Author's Last Notes (well, except for the ones at the end of the story): Phew! Even with that three-week lead time, I just barely got this done. The new school year has turned out to be a banner year for subbing. Good thing I gave myself lots of time to get this right, but you all can be the judge on how right I got it.
I went with three chapters after all. The pacing needed that last chapter. The rest of my notes (and the answer to a burning question I know a few readers have at this point) will be at the end of the last chapter, so as not to spoil anything.
Onwards... for the last time.
Chapter Seventeen: Standing Against
It only took Snotlout a day to realize the real truth about leadership: easy to criticize, hard to actually pull off.
"Ruff, Tuff, tighten up a bit," he yelled out to the wayward Zippleback riders, who were losing formation cohesion and drifting away from his Nightmare due to - surprise, surprise - another pointless argument. What was it over this time, the color of the sky?
Off his other wing, Fishlegs and Chomps diligently kept in line, though mostly because Fenrir was flying at half his cruising speed. Even then, the smaller dragon was huffing and puffing from the long flight, not built to glide like other dragons. But Fishlegs refused to be counted out of the scout flight, fretting about Hiccup and Astrid and the growing list of bad things that could have happened to them.
Scouting – just another word for boring. Spending hours over vast stretches of flowing sea, hoping to spot one overdue black dragon and his two riders. If he didn't feel a pestering sense of duty to Hiccup and Astrid after all their flights together, he might have given up already and sent the squad off to dive-bomb patrol ships or something else Hiccup would never allow in a million years. Instead, his voice was getting hoarse from screaming at Ruff and Tuff to keep their heads in the game for the seventh time this flight.
He'd give it another hour, and then they'd turn back home. Hopefully he didn't lose it before then.
"Are we further north than yesterday?" remarked Fishlegs, looking off to the northern horizon.
"Shouldn't be," replied Snotlout. "Same route as yesterday. I may have fallen asleep during navigation training, but I know all the local landmarks."
"It's a sheep, boogerlips," came Ruffnut's insult, dislodging the conversation.
"No, it's a wolf in sheep's clothing, hair muncher," countered Tuffnut.
"That makes no sense," said Ruff. "It looks nothing like a wolf."
"That's the point," said Tuff. "It's a good disguise."
Already regretting his close proximity to the twins, Snotlout almost asked what they were bickering about when he found the answer floating in the sky to the west. It was a lonely cloud, thick and squat with leggy parts that gave it a slight resemblance to one of Berk's common livestock.
They were arguing over a cloud. Wonderful.
"You sure we're not further north?" Fishlegs asked again.
"Yes!" admonished Snotlout. "Why do you keep asking me that?"
"I see an island I don't recognize." He pointed to the north, where his attention had been for the last few minutes.
"C'mon, Fishlegs," chided Snotlout, "you know there aren't any islands this close to Berk."
"I'm serious," insisted Fishlegs, "there's something out that way. It's big and… you can see the sun glint off it at the right angle."
"The sun glinting off an island?" Snotlout sighed. As soon as Hiccup got back, he was resigning his post.
"You have to stare at it for awhile… See? Did you see that? More sun glinting." Fishlegs adamantly pointed at the so-called island in the distance, as if pointing at it more would make him seem less crazy.
Deciding to humor him in order to kill the discussion, Snotlout diverted his eyes that way but didn't see anything remotely like an island. There was a grayish or silver-tone streak, but that could be anything – shipwreck, odd-colored kelp bed…
A glint.
Snotlout squinted, knowing that he was enabling Fishlegs but now curious about the object in the distance. There was a shine to the indistinct mass of… something. Fishlegs was right about that.
"What are you two staring at?" asked Tuffnut, the twins' argument having mercifully ended.
"There's an island out there," said Fishlegs.
Ruffnut snickered. "C'mon, guys, you know there aren't any…"
"I know!" said Snotlout, losing what little cool he had left. "But you know what? We're going to go look anyway, because otherwise I'm going to have Fenrir eat one of you."
As the squad veered toward the mystery spot in the ocean, Tuffnut leaned in toward his sister and whispered, "You're right, sis. He's a lot more fun to rile up than Hiccup."
Almost half-an-hour later, the three dragons and their riders were within spitting distance of the strange mass in the ocean, and none of them had any clue what to make of it. Snotlout thought it was a huge chunk of metal drifting through the ocean, which didn't make any sense. Didn't metal sink? Wasn't that why boats were made of wood? All that he was sure of was that it was shiny, big, and… moving. The wake the thing was leaving behind was massive, capable of swamping any longboat that tried to cross over it.
"Reminds me of that one time Gobber left his hook-arm on his forge during a dragon raid," said Tuffnut. "By the time he pulled it out of the fire, it kinda looked like that."
"I think something terrible lives on that thing," said Ruffnut. She smiled mischievously and added, "Let's get closer."
Snotlout didn't think it was such a hot idea. Something in the water was pushing the island along, flippers or tendrils or the like. Islands moving themselves? Icebergs he could get, but not this. But the thing's general direction was more or less Berk, which meant it could be a threat. He needed to tell Chief Stoick something other than there's an island-sized chunk of metal swimming our way. One flyover couldn't hurt.
As a group, they dropped altitude and flew to within a few dozen feet above the face of the island, the vacant metallic landscape making the dragons fidgety and uneasy. Snotlout could relate – something about the thing made him feel like he was being watched, though there wasn't a single animal crawling on it.
"Any thoughts, Legs?" he asked as they neared the raised center of the island.
"It's not a dragon," said Legs.
"Thanks, I couldn't have figured that out," Snotlout snarked back. "Just your best guess, Legs. What are we dealing with?"
"Um…" Fishlegs took a moment to consider, nervously tapping his pudgy fingers on his helmet. "Okay, it looks like it's made of the same metal as those shards Hiccup showed us. That can't be a coincidence. The surface is made to look like an island, probably for camouflage, but I'm betting that this thing…"
Chomps swerved to the right suddenly as a giant tentacle formed out of the metal ground, growing tens of yards long in seconds and swiping at the little Gronckle. The tentacle missed him by inches, Fishlegs saved by his dragon's instincts.
"… SPROUTS TENTACLES TO KILL US!" screamed out Fishlegs.
"CLIMB!" ordered Snotlout, and for once there were no arguments. Other tentacles came out of the island, seeking to pluck the dragons right out of the air, but the squad outdistanced them before they could get halfway to their prey. Soon there was a grotesque army of inhuman limbs that had literally come out of nowhere, hundreds of them, all reaching up toward the fleeing dragons.
"We're going back now!" declared Snotlout. "Berk needs to know about this yesterday!" He was trying to think clearly while his body reflexively quivered with terror. It wasn't helping that his faithful mount, Fenrir, a Nightmare who loved the thrill of combat, was also quaking beneath him.
The metal island came within viewing distance of Berk a few hours later, the monstrous thing following the coastline a couple dozen miles out to sea and hiding behind one of the reefs that surrounded the island. Hiding couldn't be what it was doing, though, as it was clearly visible beyond the reefs and Stoick expected the reefs to give the devil no more trouble than a pebble in the boot could keep him from swinging a warhammer.
From atop a cliff on the far side of the village, he watched the thing settle into position. The thing – he might as well call it what it. The Monolith, the ancient weapon Hiccup had warned him about. It couldn't be anything else. It had come to Berk, alone, with no sign of Gunnarr escorts or any indication that Hiccup, or his allies, was nearby.
Hiccup. Where was the boy? How stupid he had been to let Hiccup go on that fool's errand. For all he knew, Hiccup had already tried to stop the Monolith and his body now floated out in the breakers of some foreign…
No, he couldn't do this right now. For his people, he had to be chieftain. His people needed him to be Stoick the Vast, not Hiccup's father. Though it pained him, he absolutely couldn't think about his son's fate, couldn't think about what the Monolith's appearance and his son's disappearance implied.
Behind him, Berk was in an orderly panic. Warriors were grabbing their weapons and mounting their dragons, forming ranks based on dragon type and experience. Free-ranging dragons were clustering together in packs and flocks, some ready for a fight and others ready to flee. Most of the dragons remembered Red Death, the Tyrant Dragon of the North, all too vividly. Something far bigger, and much worse, had just arrived at their new nest.
"Whatever it is, it's smart," remarked Gobber to his side, outfitted with a war axe on his interchangeable arm. "Well out of range of our catapults. Then again, it can't do much from all the way out there."
"It's up to something," said Stoick. "It didn't come here to sightsee."
"Must be trying to lure our ships and dragons out where it can maneuver."
"If it wants us, it'll have to come get us," declared Stoick. "We have the high ground, and we're keeping it."
"At least the Gunnarr haven't shown," remarked Gobber. "Thank Odin for small favors. We're going to have a hard enough time keeping the dragons in their ranks without Hiccup to…" Gobber quieted upon seeing his friend's distressing expression. Knowing his friend's concerns, he patted his friend on the shoulder with his non-lethal hand.
"The lad's okay, Stoick. I know it in my heart. There's no Viking out there more resourceful than him."
Regardless of whether the optimism was justified or not, Stoick accepted the support without comment. Shoving his fears into his inner fortress of emotional repression, he considered sending a recon flight out to investigate the Monolith. Snotlout and his friends hadn't given him much to go on, but he feared that any dragon he sent out would be one less dragon at his disposal. He might need every fire breather he had.
"You think you know how the world works," said Stoick, "and then something like this happens. All my life, I thought I understood what made a Viking a Viking, what a dragon was only good for, and what men were and weren't capable of creating. Not long ago, I would have rushed out to meet that thing. Now I wait around like an old man."
"We're not the spring chickens we used to be, that's for sure," observed Gobber. "Nothing wrong with that."
"I should have listened to him, Gobber," said Stoick. "Hiccup was right… again. I should have mobilized us for war, taken down that fleet while we had the chance. I had the opportunity to be my old self again, and I turned away."
"You were being the responsible leader you needed to be," rebutted Gobber. "No one but the Gods knows how life will turn out… and personally, I'm not sure the Gods know, either."
Movement from the Monolith ended the conversation. The island remained stationary, but something was emerging from its surface. Snotlout had talked of tendrils or tentacles that could tower into the sky, but there was nothing to grab out there. Surely the great metal beast couldn't extend its reach all the way to Berk… could it?
The "something" wasn't a tendril. It was miniscule compared to the Monolith, but it was unattached to its creator, floating or flapping freely. The speck rose further upward, and it was soon joined by other specks… then dozens of specks… and then hundreds of specks. Stoick's heart picked up the tempo as he witnessed the army of specks grow bigger as they raced toward Berk. He didn't know much about the Monolith or its powers, but he recognized an invasion force when he saw one.
"To your positions!" Stoick cried out, charging back to the village. "To the air! The enemy comes!"
"Good thing I decided not to wear clean undies today," commented Gobber, hobbling after his old friend.
The dragons of Berk took to the air to meet the oncoming threat, a great flight of reptiles surging from the village like bees pouring from a hive. Close to five-dozen had riders, less than half of their total air power. It was hard to say how the riderless dragons would react, but these were the loyal ones, the dragons willing to lay down their lives for their nest and their friends.
Nadders and Nightmares led the way, soaring past the slower Zipplebacks and Gronckles. A few Terrible Terrors flew alongside their bigger brothers, though most of them hung back at the village. The sole exception to this pattern was the Dragon Squad, Snotlout leading the way on Fenrir, the twins to his left, Fishlegs to his right. They stayed in the middle of the flight, none of them eager to engage the Monolith's forces after their morning encounter, and especially not with their squad down two members… the good ones.
"Keep close and make your shots count," said Snotlout, talking to himself as much as to his squadmates. "Today, we show them what this squad can do."
"Dying's not part of that, right?" said Fishlegs.
I hope not, Snotlout thought to himself, but he didn't say it. No sense in tempting destiny.
The enemy shapes quickly grew definition and form, Snotlout recognizing them just as the two opposing armies crashed against each other. There was no mistaking the skeletal, reptilian nature of the attackers, almost identical to the ones he had fought before, though this time they were made of shining metal. Metal-bone dragons, their wings beating the air and their jaws wide and heavily fortified with row after row of deadly teeth. Each one was symmetrical and uniform, as if forged from the same mold. Living metal things like that skele-bull monster Hiccup encountered. Snotlout now regretted not having taken Hiccup's tale seriously.
A handful of the metal skele-dragons were larger versions, the same horrific shape but three times as big and carrying clumps of excess metal in their ribcages, filling the spaces in-between their ribs. These ones flew higher than their smaller allies, trying to avoid the battle as much as possible but still heading towards Berk. Snotlout couldn't figure out their intentions. How could you attack Berk from that height?
Soon enough, his thoughts became centered on not dying as dragon scales crashed against metal skin above the teeming ocean. The lead dragons opened up and spewed flaming death at the oncoming horde, scoring some hits in the initial attack. Liquid fire stuck to the metal and ate it, causing several metallic monsters to spiral down into the sea while others literally exploded into fragments and dust. But the barrage barely thinned the great multitude that rushed into the fray.
The metal skele-dragons didn't have breath weapons, not like the ones Snotlout fought previously. These ones were far from helpless, though, and Snotlout watched a riderless green-hued Nadder get rammed by two skele-dragons, the monsters clawing and snapping as they dragged the poor dragon down to an unknown fate below.
The two armies splintered into dozens of individual battles, dragon tailing monster, monster tailing dragon. Despite being significantly outnumbered, the dragons held their own with their fire breath and their tenacity, riders acting as lookouts and leaders. The experienced warriors fired arrows from their bows or bashed a skele-dragon's head when one got too chummy, but their weapons ineffectively bounced off the unnatural steel. Dragon claws and teeth were useless, not even taking the shine off the metal. Most riders figured this out early on and stuck to commanding their dragons. But not all dragons were such quick learners and a few paid for their natural inclination to bite and scratch with their lives.
Fenrir took out one skele-dragon with a well-placed blast to its head, the monster exploding into shards as Snotlout and his group struggled to stay in formation. Snotlout had to resist the urge to take off on his own – he might not like being in charge, but he was still the squad leader. Hiccup must have rubbed off on him, an irritating notion that made him want to bathe… and he hated baths. Even worse, he was actually missing the guy. That made him feel even more unclean.
"What are those things doing?" asked Ruffnut, referring to the bigger skele-dragons, the ones he was calling heavies, which were passing over their heads without engaging. Their smaller cousins were sufficiently distracting the other dragons so that no one was attacking them. Snotlout didn't understand what they were up to, but he couldn't dismiss the possibility that they were bad news for Berk.
The Zipplebacks and the Gronckles were having a hard time against small, fast-moving targets, though they could keep the nimble skele-dragons at bay for the most part. But against big, slow-moving targets? They might be murderous.
"Go after the heavies," he ordered. "I'm staying here."
"What happened to sticking together?" said Tuffnut.
"We're playing to our strengths," said Snotlout. "Hurry up, before those things reach Berk."
There was no further discussion as Fishlegs and the twins flew after the heavy skele-dragons. Hoping he hadn't just made a colossal blunder in leadership, but also thrilled to be free of the burden, Snotlout twisted Fenrir around and went after the nearest skele-dragon. He was back to doing what he did best: making life miserable for others.
The grounded Vikings of Berk had split themselves up into various defensive positions, some manning catapults and ballista while others lined up in ranks of archers and flankers. This was their traditional strategy against airborne adversaries. So far, the defenders were twiddling their thumbs and watching the dramatic fracas play out away from them, something the hardened Berkian warriors weren't used to.
Stoick stood with Gobber and a score of his best melee fighters near the center of the village, watching the wing of heavy skele-dragons approach from on high. "Come on down here, beasties," he growled. "We'll show you the time of your lives."
"What are they going to do from up there, piddle on us?" commented Gobber. "They won't hit anything from that height." In the past, a few smarter-than-average dragons had cracked open cottage roofs or disabled catapults by dropping rocks on them, but they had to get in close to do it accurately.
A new development came in the form of two dragons flying in from behind the heavy formation and harassing one of the trailing monsters. The twins on their Zippleback did a flyby of the lagging monster, the dragon's gas-head spraying the metal beast with greenish-yellow combustion vapors. The gas clung to the metal like barnacles on a ship, discoloring the massive thing but not harming it or slowing it down.
The Zippleback moved off as the Gronckle came in, Fishlegs pointing with his "aiming stick" at the discolored monster. A red-hot blast of fire quickly connected with the beast and ignited the gas, surrounding the monster in a cloud of blistering flame. The metal beast blackened and melted, parts of it disintegrating as it soundlessly fell from the sky. The Berkians cheered for their brief triumph over the skele-dragons – a very brief triumph.
The dozen remaining heavy skele-dragons were over Berk now, spread out to cover as wide an area as possible. What they covered it with was bits of themselves, the metal clinging to their ribs abruptly dropping off and plummeting to the ground like man-sized raindrops. The majority of the metal drops fell in clusters, hitting barren patches of grass and dirt and sending puffs of earth into the air. A few unlucky houses were pelted with the metal, their roofs caving in from the damage, but the buildings and defenses were essentially left alone by the barrage.
The heavy skele-dragons finished their run and took up a circular holding pattern above Berk, Fishlegs and the twins attempting to bring down another one but finding this beast less cooperative. Stoick was too concerned with the tear-shaped metal clumps scattered amidst his village to watch. His concern drew from the fact that the clumps were moving on their own, rocking in their little craters until their tear-shaped end was upright.
Then they morphed, the metal flattening and twisting into new limbs as if a divine hand was shaping them with an invisible chisel and hammer. The metamorphosis baffled Stoick and the rest, rooting them in place as skulls and fingers, legs and feet replaced the misshapen bombs that had bombarded the village. The Monolith was married to the undead-monster motif as the metal shapes became skeletal, forming bones that were not bones and steel joints that moved on their own power. Their constant malicious grins were composed of simple human teeth, their eyes nothing but empty, hollow sockets, as vacant as their souls.
The metamorphosis soon ran its course and the ominous human skeletons began to march out of their landing craters, as tall as the biggest Viking but as skinny as flagpoles. Stoick and his warriors shrugged off their stupor and went on the attack, Stoick leading the way with his warhammer and a savage cry to action.
It was like smashing an anvil, so solid the skeleton's head was when Stoick's hammer found it. But he was good at smashing anvils, among other things, and he knocked the skeleton to the ground. The devil-empowered skeleton showed no signs of damage, though, its skinless grin unmarred. His warhammer got the worst of it, a crack running right down the middle of the head. When the skeleton stood back up and swiped at Stoick with a bare hand, Stoick blocked it with his hammer, his arms almost buckling from the power of the blow. Not bad for something with no muscle tone.
Chaos erupted all across the village as the metal skeletons quietly and methodically assaulted the village, some attacking the nearest warrior and others attacking the nearest… anything. Wagons, kegs, catapults, houses, stone wells, wooden fences – if it existed, it was fair game. The poor put-upon sheep of Berk, apathetic from centuries of being a dragon's first choice for dinner, scattered and bleated as the skeletons rampaged through the village.
The heavy skele-dragons joined the attack, ignoring the harassment from the twins and Fishlegs as they swept in. Catapults were smashed as they rammed through the comparatively weak wood, their crews jumping for their lives. Homes became piles of refuse as their top halves were sheered off, their occupants screaming and fleeing into the open. Arrows and ballista made impact with the heavies and broke against their nigh-indestructible armor.
Even against such overwhelming power, Vikings can be incredibly stubborn. The warriors went at the creatures as if there were any other foe, beating them into the ground, throwing them off cliffs, tripping them and burying them in rubble. Catapult rounds sailed into the skele-dragons and knocked them off course, albeit briefly. Shields splintered, axes cracked, swords bent and shattered, but the Vikings would not yield their home to the devils. Not once in three centuries, and not now.
Stoick picked up one of the infernal things, the skeleton squirming in his iron grip, and bashed it against another one. A desperate move, but he was pleased to see the skeleton's metal skin buckle and cave when used against its fellow monstrosities, and he reduced the two skeletons to twisted heaps in short order.
At Stoick's back the whole time, Gobber broke his arm-axe off trying to bludgeon a skeleton into submission. Gulping at his wooden stub, he suddenly ran off to a nearby stable, disappearing inside as if trying to hide from the scourge. But before Stoick could come up with a single unkind thought, he reemerged with a dozen little dragons running at his feet. The Terrors, not the bravest of dragons, had been taking refuge within, and Gobber had somehow roused them into following him.
Right at his feet was a red-scaled Terror, cocking its head at him as if awaiting orders. Gobber pointed at an advancing skeleton and said, "Bitty, get the rat!"
Bitty had to have known that the thing in front of her wasn't a rat, but she sure didn't act like it. A lively flame erupted from her mouth and took the skeleton's leg out from under it. She followed up with a second blast that incinerated the thing's head as it crawled toward Gobber, causing the skeleton to explode into fragments.
The other Terrors got the idea and turned their fire breath on the nearby skeletons, felling several of them toot suite. More Terrors in other parts of the village did the same thing, giving the villagers a quick respite from the assault. But the Terrors couldn't keep it up, their flames exhausted in two or three attacks, and they could do nothing against the heavy skele-dragons that ruled the air.
A group of nine metal skeletons marched toward Stoick, having lost interest in the scampering sheep and wanting a crack at the Viking that was destroying them. The men around him were injured and weaponless, barely capable of standing, much less fighting. All the persistence and cleverness in the world wasn't going to win this battle, not against something this powerful… this hateful.
The dock was a wreck, several skeletons and one heavy having torn apart the ramps connecting the cliffs to the dock and rendering their ships inaccessible. They could run for the forest, but the devils would only pursue and pick them off. Rescue could come from the dragons, but only if they lived long enough to try, and that assumed the dragons would win the battle.
He was out of weapons, out of options… out of hope.
"We're doing this again, are we?" muttered Gobber, taking his place at his old friend's side as the skeletons advanced on them. "Buying time for everyone to retreat?"
"Where could we go, old friend?" said Stoick.
"Good point," said Gobber, raising his broken arm-axe threateningly at the skeletons. "I'm just glad the rest of me didn't get eaten before my time came up."
"I'm just glad Hiccup isn't here to see this," said Stoick, raising his fists as the skeletons came on… or would have, had the group not exploded into molten bits and shards in a sudden flash of blue flame.
Dumbstruck for the moment, Stoick and Gobber stood and gaped at the fragmented remains of the skeletons, disbelieving their luck. Then Stoick looked to the sky and knew it had nothing to do with luck. A welcoming black shadow flew by with a welcoming face riding on top of it. The shadow sent another fireball into a second cluster of skeletons as it passed overhead, reducing them to wreckage.
"I take it back," said Stoick, smiling. "I'm very glad Hiccup is here to see this."
Driven by panic, driven by fear, driven by the deep desire to defend their home and friends, they had flown as fast as dragonly possible. No stops, no rest, no complaints. The weather had been perfect, a Gods-sent tailwind at their backs, and their course had been a straight shot all the way back to Berk.
Even with all that, they had nearly arrived too late. Nearly.
"They're getting hammered," yelled out Nestor as they neared the outskirts of the village, once more riding Arc along with the Seer. Hiccup, Astrid, and Toothless flew right next to them, all of them dismayed at the state of their home. But the village still had plenty of fight in it. There was still hope.
"This is its true power," replied Arc. "The Monolith creates Guardians from its own body, all slaved to the one in control. It is an army onto itself."
The Monolith sat miles away from the battle, apparently content with sending its minions to destroy Berk, minions born from its own mass. While the revelation that the Monolith had such a power was no surprise, thanks to the visitor the group had received earlier in the day, the sheer magnitude of the problem was almost too much to bear.
"We need to get the dragons back here," said Hiccup. "I'll make one pass and then go help out." The chaotic air battle in the distance was his obvious objective.
"We need to find Beatrix," said Astrid. "I can't do much stuck behind you."
"I've got the ground game," said Nestor, holding Astrid's axe in his hands. He had it for a previously discussed reason. Nestor wasn't one for using weapons, but there was someone else who could put it to good use.
"As do I," said the Seer, as grim faced as ever.
"I'll provide air support," said Arc. "Looks like I'm going to be plenty busy."
They exchanged glances with one another, nobody saying goodbye or good luck. They didn't need to. The odds were bad, the threat incredibly dire, and the likelihood of survival thin, but there was nothing to do but leap once more into the fire.
"See you all when it's over," remarked Hiccup, putting Toothless into a dive and peeling away.
"Optimist," muttered Arc, following Toothless through the dive and then breaking off to land and deploy his two riders.
Hiccup's pass came and went faster than a dragon could swallow a fish, destroying three large groups of skeletons with full-power fireballs. He saw his father battling away at the Monolith's minions, a figure of steadfast determination amidst the insanity of battle. He locked eyes with him as he flew on, both of them conveying their relief at the other's momentary safety. Tempted to stay and help his dad clean out Berk, he forced himself to trust Nestor, Arc, and the Seer to the task until he got back.
One of the heavy skele-dragons had the unfortunate luck of lining up right in front of Toothless as he banked towards the main air battle. A fireball to its spine blew it in half.
"Needle-in-a-haystack time," said Astrid, frantically looking for Beatrix in the middle of the airborne chaos. She presumed the dragon would be in the thick of it… and that she hadn't fallen in battle. It didn't help that there were lots of Nadders flying about and sending skele-dragons to a watery junk pile. Hiccup helped along the search by tailing riderless Nadders, frying any skele-dragons that got close. Each Nadder they inspected proved to be the wrong color or had the wrong number of spikes on its tail.
"Where is she?" Astrid asked, her tone increasingly fearful. Had Beatrix flown away from the battle? Unlikely. Her Nadder loved a tussle almost as much as a Nightmare. The more likely possibility, and the more depressing one, was that…
A firm, insistent SQUAWK! greeted them from above. Astrid sighed with relief as a saddled, sky blue Nadder descended, matching speed and height with Toothless. The Nadder squawked again, expressing her desire to have her rider back on board. She had a few new jagged scratches along her scales but showed no serious signs of injury.
"Your ride's here," said Hiccup, moving Toothless above and slight ahead of Beatrix so that Astrid could jump down to her. Not the safest of moves, but they couldn't afford to be safe right now. Astrid unhooked her harness and readied to jump, though she paused long enough to give Hiccup a quick squeeze from behind. Hiccup hoped it wouldn't be the last.
With her usual precision, she nailed the saddle and hooked her harness on seconds before Beatrix veered away to blast another skele-dragon into oblivion, the debris cloud coating Astrid and Beatrix with sparkling dust.
"Do we have a plan?" yelled Astrid, casually brushing her clothes off.
"No," yelled back Hiccup. "But I figured frying every shiny thing in the air would be a good start."
"I like it," she said, and two of them began the frying in earnest.
The animated metal skeletons had taken serious losses thanks to Toothless, but there were still plenty of them to go around. Stoick and Gobber were already facing off five more of the devils with nothing but their fists and harsh language when a flashing dagger suddenly sailed past his nose, the weapon cutting right through the first skeleton's ribcage as if it was made of hay. It went through another one on its return trip, causing it to collapse in front of Stoick and writhe on the ground, not quite robbed of its false life.
One lively flash of orange later, Nestor was in front of Gobber and pounding his fist into a third skeleton while kicking a fourth one. The metal yielded to his barrier field, disintegrating in his hands.
The fifth skeleton was taken aback by these newcomers and hesitated, perhaps reassessing its tactics. Nestor took the moment to turn to Stoic and give him a respectful nod. "Chief."
"Nestor," reciprocated Stoick.
Nestor held out his left hand, the one holding Astrid's myssteel axe, and offered it to Stoick. "I was told to give you this… and to tell you that, no, you can't keep it."
Stoick took it and felt its heft, quite skeptical that any weapon of use could feel so light. But then he remembered the amazing weapon that Astrid had used in the Trial, the one Hiccup had mentioned to him. In all the confusion and discord that came afterward, he never bothered to ask Hiccup about it. Now he wished he had.
Letting every ounce of simmering rage in him rise to the surface, he gripped the axe in both hands and rushed the fifth skeleton, swinging the axe in a sideways chop that took the thing's head off. The skeleton subsequently flew apart at the seams.
Stoick stared at the axe and laughed, feeling like he was eight years old again and experiencing the excitement of playing with his very first axe. "I have to give this back?" he said.
Rallying his warriors around him, Stoick took the battle to the Monolith's Guardians, systematically purging the horde from the village. Gobber and his men grabbed what broken pieces of myssteel they could find and joined Stoick in slashing and chopping their enemy into ruin.
Nestor and the Seer went at it alone, picking off individuals or small groups that escaped Stoick's wrath. They worked in concert, the Seer throwing out her daggers with that incredible grace she possessed, ridding the world of skeletons at the rate of two or three monsters a throw. Nestor destroyed any skeletons that intruded on their personal space or finished off any damaged ones. The minions seemed to flock toward the greatest threats, so hunting them down wasn't an issue.
"Admit it, you never saw any of this coming," commented Nestor, wringing the neck of a nearby skeleton.
"Your levity is unprofessional," said the Seer, slashing apart her twentieth skeleton.
"It's not levity," countered Nestor, stomping another skeleton into the dirt. "It's… gallows humor."
"Try to find the humor now, Outlander," she said, waving at their newest problem. Not a skeleton, those were largely scrap metal now, but one of the heavy skele-dragons had noticed their skeleton-demolishing ways and was baring down on them from the sky, its hind legs endowed with dagger-sized claws and poised to kill whoever it snagged. It was the only one to show up since Arc took off to engage them, but it would be upon them very shortly.
"Who's it after, me or you?" said Nestor.
"Does it matter?" said the Seer.
"Trust me, it does"
The Seer analyzed the skele-dragon's trajectory and came up with an answer. "You, I believe."
Nestor smirked. "Good. Stand right here, will you? I'm sure you'll know what to do."
He whirled around and ran away, though not with any mystical assistance. He wasn't trying to escape, the Seer realized, but to lure the creature right over her head. It accommodated him, the skele-dragon shifting its flight to pursue, ignoring her completely. Quite the mistake, it would learn.
Her daggers lashed out, her timing perfect and her accuracy true. The blades flew up and parted the skele-dragon's left wing from its spiny torso, the monster going into a spin and crashing to the ground, plowing through the well-pulped ruins of one Berkian cottage. Far from destroyed, not even stunned, the metal beast righted itself and swiveled to attack the Seer, knocking down more of the wrecked house in the process.
Nestor came at it from behind, leaping on its back and running along its narrow spine until he reached its dragonoid head. Kneeling down, he grabbed under the thing's neck, then lifted up and twisted. The skele-dragon didn't even get in one buck or lurch before its head tore from its body, Nestor tossing it aside and jumping off as the headless monster dissolved into a pile of glittering fragments on top of the ample pile of wreckage.
"Learned that technique the hard way," said Nestor, wiping myssteel dust off his hands and onto his shirt.
"You lead a strange life, Outlander," said the Seer, a smidge of levity in her tone.
A localized calmness came over Berk as Nestor and the Seer watched Stoick cut down the last standing skeleton, the villagers cheering as Berk was freed of the Monolith's army. But the battle was far from over, as the explosions and screams rocking the atmosphere demonstrated.
Yet another skele-dragon exploded ahead of Fenrir, Snotlout covering his eyes and holding his breath as he traveled through the latest cloud of gray smoke and shimmering particles. Breathing in the acrid smoke from his kills was like breathing in broken glass, and he quickly learned to avoid it when possible. Hopefully it wasn't hurting Fenrir, but then Fenrir breathed out fire for a living. A dragon's throat was a lot tougher than a human's.
He could barely take a breath between killing one skele-dragon and queuing up another. How many was it now, ten, twelve? He'd actually lost count. Too busy trying to keep himself and everyone else alive.
The dragons were making some headway against the skele-dragons, the air thick with that intolerable gas residue, but there were still too many of the things. Fenrir didn't have much fire left in him, maybe three or four good shots. After that, what was he going to do? Stick his tongue out at the things? The other dragons faced the same problem. Their melting fire breath had given them a big advantage against the skele-dragons' superior numbers. Without it, their odds of survival were worse than standing in an arctic blizzard without a fur coat.
Fenrir's sudden screech of panic focused Snotlout on the flock of skele-dragons heading right toward him. Seven or eight of them diving in from above, their jaws snapping in anticipation. Way, way, way too many to handle.
Snotlout had Fenrir veer off toward the island, hoping to outrun them on an open stretch of sky. No such luck. They were gaining instead, only a few dozen feet behind him. Fenrir was chuffing as he flapped, a sign of fatigue from all the hard maneuvers and constant stress. The skele-dragons weren't alive, which meant they didn't get tired. They'd catch him eventually.
At least he'd have some bragging rights in the afterlife, in that it took eight monsters ganging up on him to take him down. But he'd much rather have bragging rights in this life.
Unable to come up with a plan (since thinking wasn't exactly his strong suit), he was about to consider diving into the ocean and taking his chances that the skele-dragons swam worse than Fenrir when he realized there was a black shape ahead, coming right at him. He laughed upon recognizing Hiccup and Toothless. Nice of him to join the battle, he thought, heavy on the sourness but also happy for the rescue.
Except it wasn't a rescue, not with what had to be over a dozen skele-dragons trailing behind Toothless. They were chasing after him with murderous fervor, the Night Fury barely out of reach. Couldn't Toothless out-fly them or something? Why was Hiccup bringing more party crashers Snotlout's way?
Then Snotlout saw Hiccup's right hand gesturing with his elbow high up, palm flat and level. Hold course was the signal, Snotlout amazed that he actually remembered it. But hold course? This was a collision course!
Hiccup wasn't kidding around, though, and he repeated the signal. Lacking any alternative, Snotlout kept Fenrir straight and level, the skele-dragons practically nipping at Fenrir's tail as they extended their necks and widened their mouths. Years ago, maybe even weeks ago, Snotlout would have told Hiccup to get lost as he veered away to safety. But for whatever reason, loyalty or desperation or even actual confidence in Hiccup's leadership skills, he trusted Hiccup.
If Hiccup was wrong about this, though, Snotlout was totally kicking his butt in Valhalla.
Right as a collision seemed inevitable, right as the lead skele-dragon behind Snotlout tried to take a bite out of Fenrir's tail, Hiccup changed signals, thrusting his hand down and mouthing out the order. It was unmistakable… or so Snotlout hoped.
Dive!
He shoved down on Fenrir and put the dragon into a steep dive, feeling the rush of wind from the almost-collision as Toothless cleared him by mere inches. He looked behind him as the Night Fury banked upward, flying free of his pursuers. The two groups of skele-dragons couldn't react in time, several of them ramming straight into each other, others clipping or grazing their fellow metal monsters. Crippled, most of them fell from the sky in a thick shower of shards and parts.
Toothless finished his maneuver by looping all the way around and coming back at the remaining three skele-dragons, only to have his follow-up kills taken by a nearby blue Nadder with a drop-dead gorgeous rider who'd been waiting to mop up the survivors.
"That move was the craziest thing anyone's ever done… in the world… ever!" remarked Snotlout to Hiccup as they formed a V-formation with Astrid, Toothless at the lead. "But… thanks."
"Don't gush too much," said Hiccup. "You might ruin your image."
"Let's save the heartfelts for later," said Astrid. "We still have lots of…"
She broke off in mid-sentence as the airspace around them was suddenly devoid of skele-dragons, the remaining ones breaking off their attacks and heading back to the Monolith. Every single one, in one sweeping simultaneous move. A few were taken down by tenacious dragon riders, but the dragons were too spent to give pursuit and only chased them a short ways before letting them go.
Cheering Vikings and roaring dragons sang out in unison over their victory, Snotlout whooping in delight with the rest of the flyers. Hiccup and Astrid didn't join in, both of them watching the retreating metal army. Despite the apparent air victory, there wasn't much to cheer about. The Monolith loomed in the distance completely unscathed, while Berk was in turmoil, its defenders injured and worn down. It was only a matter of time before the Monolith came at them again, probably with a wave of skele-dragons that made the previous one look pitifully small.
It was a concern for later. With Berk's immediate survival still in question, Hiccup and the other dragon riders headed back to Berk, hoping there still was a village to save when they got there.
Chomps's final fire blast came out like an overheated gurgle, a few embers lighting upon the side of the heavy skele-dragon that was chasing him down. With that, the Gronckle was officially out of gas, having wasted most of it trying to take down the pursuing monstrosity and not getting much bang for the barter. Six shots wasn't much in the way of ammo.
"Down, down, down!" ordered Fishlegs, forgetting his aeronautical terminology in his panic. Chomps got the idea anyway and dropped altitude as the heavy skele-dragon swept by them again, this time clipping Chomps on the wing and almost stalling them. Chomps growled a complaint in response while Fishlegs squeaked out a cry of dismay.
Play to his strengths? In what part of dragon combat did he have any strength? Analysis and stats, that's where he had strength, not life-and-death struggles against semi-indestructible monsters. He had hoped for a reprieve when Toothless came in and took out a heavy, but the Night Fury was already off to the main battle before the body had finished bursting. The twins were fighting two heavies above him, having destroyed three previous ones with judicious use of the Zippleback's gas-cloud attack. That left seven more of them, most of which were making work for all the woodcutters in Berk, minus the one trying to kill him and Chomps.
One kill to his name, one that he shared with Ruff and Tuff - that's all they'll write on his memorial. He had wanted something better than that, something people would really remember him for. The Revised Dragon Manual would've covered it, but he hadn't completed it yet. Why? Dragon Squad training! Another couple of weeks and the book would've been finished. Stupid irony.
As Chomps jinxed out of the way of the heavy's newest charge, a pair of lighting bolts thundered into the underside of the skele-dragon, the electricity surging all along its body and causing it to shatter into countless pieces. The elusive Green Lightning flew through the debris cloud and halted in midair, hovering before him like a watchful Valkyrie.
If irony was in full effect for Fishlegs, so was déjà vu.
"Are you uninjured?" the dragon said. "Regardless, you should seek the village for safety. I will draw away the other Guardians."
Fishlegs was too blown away by the dragon's sudden speech skills to do more than stammer. Green Lightning patiently waited a few more seconds for a response, then rolled his eyes and started to fly off. That got Fishlegs to speak.
"Wait, you talk?" he cried out. "Green Lightning talks? That's awesome!"
"No," Arc declared irritably, looking back at the burly youth. "No Green Lightning. Arc, please. Just Arc. When this is over, assuming we survive, we'll discuss this further."
Green Lightning/Arc dived down to engage another heavy, raking it with electric death and drawing away most of the other heavies from the village. Despite the continuing chaos flowing around him, Fishlegs couldn't help but be giddy. His second chance encounter with the strange dragon had just raised the number of questions he wanted answers for by about a million.
"Any ideas, Ruff?" asked Tuffnut. "And just so we're clear, an idea is not the same as an insult."
"Well, I have a lot of insults left," admitted Ruffnut, "But as ideas go…"
The twins found themselves at the center of a skele-dragon circle, two heavies flying around them like a pair of ravenous sharks circling a solitary sea lion. The Zippleback's attention was split, one head per threat, but they couldn't use a flame cloud attack without taking their eyes off of one of the heavies and getting rushed from behind. They barely avoided the first attack, and now they were stuck in an airborne standoff.
"These things learn," said Tuff. "How are they so smart without any brains in their skulls?"
"Well, how do you… no, too easy." Ruff's failure to complete her insult meant she was too scared to care, which worried Tuff. It took a lot to make his sister self-conscious enough to fear for her life.
The Zippleback gradually lost altitude as it held itself aloft, the dragon's energy quickly draining as it spun slowly around to keep the heavies in view. The encircling monsters kept matching altitude with them, preventing the two-headed dragon from breaking away. They were only a few hundred feet above Berk now, the ground getting steadily closer by the second. If they were forced down, the Zippleback, and the twins by extension, wouldn't have a chance.
"I think I have a… no, that's an insult," said Ruff. Then she suddenly brightened. "No, it's an actual idea!"
"Which is?" said Tuff.
She told him. It was risky, kind of insane actually, but since that Green Lightning dragon that had saved Fishlegs was too busy with other heavies to help out, he was willing to try it.
"Ruff," said Tuffnut, "if this goes badly, I just want to say that… you're a very annoying person." He couldn't say his real feelings, he still had a hardened warrior image to maintain, but his tone gave away what his words couldn't.
"Yeah," said Ruffnut softly, getting his real meaning, "I feel the same way."
Praying that their dragon's gas supply held out, Tuffnut triggered the Zippleback's gas jet, slowly filling the air between then and the skele-dragons with flammable vapors. The Zippleback continued to rotate, expanding the cloud around itself and surrounding the twins within a circle of stinking combustion gas. Two, three, four times around went the Zippleback, the mist growing so thick that it obscured all vision beyond it.
The Zippleback coughed out the last of its gas as it sealed the top and bottom of the circle, creating a sphere of gas with them at dead center. The vapors began wafting inward, threatening to envelope the twins in its embrace.
"Ruff?" asked Tuff, expecting his sister to light the gas at any moment and wondering why she hadn't. If they waited too long, the gas would disperse too much to be effective.
"Listen for it," she said, cocking an ear. She could hear the flap of the skele-dragons' wings as they continued to circle. No change yet in pitch or volume. They had to be inside the cloud for this to work. They had to take the bait.
"Ruff!" insisted Tuff.
"Shush!" she hissed. She listened again, reacquiring the distant flapping sound as the vapors began to tickle her nose. There was a good chance she was about to get her face fried off, but it was better than what the skele-dragons had in store for her.
THERE! The tone changed, or the flapping rate changed, or something. But the sound was getting louder for sure. They were coming in to see what had happened to their enemy. "Cover up!" she warned, Tuffnut covering his face with his hands. Ruffnut slapped her Zippleback head lightly, initiating a shower of potent sparks and flinging them into the cloud.
Just before covering her face, Ruffnut saw the world catch on fire. Yellow vapors became alive and angry, a scorching wave of heat washing over her and Tuffnut, licking at her hair and clothes. Her helmet became intolerably hot and she batted it off her head before it could burn her scalp. The Zippleback retracted its heads as far from the burning cloud as possible, screeching in terror as two flaming shapes emerged through the cloud and collided with the dragon's torso, pushing it into the flame cloud and through it.
"I'm on fire!" screamed Tuffnut. "I am very much on fire!" Thankfully he was more blackened than burnt, the flame cloud having used most of its fuel in its first seconds of life. His clothes and hair singed and smoking, he slapped away at any potential flames. Ruffnut did the same, only without the theatrics. Neither of them noticed the damage to their harnesses, more so Ruffnut's harness as its straps weakened and frayed.
Safely past the dying flame cloud, the Zippleback struggled against the momentum of the stricken heavies pushing against it. One of them slipped off and plummeted to the ground, exploding on the rocks near the docks. The second one didn't wait to land before it exploded, showering the Zippleback in red-hot debris. Its scales resisted most of the damage, but it rocked backward in surprise and pain, throwing its heads back violently.
His arms and legs clasped around the dragon's second neck for dear life, Tuffnut weathered the dragon's gyrations until it regained its control. But he watched in horror as Ruffnut's harness came loose, the force of the dragon's whipping motion sending her flying away, screaming his name as she fell towards the uncompromising ground below. The Zippleback was too stunned and reeling to react as Ruffnut plummeted, no other dragon close enough to intervene.
"RUFF!" he cried out, reaching in vain for his disappearing sister.
The sky-borne fireball drew Nestor's attention to the heavens, Nestor itching to get more action rather than spectating while his friends were in mortal peril. Way above the expanding fireball, Arc was cooking up some skele-dragon stew as he sent a fifth heavy skele-dragon into explosive submission with a barrage of lightning bolts. Arc had things handled on his end, not that Nestor could have helped him from down below.
Then the screaming began.
Alerted to the rapidly fading fireball cloud once more, something alive and humanoid was falling from a nearby two-headed dragon. One of the riders from the looks of it, and neither Arc nor that Gronckle he'd seen flying around were anywhere nearby.
But he was.
Pure instinct drove him, shunting every ounce of power into his legs. The ground shuddered as his feet pushed against it, propelling him forward. He rocketed past damaged homes, sidestepped startled villagers, and danced over thick piles of dust-quality myssteel. The world blurred as he pushed his power and his body to its limits, his mind calculating the best spot to jump and hoping he was right.
He smashed through the tangled wreckage of a hay wagon. He didn't even feel it. His muscles screamed for mercy, emphatically telling him that the human body wasn't built for this abuse. He ignored them. He only had seconds – he only needed seconds.
Three.
The leap had to be precise. Perfect.
Two.
The one thing he couldn't do, and could never do, was fly…
One.
… But he still had great timing.
He catapulted himself over what might have been the last intact house in Berk, his legs taking the top third of a stone chimney with him. The mild impact diverted his trajectory, forcing him to reach out to Ruffnut as he rushed by her in the air and snagged her around the shoulders, pulling her with him and changing her downward velocity into forward velocity. Her scream switched from fear to surprise as he grabbed her close and shunted everything he had into his barrier field, swiveling so that he was the one on the bottom as gravity drew them back to the ground.
"Brace yourself!" he warned, his barrier flaring intensely, Ruffnut screaming again as his body slammed the ground like a hammer might slam a nail. He gouged a path through the earth, the compacted dirt slowing him but failing to stop him. That eventuality came from the granite boulder he hit, knocking him senseless even through his field.
"Ga… blah… huuf…" was the level of discourse Nestor could talk at for a few seconds before his brain assumed control again. Ruffnut moaned once and crawled off of Nestor, sitting down a few feet away as she shook off a serious case of disorientation.
"Did… did that just happen?" she asked herself aloud. "I was falling… and now I'm not… and maybe now I'm dead."
"Not dead," said Nestor, finally sitting up and rubbing the back of his head. "But salo krebit, death might have been less painful."
She looked at him, absolutely awestruck. "How… What… That was…"
"Explanations later," he explained, slowly standing up and wincing from a number of overexerted muscles. "I need to get going. You'll be all right if I leave?" Ruffnut's astonishment didn't lessen, but she managed a nod. Too fixated on other concerns, and unused to reactions to his power that didn't involve the gratuitous use of sharp objects, Nestor was unprepared by the enamored look Ruffnut gave him.
"Well…" he stammered. "Okay… bye."
Yelling out her name every five seconds, Tuffnut landed the Zippleback moments after Nestor ran off. Ruffnut didn't even respond to him when he jumped down and sprinted to her side. "Loki's Luck, you're alive," he said, resisting the urge to hug his sister because, you know, warriors didn't do that kind of thing. "Are you okay?"
She still wasn't saying anything, her eyes staring off absently at something. Tuffnut began to worry that the experience had turned her catatonic. It would have done it to him, that's for sure. But then he realized that the look on her face had no sign of fear at all, and she was watching that Outlander guy running up the hill. It took his brain a few tries to work it out, and he cringed upon comprehension.
"You have got to be kidding," he said.
Stoick had seen his village burn to the ground four times during his lifetime, each instance with dragons as the responsible culprits. He shouldn't have felt any worse about it than before as he estimated the damages and winced at the gaping holes in the cottages, the mauled roofing. Berkians took to rebuilding their homes like wolves took to howling, so this was just another chance at urban renewal. But he felt the destruction more profoundly this time, and he wasn't sure why.
Perhaps he had fooled himself into believing the old days were behind them, that Berk had entered a new age of prosperity that didn't require such repetitious destruction. More likely, it was the Monolith's presence that soured his mood, knowing that this current pause in the action was only a respite. The dragons were arriving back at Berk, some sporting numerous injuries and flying irregularly, their riders covered in soot and sparkly dust, their heads hanging with exhaustion. Casualties had been light so far, due in no small part to Hiccup and his allies showing up when needed, but the Monolith's forces had worn them down considerably.
"The defenses are slag," said Gobber, affixing a warhammer to his utility arm so that he wasn't going around with a stub for a hand. He knew full well it would do nothing about the metal monsters. "Catapults are down, most of our weapons are busted, and the ones that aren't might as well be tossed into the drink for all the good they can do."
"Our dragons can't even burn paper with the gas left in their bellies," said Stoick morosely.
"Perhaps it's a opportune time to retreat," spoke a very different voice from above.
Too dispirited to be surprised by much, Stoick reacted rather blandly to Arc's arrival, the green dragon landing before them with little fanfare. Despite Stoick informing Gobber the previous night about Hiccup's new allies, with the added benefit of a few pints to soften the news, Gobber still screwed up his face attempting to wrap his mind around the existence of a talking dragon.
"Ye Gods, it can talk!" spoke one villager, others echoing the sentiment. Arc merely rolled his eyes once more and pressed on.
"This was never about victory, Chief Stoick," said Arc. "The Monolith cannot be stopped with our meager forces. It will produce more Guardians like the ones we just fought off. But we can delay it so that your people may escape."
"Escape where?" said Stoick. "Our closest neighbors are not on the friendliest of terms with us."
"If you mean the Gunnarr," said the Seer, walking forward out of the surrounding Vikings and standing next to Arc, "then I would agree. But the Mainland is closer." The Seer's presence was more baffling than the dragon's, but after seeing her blades cut through so many steel horrors today, no one thought to question her involvement.
"Oh, yes, the people who really love Vikings," said Gobber sarcastically. "Brilliant idea."
"I'd rather risk the Mainland than the Gunnarr," said Stoick. "But we don't have enough dragons and ships available to evacuate the entire village, not before that thing launches another wave."
As the conversation continued, the nearby crowd grew in size as more dragon riders arrived and dismounted, the young Dragon Squad members among them. Astrid joined Snotlout, Fishlegs, Ruffnut and Tuffnut off to Arc's side, having returned a few seconds ago. The chatter throughout the crowd grew dark and depressing, the previous elation over their victory vanishing as talk of fleeing Berk and deciding who stayed behind took over.
Astrid was happy to see everyone still alive, though Ruff and Tuff had a singed look to them, but she began to grow concerned at not seeing Hiccup and Toothless. She had gotten separated from him on the way to Berk, Toothless dropping back and escorting some of the more wounded dragons. He should have been here by now, though.
Then she realized that Nestor wasn't present either. Had he fallen in battle? Unlikely, not with the causal way Arc and the Seer were acting. But he had less of a reason to be missing than Hiccup.
The realization that the three of them were missing, together, right after a major battle and right before the inevitable next one, was giving Astrid a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. Her gut told her that they were up to something… and it wasn't something she was going to like.
Catching an updraft to buoy his tired wings, Toothless flew in a circular holding pattern above the island. Below him was a verdant clearing with a lone human figure, waving to the dragon impatiently and insistently. He'd been there for a few minutes already, waiting for the Night Fury to show up.
Toothless knew he was there. So did Hiccup. They both knew time was running out. Hiccup knew what came next… what had to come next… but he needed to know that Toothless was a willing participant, that he knew what was being asked. They couldn't do this without Toothless, but that didn't mean that Hiccup couldn't give him a choice. They had a break in the action, a pause before Cervantes came at them again, and they had to use it while it was still available. But he still had to give Toothless a choice.
"You understand, bud?" said Hiccup to his dragon friend. "The odds are bad this time, really bad. But this is the only chance Berk has. They won't evacuate the village in time. We have this one shot, the three of us. Nestor and I are willing. Are you?"
Toothless nodded without pause or hesitation. His solemn expression, almost borderline sad, told Hiccup what he needed to know. Hiccup leaned forward and hugged his friend around the neck, using the embrace to gather the strength he needed to be brave. To be brave for his sake, for Toothless, for Astrid and his dad, for Gobber and all his friends, for Nestor and Arc and the Seer.
For Berk.
For the world he cared about.
Nestor was about to yell at the flying black spot in the sky to get down here already when Toothless dived in and grabbed him, lifting him with his front paws and helping him climb up to his back. Nestor took a seat behind Hiccup, the two of them exchanging grim expressions as Toothless headed out to sea, right toward the silver monstrosity silently floating in the distance.
"Go ahead and grab what you need from the satchel," said Hiccup. The satchel in question was on his back, slipped over his harness. Nestor opened it and extracted both the tome-diary and the powercore, the artifact vacillating between red swirls of light and an earthier brown luminance. Nestor quickly flipped to a marked page in the tome, his fingers tracing the passage he needed for their private last-resort plan.
Before leaving their out-of-the-way resting spot and speeding to Berk, Hiccup's group had agreed to a very sketchy plan. Delay the Monolith somehow, get as many Vikings to safety, then flee and draw away the Monolith with the powercore. It wasn't much of a plan, with plenty of holes you could fly a Nightmare through, but the alternate was to do nothing and let Berk die. The Seer initially suggested that Arc fly on with the powercore, since under no circumstances could they allow it to be recovered by Cervantes, but Arc defiantly said no, forget pragmatism, he wasn't letting others die while he fled for the wilderness. Leaving the powercore behind was a bad idea, since the Monolith could track it, so it was given to Hiccup and Toothless for safekeeping. Toothless being the fastest of dragons, he had the best chance of escaping with it.
That had been the main plan, but it wasn't the only plan.
The previous evening:
Firewood gathering was an easy chore to do when the island you're resting on hadn't ever been touched by human hands. Plenty of dead wood to go around. It was a one-person job that had become a two-person task when Hiccup volunteered to go with Nestor to refill their stock before night came on in full.
"Got a sec, Nestor?" Hiccup asked, once they were a good distance from the camp.
Bending down to grab an armful of brittle sticks, Nestor looked up from his growing pile of wood and said, "Got plenty at the moment."
"Could you put down the wood, actually?" Hiccup asked. "This is kinda sorta serious."
Nestor did as asked and stood up, perplexed. "More serious than usual, I take it?"
Hiccup nodded, lowering his voice to a whisper. "It's about what the Seer said, about the two of us and the Monolith."
"That?" Nestor glanced at the camp, making sure that no one else was close enough to hear. "She said it herself, Hiccup. Her visions don't necessarily come true."
"Her track record's been pretty good as of late, don't you think?"
"So what are you saying, that we should listen to her and head off to fight the Monolith?"
"No… but what if Arc's plan fails? What if we end up having to fight it?"
Nestor laughed unhappily. "Then I hope you've gotten what you've wanted out of life, because that's where it'll end. We fight this thing by not fighting it, Hiccup. Arc's plan is sound."
"Okay, let's pretend that he's wrong. Let's say that the Monolith can just keep going and going forever, destroying everything in its path. Shouldn't we prepare for that?"
"How do we prepare for that?" said Nestor.
"We start with what we know," said Hiccup, "and what we have. That Artisan diary has to have something in it, another weakness we can use."
"Hiccup, I read most of it," said Nestor impatiently. "Unless turtles are the key, that thing's pretty useless… wait…"
"Wait?" said Hiccup as Nestor made a thoughtful look. "Wait for…"
"Key," said Nestor. "The powercore is a key."
"Yes, we know that. And you use an activation phrase… which we have… and which you can speak." Nestor's thought was now Hiccup's thought, and what a thought it was. "Do you think we can still use it?"
"I don't know why we couldn't," said Nestor.
"Then we can get inside and take out Cervantes," said Hiccup, laughing at the simplicity of the plan. "Heck of a lot easier to do than taking on the whole Monolith." Then he noticed the dark look on Nestor's face. "Why are you not agreeing with me?"
"A few reasons," said Nestor. "One – something that big is likely to have internal defenses. Just because you get past a castle's walls doesn't mean the fight's over. Two – this is Cervantes we're talking about. He's no pushover, and he'll have control of the Monolith as well as his usual bag of tricks. Three – to get inside, we'd have to bring the powercore in with us, and if we screw up we'll have hand-delivered the powercore to Cervantes. And four – even if we take down Cervantes, the Monolith could keep going on its own. It's basically a Guardian, and Guardians have their own agendas. If we did this, we couldn't stop with just Cervantes."
He gave Hiccup a truly serious expression, as serious as the young man had ever given anyone. "Hiccup, there's only one thing we have in our arsenal that might do the job."
No one else knew about their plan, a miracle considering how it usually took Astrid five seconds to smell a secret on Hiccup. It wasn't like they wanted to do this. Hiccup had hoped for an alternative, had wanted to believe that the Monolith was beatable or his people would escape before it brought its full might to bear on the village. He had hoped it would run out of steam or fire or whatever form of energy moved it along. Wishful hopes dashed by rude reality.
The metal island had begun to drift once more, pushing through the churning waves with its massive tendrils. When it came to a shoal or reef, the giant war machine would press against it and smash through the stone as easily as a man punched through a wall of paper. Tentacles emerged and flicked off the debris, the Monolith keen on preening itself. It avoided the thicker formations, taking an indirect course to Berk that sidestepped the worst of the reefs. No second wave of flyers graced the airspace above the Monolith so far, but Cervantes's intentions were clear. Still many miles out, it would arrive at Berk within the hour.
Toothless dropped low to the ocean, aiming right for the domed section at the center of the Monolith. That was where Hiccup had found Cervantes, and that was presumably where they had to go to gain entrance. Toothless let out a low growl, the trembling nature of his utterance telling Hiccup that his fearless friend was as terrified of the island as he was.
"I hope the powercore doesn't care about inflections," said Nestor, holding the crystal to his chest with one hand while his other hand held the tome open to the proper page. "I was never good with inflections."
"We'll be within tentacle range in less than a minute," said Hiccup, his stomach knotting up more and more with each speeding second. "How do we do this?"
"We pass over the island, I start reciting the phrase, and I keep doing it until the island responds… or we get horribly killed."
"As stupid-crazy ideas go, this is the big one," said Hiccup. "I'm just glad it's only us doing it." The regret in his voice was thick, his mind inundated with all the things he wanted to do, the things he wasn't going to live to see. The lands that he would never visit, the adventures he was never going to experience… the love he only had the briefest of moments to feel. Four days. They hadn't even made it four days. His future wiped out so that other futures could come to pass. Where was the fairness? Did fairness even truly exist?
"I'm just glad that, of all the people the Fates saw fit to thrust into my life, it was you," said Nestor, his grateful voice cutting through Hiccup's self-pity. "I'm very glad it was you."
They helped, Nestor's words. Not a lot, not enough to dull the regret, but they helped just the same. He was not the nuisance he once was, not the useless outcast of his people any longer. There was a village full of family and friends that needed him to be steady. There was a dragon beneath him, his truest friend, one to die for and to die with. And he had another friend behind him, one willing to sacrifice himself for a village that saw him as only an Outlander.
Hiccup reached out and gave Nestor his hand, placing his other hand on the side of Toothless's neck. Nestor took it as Toothless leaned into Hiccup's offered hand. They said no words. There was no need for them.
The sea yielded to a silver plateau, a forest of long grasping limbs beckoning at Toothless to fly lower, just a little lower. Nestor released Hiccup's hand and raised the powercore over his head, finding his place on the page once more. He cleared his throat and began to speak, only no words came from his lips – at least nothing that sounded like words to Hiccup. More like someone clicking their tongue while a dog whined to be let out of its pen.
The powercore reacted immediately to Nestor's speech, the red and brown swirls merging into a golden glow that encompassed the entire crystal. The glow was even more hypnotic than before, and Hiccup forced his eyes away from it.
Nestor recited the alien words again and again, keeping the golden crystal above his head and out of sight so as not to distract him. The island acted unimpressed, its tentacles continuing to stretch upward, its motion through the ocean unobstructed. As far as Hiccup could see, the Monolith still yearned for a Night Fury dinner, with a serving of Hiccup and Nestor on the side. Hiccup despaired as the powercore failed to pacify the island – there was no Plan B if this didn't work.
But as they glided towards the Monolith's central dome, the tendrils lost much of their enthusiasm. They slowed their gyrations and their stretching, some even shrinking and receding back into the metal surface from which they came. Nestor's indecipherable chant was acting like a lullaby to the island as the tendrils ceased their mad yearning for dragon flesh and slunk away to their hidden holes. Not all of them disappeared, only the ones after Toothless. The rest continued their various jobs, shoving the island through the water or removing debris from its surface.
The featureless dome ahead of them had gotten bigger since Hiccup last saw it. It had to be twice the size of the Great Hall, maybe bigger. Unlike the other ridges and hills that composed the surface of Monolith, the dome remained uniform and unblemished by any tendril activity. You might as well have stuck a sign on it that read "Heart Of The Island: Attack Here." Then the Monolith showed its true hospitality, the dome's curved sides forming a seam that soon split apart like a lipless mouth, spreading to create an angled hole inside the dome that could easily fit a half-dozen dragons flying wing to wing. You could have stuck another sign on it that read "Fly In Here: Don't Forget To Abandon All Hope."
Toothless gave Hiccup a dubious look, asking the obvious question. Hiccup nodded. "No sense in waiting around, bud. Just not too fast." That satisfied Toothless, though it didn't cheer him up, and the dragon proceeded to line up with the hole and slow to a flying crawl.
"Any last thoughts?" said Nestor, seconds away from the shadowed opening to Cervantes's new home.
"One," stated Hiccup. "What does salo krebit mean?"
"You're asking me about that now?"
"Probably won't get a chance later."
"True," said Nestor. "It's an Old Frank phrase meaning 'pale crayfish'."
Hiccup screwed up his face in disbelief. "Pale crayfish?"
Nestor shrugged. "Well, where I come from, you don't want to eat one of those."
Hiccup laughed aloud, Nestor joining him a moment later, as the shadow of the Monolith's mouth folded around them.
Astrid saw the distant Night Fury before anyone else, her attention already drawn to the sky during her search for Hiccup. She counted two riders onboard, Hiccup and probably Nestor behind him, and they rapidly shrunk away as they headed toward the Monolith. Soon the dragon was only a nondescript dot against the gray clouds on the horizon, still moving inexorably toward the village-killing war machine.
"What are they doing?" she exclaimed absently, her heart seizing up and her mind racing over the possibilities, the reasons behind their actions. Nothing made sense, nothing could explain why Hiccup and Nestor would take off on their own and head for the belly of the beast.
Except they had to have a reason. This was Hiccup. He always had a reason.
Snotlout was the first to react to her outburst by asking what was up. When she didn't reply, he tried looking the direction she was looking and not having much luck of it. He finally noticed the moving black dot heading for the killer metal island and figured there was only one thing that could get Astrid so upset.
"Is that Toothless?" he asked. "Is that Hiccup? What are they doing?"
The rest of the Dragon Squad heard him and turned to look, prompting others in the crowd to do the same. Soon the entire gathering, including Stoick and Gobber, Arc and the Seer, were looking out across the sea at the small black mark in the sky, descending low to the sea and then to the Monolith. More faces grew to resemble Astrid's fear-strewn visage as they watched Toothless fly over the island and then disappear entirely, as if the island had gobbled them up.
"By my ancestors," said Arc, his eyes wide and terrified. "They can't be serious!"
"What?" asked Stoick frantically. "What is my son doing?"
"The Dragon Rider and the Outlander are confronting the Monolith," said the Seer. "It was the only way this could end." Her voice was grave, her eyes closed and her head bowed. She offered no reassurances, and she turned from the scenery as if unable to watch further, as if she already knew the outcome.
"To the ends of the earth with your visions!" scolded Arc, though the Seer did not react to his harsh tone. "Hiccup has the powercore! They've all but given it to Cervantes!"
Astrid heard none of it. The only thing she could hear was the sound of her heart breaking.