ON WITH THE SHOW!
Related: Previously on Nightfall, Astrid covered in Terrible Terrors, courtesy of drive-by anon over on AO3, at: http: (doubleslash) i dot imgur dotcom (slash) Q3pf1sL dot png. I recommend looking at the art before reading this chapter so you can get your giggles in properly…
Nightfall, Part Fifteen
Pfikingr are loud.
For many days now the two-who-are-one have been flying from island to island, testing their healing wings and trying to find one where the humans will not go. They stayed too long in one place and the sickbadwrongthing that might be this flock's Alpha had found them and tried to steal them, so they will wander, but now pfikingr are everywhere, making noise and chasing dragons and shadows and sometimes each other, which was funny to watch from safely up in the air where the humans did not see the dragon-pair because they were too busy hunting each other.
One small island is still on fire, smoldering until the rains or the snows come back again.
It does not matter, the doings of pfikingr are no longer their problem. Now they are curious about things that properly belong to dragons. From his current perch on a broad and craggy rock ledge high above the ocean where no human could ever climb, Hiccup is content to rest his head on his paws and watch the ships in the distance. The water below carries some of the sound of it to him, and he listens to them curiously but unafraid. The humans are too far away – he could hide both of the ships behind one paw if he stretched it out – and they do not know that the dragon-pair is here. In their black scales they blend into the weather-darkened stone and they are waiting patiently and still.
Hiccup and Toothless are hiding not from pfikingr but from dragons. They are looking for the nest of this flock and nests are hidden safe places, they will not find it by looking. They will find it by hunting.
Behind him, Toothless stretches out a wing luxuriously, scratching his back against the stone and enjoying the feeling of muscles well used. They have been flying this afternoon, and having the full use of his wings back is making the black dragon purr happy flying good good good stre-e-e-e-tch good flying happy fast happy.
Turning his back on the distant ships, Hiccup climbs down from his perch and onto the larger flat rock hidden behind the outcropping, running a soft paw across the healed wing, investigating just to be sure. If Toothless believes he is healed then Hiccup trusts him implicitly and completely, but he wants to know, they are his wings too. The scars he can feel under his cheek when he turns his face to rub against the wing will probably never fade, but they will not make flying any more difficult and they will remind them not to underestimate humans in future. The bones are solid – they have been able to hunt much better here when they do not have to hide from pfikingr and now that they can fly again.
Yes yes good yes flying us flying good you good flying, he hums, smiling a dragon's smile at Toothless and settling himself by the bigger dragon's side, rolling onto his back and stretching out his own wings on the sun-warm stone, heedless of the lethal drop only paces away.
They are well. The nightmare of trapped and besieged and hunted is behind them. They are free again, free to fly like no one else, together and faster than anyone in their flock and fearless because they can outfly anything and because they are together.
They fly as if dancing, as if they will never have to come down again, as if all the world is sky and all the horizons are catchable like prey that is just fast enough that it is fun to chase but that they know they will catch because they are faster.
They could go home but now they have a curious thing that they want to find out about and that they are not afraid of because they are together and they are free. If it did not want to be investigated, it should not hang its tail from a tree branch so temptingly. Hiccup and Toothless simply cannot resist pulling tails.
The man who is a dragon sighs with pure delight. He could close his eyes to imagine flying better but he prefers the look in his dragon-love's expressive eyes and the grin that Toothless returns to him, dropping his nose to touch the purr in Hiccup's throat and match it.
Hunting? Toothless whistles, raising his head and looking inquisitively out to sea.
Hiccup squawks an irritated noise. Human ships calling human wait-to-pounce, this last a hunting signal the pair uses. No dragon would fly right now, including them.
The bigger dragon huffs, not thinking much of the intelligence of the dragons here.
His companion laughs, understanding immediately and reaching out a paw to wrap around as much of Toothless' closest one as his paw can hold. Wait-to-pounce, he whistles again, urging patience.
And when Toothless gives him a mocking look - you wait-to-pounce you reckless you? – he only laughs again and closes his eyes against the sun that is warm on them.
They are together, they are free. It is indescribably good.
The sun is almost down when Toothless sees another dragon in the distance, moving as if it is carrying a kill. He stares, interested, crouching down as if he could pounce on it from here, while at the same time sweeping his tail around to pull his Hiccup-beloved to him.
Hunting up up go now, the bigger dragon whistles, feeling his partner leap to his shoulders almost immediately, setting himself for flight. With his body he tells Toothless that he is ready to go and eager to, chattering want want want sounds interspersed with flying happy flying us go us hunt flying good yes.
That it is getting dark does not bother them; Toothless can see better in the dark than any other dragon, even in the darkest cave, and Hiccup is used to the night.
When they take off they do so silently; they are good hunters and they do not need sounds to speak to each other like pfikingr.
Toothless glances over his shoulder briefly and indicates you watch. When Hiccup crouches down and fixes his eyes on the low-flying two-heads cousin/s that they are steadily gaining on, the black dragon changes direction, angling them up and towards the clouds, where the air is thinner and a dragon carrying prey would not go or look. He takes into account the wind that could blow their scent to the dragon they are stalking and where their shadow will fall as the sun goes away, finding just the right approach through experience and practice and aided by Hiccup's signals as he tracks the two-heads cousin/s.
The clouds bat around them like waves but they are used to that, they love to fly high. They dive through clouds that cannot be pounced on and chewed on and that disappear when they get too close, and they spin until they do not know which way they will be facing when they come out of them. Once Cloudjumper had caught them playing at this game when the clouds were so low to the water that they were in danger of hitting the ocean – if they were not as good at it as they were.
But it was a good game and they had gotten Cloudjumper to play as well and they did not get scolded.
Now they are using the clouds to hide themselves, to cast no shadow when possible and a faint and broken one when the leaving sun catches them.
The light is almost gone when Hiccup taps his paws in a puzzled way on the back of Toothless' head and points.
There is a cloud on the water that goes on a very long way, and they are following the two-heads cousin/s towards it.
Toothless slows and hovers briefly. He does not like it, and he can feel that Hiccup does not like it either.
A paw wrapped around his shoulder gives them both courage, and they dive down to almost skim the waves, following their lead to the thing that makes dragons walk in their sleep and scream in fear. They are unhappy with the sickbadwrongthing and want to growl at it.
Hiccup deeply and truly dislikes this place; it sets his teeth on edge ready to snap and he thinks he might soon hate it more than the shoreline they had been trapped on. The fog makes sounds in his ears sound strange and it makes the sounds in his mind sound strange too. It is too thick, and too still. Fog moves. This does not.
But they keep going. They must know what is going on here, and that means finding the nest and tracking the sickbadwrongthing to its lair, if they are right, but Hiccup believes they are. And then they will leave and not come back, but it would itch to have a mystery at their tail, and then it might come after them. They should scream at it first so it will not chase them anymore.
The fog smells of still air, of seawater, and of blood from the kill in the claws of the two-heads cousin/s, but it is a lot of blood. Hiccup raises his head and watches for other dragons. Maybe there are more hunters. But in this fog – it tricks his eyes and it tricks his ears and drowns his nose.
Toothless flies more slowly, banking away from another sea stack. There are so many of them, like fangs in the mouth of the biggest dragon of them all, like a nest of the biggest dragons of them all, all hungry, all gaping in the darkness made darker by the fog and ready to strike down exploring dragon-pairs.
How can anything fly in this maze? Hiccup longs for the open sky, looking up as much to search for the night sky as to keep a lookout for other dragons. In the night, he searches not for scales but for eyes.
Communicating to each other almost exclusively through touch, both dragons shudder together as if they were cold, sending each other their nervousness and trading back equal reassurance.
The wrong fog makes their wingbeats loud, and they must fly so slowly to stay quiet that they are almost hovering. Hiccup glances down at the ocean below them and it is too close. Up! he urges Toothless, tapping his back paws against the dragon's sides and clenching his front ones on the back of the black dragon's neck.
Toothless surges away from the waves that are trying to pull him down with their cold claws and cannot avoid another sea fang. Scrabbling for a grip, he sets his claws into it and digs with his back feet for purchase until they are hanging from the side of the stone.
It is not a good place. The rock is weak in the fog and it crumbles beneath the dragon's paws, falling to the water below and making splashes that sound too loud. He keeps having to move them to new footholds and beat his wings to keep their balance.
All but silently, Toothless rumbles deep in his chest, worried stalking bad worried careful.
Hiccup purrs agreement, but it is not a happy sound and comes out closer to a growl. They are hunters, but they are being hunted, and he wants to turn and fight the thing that stalks them.
The black dragon signals up again but does not take off. Instead, he scrambles up the rock until he reaches a ledge that does not threaten to break beneath their weight just yet. There he crouches and growls deep in his throat, setting their tail to the stone and preparing to defend.
But nothing comes for them as it becomes truly dark in the depths of the still fog, and they have lost the cousin/s that they were stalking.
The dragon-man whimpers a soft question, uncertain, as he looks around and down and up. He does not know where they are, where the open air is, and it unsettles him.
Toothless twists his head around to look at his companion and chirps reassurance, the sound familiar and welcome and strange in this dead air. He flips his nose straight up and purrs and chirps flying good safe good flying us up up up up.
It is a good idea, and Hiccup relaxes slightly. If they must, they will fly straight up and the fog will not follow them all the way, because they will go as high as it takes until they can turn and fight clearly. This is not a maneuver that most dragons do naturally, because it is so easy to overbalance and fall backwards where it is hard to get wings and bodies twisted around to fly right again, but it is useful, and Hiccup and Toothless dare to because they are good at that trick. The black dragon is built for agility, and his companion has been raised on flight and freefall since a very early age.
Guard, Hiccup suggests, raising his jaw and assuming the pose of a dragon on the defense of its nest, head up and protective. He glances around at the fog and slips his claws on to slash at it where it winds towards them. His claws go straight through as he knows they will – dragons cannot fight fog – but it makes him feel better. Bad bad this nest guard.
Toothless hums thoughtfully. It is possible. Their own nest is protected by ice, so it is not too different an idea that this one might be defended by fog. He rolls an eye back to look at Hiccup, who catches the glance and sets his shoulders, nodding fiercely and growling deep in his throat.
Yes, they will go on; they are together so they are not afraid.
They wait, stalking again, scenting the still air for the smell of dragon or the smell of kill, listening for the sound of wings.
This-way go ready flying, Toothless suggests finally, tensing for a takeoff and angling his body towards the direction he means to go.
Hiccup whistles a very quiet question. Why?
His dragon-half does not answer, but leaps into the air with a strong downbeat that propels them through the fog, swerving to miss another sea fang that Hiccup could not even see coming.
But Toothless sees better in the dark than he does, so the dragon-man trusts his beloved to lead them even though he does not know why the dragon has chosen this direction. There is nothing of uncertainty in Toothless' movements that he can feel so clearly where they are pressed together as they fly, and his breathing is steady except when he gulps in the air as if he is following a clear scent.
After a moment, though, he sees a shadow in the distance that is the stocky shape of a rock-skin cousin, small wings beating furiously and setting up vibrations in the still air that Hiccup can feel now that they are closer. And there is a faint scent of prey-blood beneath the seawater-smell in the air. Pleased, he settles down again.
As they track the new dragon, though, Hiccup cannot stay calm for long. His shoulders itch and his spine wants to curl a tail in as if it were about to get pounced on, and not by a hatchling, by something big. He looks everywhere for eyes but there are no eyes except Toothless' barely visible as faint green against the night-black of his scales, and Toothless is not watching him, Toothless is hunting, and being watched by Toothless is a good thing and does not feel anything like this!
He looks around them and knows something is wrong. Something here is not right in the endless fog and he cannot see what it is. Irritated, he shakes his head like there are bugs in his ears, pawing at one of them with the side of his dragon-claws so as to not cut his own skin. He will save his claws for the enemy that is biting at him.
The sounds, there is something wrong with the sounds…
It takes a few more minutes for Hiccup to figure it out, as they fly and stalk, but when he does he is afraid.
There are waves washing around the sea fangs, beating against the rock to eat them away, but either his eyes or his ears are lying to him, because they do not make noise at the right time. He can hear waves, but they are the wrong waves. They are not these waves that he can see clearly with his well-trained night vision.
The dragon-man sets his back paws against Toothless' shoulders and pulls hard on the flying-with, reluctant to make an alarm sound and interrupt their hunt again, but disturbed by the impossible thing. He shakes his head harder as he does so, trying to make whichever one of them is wrong right again, like he has woken up from a dream that will not go away and its shadow is in his eyes even when the sun is too.
Toothless pulls up short, tail flipping under him to balance and then hovering, at the distress he can smell and feel, but by then the waves are right again.
Hiccup shudders, a full-body movement that transfers to the dragon and shakes its way all the way out to Toothless' tailfins.
Threat? Toothless growls quietly, looking around and sniffing the air.
He risks another look. The waves are waves and they sound like waves. He croons uncertainty to Toothless and the dragon purrs comfort and together.
Smell, he suggests, lifting his nose and following his own advice. Nest hunt track nest dragons hunting.
Hiccup whistles a soft question. The sound carries in the dead air.
Hunt prey kill hunt dragons dragons fear dragons nest flock many prey fear prey hunt fear, it smells like, Toothless mutters. Nest no nest; and he places the emphasis on nest that makes it their nest, their home, which is safe and hidden and a sanctuary where they are happy with their family.
Reaching out a paw, Hiccup strokes it down Toothless' head from as far as he can reach to the flying-with, comforting them both. Curious? he chirps.
Yes yes yes. Toothless shifts away from hovering and sets off again, following the scent.
Finally the fog clears as they approach an island that is bigger than any sea fang; it is a mountain, with crags to climb and rocks to sun on and to protect the nest. And there is sky overhead! The stars are bright and familiar and welcome, the growing moon a friend to wandering dragons.
There are many rocks that have fallen and tumbled from high places to lower ones – rocks do that, sometimes they do that all at once and that has happened here. Some are darker and older than others and some are broken new and sharp for dragons to cut their paws on until they have been worn down by scales or more rocks dropped on them on purpose. Rocks are not friendly to rocks, they fight like dragons.
Dragon and rider alight gently on the rough shore that surrounds it, looking the mountain island over. As soon as he lands, Toothless raises a paw curiously, amazed. The ground beneath his feet is warm. He hums with pleasure – dragons have fires in them, but they adore warm things. Warm things belong to them because they are distant kin. The fog is worrying, but if the nest is warm even in the ground then he is not surprised that the flock has made their nest here. It would be good to have warm ground for a nest.
They are hidden by the darkness, but they can see and hear other dragons crying out to each other, they can smell the familiar scent of a dragon-nest – different from theirs, but so many dragons in one place can only mean a nest. And if there is a nest, there must be a leader, and either it is the sickbadwrongthing or it will know what it is, because what leader of dragons would not know its territory? Their Alpha does.
They have lived all their lives under the rule of a good king, and have never known another.
There is always a way into a nest, and confidently, Hiccup and Toothless take off again, examining the island from the air. There are many dragons to follow now, but they stay out of sight as much as possible because they are strangers and nests are defended because nests contain eggs. They are invisible in the night.
Hiccup leans to one side to catch Toothless' attention and gestures, pointing him to a fissure in the rock. A blue-spikes cousin has just dived into it and has not returned.
The black dragon rumbles with satisfaction and tenses, stretching out his newly healed wings. They have flown very fast to test them but now they will do it for real.
On his shoulders, Hiccup smiles a wide grin, showing all his fangs at the prospect of flying properly after all that slow stalking, and crouches so they can go faster and the air will not fight them. He feels every muscle tense, every decision and estimate and observation made in the way Toothless moves and the way he breathes – if they could read each other's minds they could not have communicated more clearly.
Lunge – faster, faster, and Toothless banks for a moment right above the fissure to see if they can safely dive into it. It goes a long way down and a long way in and he feels Hiccup shift, urging him forward.
A second rapid sprint, and they are in the darkness of the caves inside the mountain.
It is warmer in here, and there are no guards. The black dragon hurriedly slips away from the entrance and deeper into a side passage of the caverns, rubbing against the walls to pick up the scent of the nest so that their stranger-scent will not give them away in the dark. But they are not challenged.
This is a new strange place, but Toothless moves forward confidently, following something that Hiccup cannot detect. This in particular does not worry the smaller dragon – Toothless can smell things he cannot – but the whole place does. He feels like there are bugs in his head, and no amount of shaking will make them go away.
After a few turns Hiccup sees fire-light ahead of them, but a strange fire-light, constant and steady rather than flickering like dragon-fire.
They come out on a ledge overlooking a deep cave that falls away far below them. It is filled with smoke and fog like all of the fog that should be outside has come in here, but fog does not do that! It smells strange, choking him with a scent he has smelled before but does not remember yet. And it is warm, warm like they are high above the biggest fire in the world, like a sun underground but a dark, dull, brightness.
Hiccup wonders if the world might be a dragon, and this is its heart-fire.
And then he does remember the smell, the smell of death hunger fear madness emptiness power rotted-meat deepest-darkest-sea-caves that is the smell of the sickbadwrongthing that tried to take Toothless away from him. It grips his throat and he cannot breathe for a moment, does not want to breathe it in to himself. It will poison him! The stink will fill his body and the sickbadwrongthing will fill his mind.
They have found it. It is here.
He is about to cry out to Toothless when dragons stream into the cave, all carrying kills and flying quickly. They soar over the deep cave and let go of the food and eat none of it, flying together in a flock so closely that it is impossible to pick out one from another, milling and turning and flying like a school of fish that looks like one silver thing from the air or a flock of birds that fools the hunting eye, and so they must pounce at all or none.
Dragons do not generally store food, so Hiccup is puzzled. He hunches down on Toothless' shoulders, pressing his chest to the back of the dragon's neck, and growls confusion fear fear strange bad strange fear worried.
Toothless rumbles back at him, settling them down to the rock of their ledge.
Alarmed, Hiccup whistles an alert ready go! They are intruders in this place and they are not part of the nest, they will be chased away by angry dragons if they are caught!
The black dragon growls frustration, shaking his head so that his ear-flaps flop back and forth, but does not rise and prepare to fly away again.
Below them, the food is all falling and all gone, and the dragons are scattering as quickly as they can. Hiccup can smell the fear.
And then something enormous, with many eyes and a heavy head and long tearing fangs, rears up out of the fog and snaps at the closest of the retreating dragons with a roar. When the fog shifts around it there is clearly a fire below that stains its scales a sullen red; the color shifts across its skin as it moves.
It misses, but in that snap Hiccup can see bones caught in its fangs. They look like dragon bones, but that is unthinkable…but he can smell dragon blood and death and terror, and when it misses its first strike it lunges at one of the perched dragons, which shrieks and flies away and barely escapes.
He does not have time to comprehend the horror of this – it had tried to eat a dragon! – before the roar of an Alpha blasts into his mind.
Hungry! the Alpha demands. It tears through him – through all of them – as she roars. Hungry! Angry! It is more sensation than anything else, and ravening hunger gnaws at Hiccup even as fury sweeps through him.
She is powerful and old and strong, vain and idle and jealous; she has been the Alpha of this flock for a very long time and this is her domain, her place of power.
Both halves of Tt-(click)-th-phuh-ss are trembling now, terror running through them like waves as they cower away, but they cannot flee even though this is more wrong than they could ever imagine.
Stranger, she snarls, reaching out into her flock and sensing the intruders there. In response, the flock screams and screeches, and whether their racket is because they are frightened of her or of the strangers is impossible to tell, because they flee into caves and back passages and take off flying once they are out of the reach of the killer of dragons that rules this nest.
Come.
Tt-(click)-th-phuh-ss are terrified, but they cannot move; she has her many eyes on them and they must obey. She knows they are there, she blasts at them, and they cannot hide.
This is a new trap, one without metal or ropes and no small pieces to take apart with clever paws but with the most dangerous of teeth. It is a strong trap, and it holds them tightly in her eyes.
The black dragon and the dragon-man who are halves of a whole step forward together, Hiccup still mounted on Toothless' back.
She looks up at them and they are not sure that they are out of her reach. She is interested in them – they have found her, they have come to her when she called them even though they fought for so long, and now she wants the dragon that is not like one she has ever seen before.
Her will slams into them and it is like a weight, absolute fear combined with absolute force, demanding their obedience to her, because she is the power here, great and wonderful and terrible!
This is her realm, she is monarch here and none challenge her! She was the one who found the warmth in the heart of the mountain, she dwells among it closer than anyone else can get, she brought the flock to her with her calls, they are hers to command! They belong to her!
She has grown on the tributes they have brought her when she commanded that they should feed her because why should they feed only themselves and not the great queen who rules the warmth that is liquid fire and rock from the heart of the world? She had demanded that they bring her food so that none of them would ever forget that she was the monarch of the fire, none of them would ever be able to take her place at the side of the greatest heart-fire of all. She must guard it and protect it so that it will stay! It is hers, and they are hers!
The food was good, and the fear better, and when they did not bring enough to properly reward her for protecting the warmth of the heart-fire that they benefited from she had punished them, she had eaten the slow and the lazy ones who would not serve her well and added their fires to her own. Now she is a great queen, and her footsteps shake the world!
And the world had felt her, it had shaken her too, and her island had shuddered around her and things had changed as the heart-fire roared back at her after she had roared at it for so long.
The heart-fire had moved and it had shaken her island and things had changed. The tunnel in the deep dark places near the blinding heat of the heart-fire had filled with fire and collapsed, and she could no longer use it to feed in the deep oceans that no one but she among dragons knows about.
Now she is hungry all the time because she cannot swim in the deep waters through her tunnel and eat the enormous dark things down there that only she is strong enough to fight and conquer! The fires want her to stay, she is theirs, she will be warm forever! She will stay in the heart of her island and her flock will feed her, or she will feed on them.
They must hunt for her, and she will protect the warmth for them. The fire is hers, and they are hers, and they will obey!
You, the priestess of the volcano commands, hard as stone and inexorable as lava. Hunt.
She grips them tightly and burns the commands into them.
Obey.
They must obey her, she is the power here.
Hungry.
She is the greatest of dragons, and she is so hungry.
Hunt.
They must feed her so she can protect them.
Mine.
Their lives are he—
Mine! Hiccup roars, an angry, frightened, disgusted shriek that echoes off the walls of the volcanic cavern.
The binding straps on the flying-with have some leeway and he shifts so that he is crouching on Toothless' shoulders with heels set back and claws braced before him as if ready to be attacked, because she is attacking them, rather than sitting on the black dragon's back, shaking his head as he does so to drive her voice away and roaring his loudest, angriest roar.
Mine!
Toothless is his! They belong to themselves and each other!
Furious at the challenge, the enormous dragon who is death to dragons, who is an eater of dragons, roars back at him. She has never been challenged, and she will not be challenged by something that she did not even realize was there. She had felt one dragon, new and different and strange but one single self.
You dare?
But they are two who are one, and Hiccup does not hear Alphas quite so clearly.
He screams back at her hatred defiance hatred denial hatred, a noise much more draconic than human, the voice of something that had never been before and never would be again. It is new and strange and incomprehensible to her, and she snarls, disconcerted.
What you?
Hiccup screams dragon and there is nothing of humanity to it. It is all that is good about what they are – flight and freedom and togetherness and the safety of the nest and the belonging to a flock and a family, sunlight and joy. And it is defiance, defiance of the monsters in the world that would take all that away from them, because flight is their nature and what they are but they will stand and fight to defend it if monsters like her try to take it away.
She blasts Hatred at him and he shakes it off with his cry still in his ears and held close and cradled like a precious egg in his mind, the best of treasures, to be protected and guarded and warmed against all harm and thieves.
Seizing his advantage despite his terror, Hiccup drops back into the harness ready for flight and digs his claws into one of Toothless' ear-flaps where they hang limp over the dragon's bowed head, simultaneously kicking the black dragon's ribs as hard as he can and shrieking fly fly fly fly fly!
Toothless' head comes up with a snap and he roars in his turn as he fights her grip on him, trying to make it crumble away like the rocks of the sea fangs beneath his claws. She is strong, and he can hear her too clearly, but he can hear Hiccup best of all because there is no line between them and he loves Hiccup more than anything.
If Hiccup can think then Hiccup will think for them both.
Toothless leaps, flying blind and mad and stupid, trusting Hiccup to guide them.
So Hiccup does something crazy.
Instead of turning their tail to the colossal death of dragons and fleeing – the old and the wounded never manage to outrun their deaths – they will fight. He urges Toothless forward and down, falling out of control towards the monarch of the pit.
It is a plunge into a nightmare. There is heat on their faces and skins and a furious killer trying to maneuver around to find and then get at the pair that has just flown too close to her for her to see or hear clearly with the screams echoing off the rock walls, because Tt-(click)-th-phuh-ss are shrieking together, drowning her out and unable to stop anyway for the fear of her. It is a long fall with death and worse at the bottom, and Toothless struggles to get his wings under control as Hiccup shifts his weight and slews them to the side just as a blast of fire misses them, scorching the rock and adding to the heat.
But they have played this game before and before they can hit Toothless pulls out of the spin and gets his flight under control, still fighting the voice in his skull that commands him to stop, to stand still and face punishment for defying her. He dodges blindly and feels a small clever paw catch one ear-flap.
Love love love, Hiccup purrs, almost inaudibly in the chaos. But it gives Toothless something to hang on to as they try to escape, landing briefly and hiding in the monarch's shadow.
Deep in the pit around the feet of the death of dragons there are bones, there are dragon bones and they have been chewed on and spat out and now they are trampled underfoot as she tries to find the disobedient little dragons that have dared to refuse her commands. There are skulls that are the faces of the dead and the hot burnt reek of old dragon blood, much of it, oceans of it: they are surrounded by the dead cousins who have been eaten by a monster that is trying to eat them.
Toothless whimpers, feeling the dead catch at his paws and pull him down, bones cutting at his scales like claws.
Distantly, there is the smell of old ocean – good ocean and real ocean – long buried under rock that trapped her in here as the volcano shifted, as her hunger grew and one of her food sources was cut off. She cannot dig it out and she is too proud and arrogant and spoiled to find another exit although rocks can be moved – she is content to be the queen as long as she has a flock to serve her.
And far below, through passages dug out wider and wider as the eater of dragons grew, they can see the fire at the heart of the world, like the liquid fire of rock-skin cousins but infinitely greater. It is a strong smell like salt in their eyes and dangerous, and it rumbles distantly.
The world is a dragon! One too enormous to think about and too powerful to control or command, and Hiccup understands instinctively that the monarch of the pit is nothing compared to the fire that is her power and her captor.
She sees them, and her will stretches out to them even as her jaws lower to bite and swallow them both. Her eyes are on them, commanding.
The two-who-are-one do not need words to fly together, they don't need sound – all they need is touch. They have flown on the darkest nights and in the darkest caves and this is surely both.
So when Toothless closes his eyes he knows they can do this.
And they fly; they leap at her as though they are the hunters despite that she is so much bigger than them, she is an Alpha and the ruler of the flock, she is a monster and they are terrified of her.
But first they must fight.
He follows Hiccup's unspoken commands as he slews them both around to face her and recognizes the touch on the back of his skull that means fire!
With a shriek, Toothless blasts her directly, and again, and again.
The dragon-priestess of the volcano roars Fury! and Pain! She recoils from the explosions and beats her paws against the rock to make the earth shake. It is loud and disorienting and Toothless cannot see but he trusts his other half.
Go! Hiccup's movements say, and his paws and weight tell Toothless where to go, so he obeys in perfect trust, flying up and up until a tap of claws tells him he can open his eyes again.
Toothless does not look back but he can hear the scream of absolute rage that tells him they are not safe, that they need to get out of here right now.
They have pulled the tail of a true monster this time.
He hopes they hurt her.
Hungry! the monarch of the pit roars. He can hear her teeth snap and does not stop to find out if she can catch them. Angry! Hungry!
And fangs scrape together right below his tail. She has leapt for them and missed.
Terrified, Toothless panics. They have never been in such absolute danger and the only thing he can think to do is run, to reverse and retrace their steps into this nightmare as quickly as possible, which he does at a dead sprint, and out into the darkness of the fog-ringed mountain slopes.
Perhaps she cannot get out of the island or does not wish to, but Toothless does not care. He takes off flying faster, faster, faster, diving into the blind maze with his heart, his beloved, the best of dragons who can face down an Alpha and defy her still on his back and with him and they will be safe if they can just get away –
They fly as fast as they have ever flown – they were born to fly – at speeds they have ever only achieved while diving, dodging sea fangs and dragons that have fled their vile, evil Alpha's nest for now, screeching in terror.
The wind whips at them, the fog grabs at them, but they burn through it, going nowhere in particular but away. Toothless shrieks in a whistling breath and fires it out to scorch away the fog but it comes back, it is hers and she is grabbing for them. The fog is in their eyes and the fog is in their mind, trying to ensnare them as they try to outrun her, to blind them and deafen them and fill their mind with submission and fear and obedience, to bind them to her in the lost of the fog.
Toothless is full of panic and shock and he can hear Hiccup screaming back at her in defiance, dragon's voice full of anger and fear and disgust all tumbled together like a knot of seaweed around rotted bones. He joins his voice to his love's and they roar together, refusing her, defying her, filling the air and their minds with their voices rather than listen to hers, because if they fly fast enough and concentrate on that she cannot pull them back with their curiosity as bait, the warmth as the snare, and her power as the fangs of the trap.
He distantly hears Hiccup stop shrieking anger/fear/disgust and start purring, humming, singing love you beloved you love love you beloved mine you love instead, and it is a good sound under Toothless' screams like he is going to blast something but he will not return there alone to shoot at her, she will kill him and his beloved best-of-dragons both at once and eat them! How could they fight that?
The only thing he can think to do for now is flee, screaming to drown her out. He forgets their escape plan, forgets that the sky must be above the fog, and plunges through it as fast as possible. Suddenly there is something he can blast and burn: there are sea fangs! Toothless fires at the first one that blocks his way and it collapses, showering them both with flying stones.
Too many stones have hit them recently, and Toothless obeys the pull on his harness that stops him from trying to fly right through it in his thoughtless panic, banking sharply to the side instead and avoiding the worst of it.
Hiccup has an idea – he is the only half of them that can think right now. He raps his claws on Toothless' shoulder sharply and points at a sea fang nowhere near them, signaling fire!
The black dragon doesn't ask, doesn't care. He shoots at it and it explodes, crumbling.
His companion taps him again and they repeat the process with one on their other side, but not right in front of them.
Toothless will think about what that is about later, right now he just wants to get away, faster, faster, faster!
After an eternity of fog and mist and stones where the only thing to live for is the warmth on his shoulders and the horror of what awaits them if he stops, there is a wonderful thing.
There is light ahead.
Sunlight, there is sunlight! How can there be sunlight, it was just night! Did they lose the night? Is it morning?
Toothless doesn't care, and he can't stop crying out in fear. She is still out there, she is still angry, and they have to get out of her fogs as quickly as possible.
He flies blindly and in pure terror for the light, the adrenaline of fight-or-flight and fear and need-to-protect and flight at these speeds driving him.
When they emerge into the light it is sunlight – and a blast of fire.
To be continued.
And: …if you're keeping 'score', the song for this chapter is Ed Sheeran's "I See Fire", which you may have heard as the credits song for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.