The second piece of good fortune was that Toothless didn't have any serious injuries from the battle in the Repository. Scrapes, bruising, lost scales, and a rear leg that Toothless growled at Hiccup not to touch, but nothing worse. Not a surprising outcome, considering that dragons were generally resilient to fall-based impacts that might break every bone in a human body, but Hiccup still instinctively fretted over Toothless's health after every crash and bad touchdown. Considering that the two of them had replacement body parts from their previous adventures together, Hiccup didn't think his concern was excessive.
"I have this story that keeps running through my head. Something Nestor told me a few weeks ago," Hiccup mused, working free the rudder from the dragon's tail with his mini-crowbar. He had taken to talking constantly while he worked his smithing magic on the dragon's rudder, not so much to entertain Toothless but to keep his thoughts from going places he didn't want them to go.
The dragon kept his eyes on the dreary horizon outside the cavern, the sun beating down on the landscape and heating up the arid ground. The wind had picked up as well, though their cave sheltered them from the majority of it. There didn't seem to be anything to guard against in this forsaken land, but Toothless was determined to stay on guard anyway. At least they wouldn't be sticking around for too long, as the rudder's damage was largely superficial and within Hiccup's power to address out in the field. They should be in a flyable state by sundown.
"Nestor likes his Greek mythology," continued Hiccup as he worked to clear the latest jam in the linkup. "This myth was about an inventor who was trying to escape from an unpleasant king and created a set of wings made of feathers and wax. Well, actually, he created two sets, one for him and one for his son. I forget the dad's name, Daedul-something, but the kid's name was Icarus and he was one of those types that never listened to his dad. I can relate to that. Anyway, the inventor tells Icarus that they're flying over the sea to safety but that he shouldn't fly too high or else the sun will melt the wax on his wings and he'll fall to his death. Guess the first thing Icarus does after that warning."
Naturally, Toothless didn't make any guesses. "After Nestor told me that story, my first thought was that Icarus should've gone with dragons instead of feathers and wax. But I got what he was saying. Heed the warnings of your elders and don't fly higher than you can handle. I thought it was a silly lesson. If I'd played it safe all my life, you and I wouldn't be having this one-sided conversation. Yet… yet here I am, in the middle of some blighted wasteland, with no idea what happened to the others… to Nestor… to…"
He forced himself to swerve his thoughts away from its dangerous course, his hands ceasing their activity as he fought off this new wave of despair. The analogy – keep to the analogy. "Nestor warned me about this life, and I didn't listen. Is this what happens when you're flying too high for too long? Something finally brings you down to earth again? Did I earn this fate?"
Toothless looked back at him with renewed concern, hearing the catch in his voice as he talked. The strength of the dragon's gaze solidified Hiccup's mood again, forcing his hands back to their important repair job. "Remind me not to listen to anymore Greek myths. Overall, they're really depressing."
Navigating around the despair-filled pitfalls in his mind was proving an arduous task. If it wasn't Astrid, it was Nestor. In his heart, he figured Arc and the others left behind in the Repository had made it to safety. Arc would have found a way to get them out – he was chalk full of Hyperion cleverness and persistence, after all. But Nestor had come through the mystical thingy with him and Toothless, that much he remembered. Nestor had saved them both from a watery grave… and had disappeared into nothingness for his troubles.
He didn't believe it, though. He had no reason not to, but he still couldn't believe it. Hiccup had too much to deal with, too much sorrow already. Another dead friend was too much to take on right now.
He lapsed into silence while he finished the repair work. Talking was not helping him get through this.
A good hour later, the rudder had been reassembled and the linkup repaired to a workable state. It wasn't pretty, with several kinks in the metal that might cause problems after prolonged use, but it might just get them to civilization and a proper blacksmith shop.
"Okay, bud, let's see if it works," he told Toothless. The dragon quickly stood up and flexed his tail rudder, which creaked more than usual but responded to Toothless's tail movements as it should. Then the dragon moved out of the cave and into the sunlight, the harsh glare making his bluish-black scales stand out like tar on a newly repaired roof.
Using the brisk wind to aid his liftoff, Toothless carefully took to the air solo and gave the rudder a thorough testing, banking left and right, spinning a few times, roosting for a moment on top of one of the finger-like rock formations nearby, climbing and diving in rapid succession like a boat on a choppy sea. The dragon was clearly happy to be back in the air, though his enthusiasm wasn't as unbridled as usual. He didn't take to the maneuvering with much gusto.
Hiccup sighed in relief as he watched his friend put the rudder through its paces. One problem out of the way. Now he just had to figure out where they were and where they were going.
Basic direction was a no-brainer. With the help of the sun, he figured he had north more or less figured out. The only reason he had for going north was that Berk was always in a northern direction no matter where he went. It helped to live so close to the Arctic Circle that on the worst winter days you could spit and have the spittle freeze in midair. So when in doubt, head north.
Of course, north could also lead to more deserts instead, and with no guarantees of another easily accessible watering hole.
The other problem was navigation. Traveling during the day would make them dry up and crumble into dragon-scented dust. Flying at nighttime wasn't a problem for Night Furies, but the stars here were of a different configuration than in the northern skies. Hiccup was still working on his celestial navigation back home – he'd be completely lost here.
So travel during the day and get roasted. Travel during the night and get lost. Decisions.
Hiccup kept his concerns to himself as Toothless landed, the dragon wincing as he touched down on his bad leg but happy enough to walk over to Hiccup and commence the nuzzling and licking. Toothless now thought they were free to leave this place. Hiccup was not so convinced any longer.
Regardless, Hiccup planned on using the sunset and twilight time for a bit of recon around the area. An hour out, an hour back. That should give him a better picture of their situation. His grumbling stomach was trying to rush him on this, but it wouldn't pay to fly off to find food and then die of thirst a few days later instead.
With a few hours left to sundown, Hiccup spent his time cleaning his false leg as best he could, packing gear, checking over his riding armor (and debating if he was going to bother to take it with him at all), trying to find a way to store some water for travel (and finding none – he left most of his supply containers back on Captain Linebreaker's vessel), and finally creating a game of stone throwing where he threw a rock and then tried to get all subsequent rocks to land right by it.
Toothless napped in the shelter of the cave.
Hiccup eventually did the same when he ran out of throwable stones, using his dragon buddy for a pillow. He wasn't all that tired, but sleep seemed like a better option than staying awake with nothing to do. Because that led to thinking… and that was the one thing he didn't want to do.
A dream did come to him, but it was nothing that he expected to see. He had assumed that his nights would be as troubled as his days, his dreams full of tormenting images of Astrid, happy moments to make his waking hours worse or sad moments to keep his mood consistent all the time.
But his dreams went a different direction entirely.
He was resting exactly as he had been when he drifted off, pressed against Toothless's warm side while facing the cavern entrance. He thought he was awake initially, as nothing dream-like was occurring outside of the sunlight being blurry and distorted, like it was in his face and blinding him despite the cover offered by the cave. The world was little off, the wind howling as before but somehow moving the sands along slower. The thin stands of clouds in the air were moving the opposite direction of the breeze, and the nearby rock-fingers were thicker and longer than Hiccup remembered.
None of it felt different. It was a dream – everything made its own type of sense in a dream. Yet Hiccup could tell that this wasn't the real world, but a not-quite-right copy of it. The sand was the wrong color, more tan that rust. Toothless breathed the wrong way, heavier than normal. He couldn't feel the dry heat of the air or the rocky bed beneath him. A hundred little details that combined into an incomplete picture of reality.
That's not what ultimately disturbed him. That honor went to the woman walking along the cave entrance.
Much like the dream, he wasn't certain she was a woman, or more precisely a girl. She seemed perfectly human, a shapely feminine figure clad head to toe in a black robe, her hair hidden beneath the robe's hood. Her face was young and striking, a few years younger than Hiccup, her skin very dark and blemish-free. She walked as if she had all the time in the world, the fabric of her robe billowing behind her in defiance of the wind that was blowing at her back, her boots marking the sand as she walked.
He thought to call out to her, ask who she was and all that, yet he couldn't summon the will to do so. She didn't look his way at all. She strolled on by as if hypnotized or unable to see the cavern or anything inside the cavern. She walked on as if firm in her destination and certain of what fate awaited her when she got there.
He watched as she passed the entrance and left his sight, and he felt a very strong compulsion to pursue her. She had walked this way for a reason, and the reason involved…
The jostling that knocked Hiccup from the dream made him sit up and yell out, "I'm up, I'm up, I'll get the bucket of water," which only made sense if you knew anything about Hiccup's life pre-Toothless. Hiccup immediately got his bearings and found the real world a lot dimmer but a whole lot more stable than the false one he'd just dreamed, the sun almost below the horizon and casting the land in a red-orange haze.
That dream… one of the oddest he'd had in his life, even beating out the time he dreamt he was a walrus attempting to recite poetry to a crowd of excited gnomes. Well, perhaps not as odd, but far more intense. Even more so, he remembered the details of the dream very well, right down to the discolored sand and napping Night Fury, unlike the nervous Night Fury he had on his hands.
Yes, the reason why he'd been jostled awake wasn't a good one. Toothless was on his feet, his back arched and a low growl rumbling in his throat. His defensive posture was aimed at the two other dragons parked outside the cave, both of them staring back at Toothless and Hiccup with threatening postures of their own.
While Hiccup knew more about dragons than ninety percent of the world's sages combined, there were some holes in his knowledge base. Besides the usual Nadders, Zipplebacks, Gronckles, Nightmares, and Terrible Terrors that lived in and around Berk, Hiccup had had encounters with several exotic species over the last two years, and first-time encounters were never peaceful affairs. Every dragon had their likes and dislikes, their talents and weak points. And while this wasn't the first time he'd seen a Skrill in the flesh instead of reading about it in the Dragon Manual, it was the first time he was close enough to sneeze at one.
Both of the Skrills blocking off the cave exit had narrow torsos the color of charcoal, leading to angular mouths that had tiny pale eyes at the very tip and a small hooked horn above their nostrils. Two rear legs were positioned halfway down the body, the torso ending in a massive tail with no rudder, only long spikes all along the spine. No forward sets of legs were apparent, so the dragons used their set of bat-like wings as balancing limbs on the ground. Spikes adorned parts of the wing and the entirety of the Skrills' back, lined theirs belly in linear fashion, and formed a mane of rear-facing stabby protrusions where the head met the neck. A difficult creature to envision a rider on, even if its hide didn't crackle with little blue bolts of wriggling electrical current that leapt from spine to spine. The Skrill one on the left had slightly grayer coloration, but otherwise the two spiky dragons were very similar in size and profile.
That was the thing about Skrills – they were largely an unknown species. Berk had never actually suffered a raid from a Skrill. The few Viking-Skrill encounters recorded or passed along were by Vikings out at sea in the middle of tempest-class thunderstorms. Tales told over the centuries spoke of Skrills flying amidst the powerful lightning blasts, appearing and disappearing like phantoms in the torchlight, riding the lightning to unknown destinations. There was much debate about whether a Skrill had ever attacked a Viking, considering that one only met them in storms and storms were known to cause confusion and disorientation when they weren't frying you with lightning or drowning you in the waves. Skrills didn't socialize with other dragons and they were definitely not friendly with humans.
Under better circumstances, this might have been a banner day for Hiccup. Getting to know an elusive dragon species lent itself to excitement and adventure. But these two were not in the getting-to-know-you mode. Their long mouths were wide open, giving him a great view of their dagger-sharp teeth and pink tongues. Raspy hisses came from their throats, their wings rising into the air as they balanced on their legs, raising and lowering their necks in a rhythmic pattern.
A warning dance. Hiccup recognized the behavior from other dragons. It's what a dragon did when it felt threatened but wasn't ready to attack. Unfortunately, it quickly became an attack if the threat didn't move off almost immediately. Hiccup and Toothless were the threat.
"Take it easy, bud," Hiccup whispered to Toothless. The dragon kept up his defense posture, bearing his teeth to warn the Skrills of a serious hurting should this get hostile. Hiccup prayed that wasn't going to happen. Despite being "lightning dragons," Skrills didn't project lightning in their attacks. Only Thunderchilds had that distinction. Skrills shot white fire in long continuous bursts, and the two Skrills before them could easily blacken the entire cavern. Toothless would be okay, being fireproof, but not so much Hiccup.
"Is this their nest or something?" muttered Hiccup, looking for signs of previous habitation. No obvious evidence of dragon nesting, no old droppings or rearranged debris for bedding. There was the spring, though. Maybe this was their watering hole.
"Bud, let's try to clear out," suggested Hiccup. "They may just want the water."
Toothless ceased his growling, looked back at Hiccup with a wary eye, and then waggled an affirmative. Hiccup pointed to the right side of the cavern, where there was just enough room to squeeze by the Skrills.
The dragon took one step and the Skrills instantly reared up again on their legs, their hissing intensifying. Their bobbing heads became more rapid, their eyes narrowing. Hiccup grabbed Toothless by the saddle to prompt him to halt. Obviously, moving towards the Skrills was considered a provocation. Problem was, there was no way to get out of the cave without doing so. The Skrill had them fenced in.
Hiccup glanced backwards. The cave was too shallow for retreat. There was no way to get out without going through the Skrills. He gave the agitated dragons a dopey, apologetic look. "Uh… didn't mean to intrude on your favorite hole. If you guys back off, we'll leave right now and…"
The hissing grew louder still. Toothless resumed his growling as the Skrills' posturing grew more threatening. For whatever reason, they weren't going to allow them to go. They were too caught up in their instinctual aggression to back down.
This was going to get ugly any second.
"Okay, new plan," said Hiccup into Toothless's ear, slowly crawling onto the saddle. He didn't have his harness on yet, but he wasn't about to go fetch it. He'd just have to do a lot of clinging.
"When I say now, we rush. Go right between them. Maybe we'll take them by surprise and get past them before they can…"
Before Hiccup could finish relaying his risky plan, a third Skrill thumped down from out of nowhere, in the very spot Hiccup had aimed for, just behind the first two and cutting off the proposed escape route.
"That just figures," said Hiccup dejectedly.
This new one didn't join in the warning dance, however. It hissed, but the hiss was of a different octave and inflection than the others. The other Skrills ceased their warning dance and faced the newcomer, a new variety of hissing erupting from their gaping mouths. The newcomer hissed back in a strange tone, prompting more hisses from the others. It grew into a hissing choir, where Hiccup couldn't tell which dragon hissed what.
This has to be some kind of conversation, mused Hiccup. Hopefully not about which dragon gets the choicest bits off the human.
This went on for many long moments until the general hissing came to an end. The first two Skrills closed their mouths, bobbed their heads up and down once in a slow acquiescing manner, and then launched themselves into the air, disappearing out of sight. Their shadows sped along the ground to the east until they shrunk into the sand dunes and faded from view.
Hiccup sat atop Toothless, baffled and relieved all at once. Toothless ceased his growling and gave the newest Skrill his full attention, though his posture didn't relax. This Skrill watched the others fly away before turning his focus on Hiccup, moving forward a few steps in a casual fashion. Its scales were more greenish-black than the others, like a forest in shadow. It had an odd expression on its face. Rather than threatened, it seemed almost curious.
Not knowing if this Skrill's intentions were any less unfriendly than the others, Hiccup almost ordered Toothless to go for the sky. Having one Skrill to deal with instead of two dramatically improved their odds of survival. Yet his gut was telling him to stay put. He was having a dose of déjà vu and he suspected the next few seconds would cast everything in a new light.
He wasn't disappointed.
"Ze Dragon Rider, I presume," the Skrill spoke.