Dimmadreki Chapter 17

A/N
As of Chapter 16, this story has exceeded 15,500 hits and is now one of my Top Ten stories, in terms of popularity. I offer a sincere "thank you" to everyone who has read the story and helped make it so popular, and a double "thank you" to the sources of the 400-plus favorites, follows, and reviews I've received.

And to Lovesbugsalot, who sent a review that consisted of the words "Naw fig": nobody has any idea what you meant, but I've been saying "Naw fig" to all my friends all day, which is confusing the bejeebers out of them, and that's fun, so thank you, I guess. I prefer reviews that I can understand, though.

o

Dimmadreki steepened his dive and plunged toward the sea stacks, with the Monster in close pursuit. He swooped under a substantial-looking arch. Would she follow him? Would she get stuck? If she did, it would almost be too easy, but he'd take it. He really didn't think she'd try to fit through that archway.

She did try. Her head barely fit; her shoulders struck the rock, and shattered it with a sound like a nearby clap of thunder. Huge chunks of rock flew everywhere. It didn't even slow her down. He flew through another stone archway, and she destroyed that one too. So much for Plan A.

"You don't think you can outfight someone who has lived for four hundred years, do you?" she roared. "You might be Worthy, but you're not immortal! End this chase, land on the volcano, and swear your obedience to me, and you'll live to fulfill your destiny. Fight me, and I will either burn you alive, or eat you alive!"

I'll fulfill my destiny, all right, he thought, but I'll do it my way! He flipped his tail and raced for the sky. She curved upward and followed him. Another tail-flip, and he was headed back toward the volcano. For a moment, she hesitated behind him, unsure if he meant to land and give up, but her uncertainty quickly faded. He was moving far too fast to land. He raced toward the cone, pulling up at the last moment to avoid colliding with it. She pulled up sooner, and avoided the collision he was trying to trick her into. So much for Plan B. He was running out of ideas fast. He was also running out of daylight; he had to finish this quickly, before it became too dark to…

Wait a minute…

What had Myrkrid told him about Night Fury vision, back on the island of the Changewings? Maybe running out of daylight wouldn't be such a bad thing.

He was roused from his meditation by a hideous rushing sound from just behind him. He threw himself into a tight barrel roll, then snapped upward into an inverted loop, just in time to let another huge shaft of flame pass beneath him. He straightened out his flight path and headed for the clouds, with the Monster still close behind him. "It's no use going up there!" she shouted. "You can't hide! I can hear you and I can smell you! Surrender while you can! I only have to hit you once!"

But first, you have to hit me. He reached the bottom of the cloud layer, made a quick zigzag in case she tried to flame him again before he disappeared, and felt the tiny concealing particles of moisture all over him. For a while, at least, she couldn't see him. She might be able to hear him or smell him, but he'd minimize that by gliding as much as possible and not getting too close to her. The critical question was, could he see her?

He looked all around. There, somewhat behind him and three hundred feet below him, was a blurry but recognizable silhouette. He couldn't make out her eyes or any other features, but it was easy to tell her head from her tail, and her wings were clearly visible. Huge leathery sails. Targets.

He made a quick battle plan. He saw which way she was flying. He mentally mapped a flight path that would let him strike her repeatedly and regain altitude with a minimum of flapping, took a deep breath, sparked a firebolt, and dove.

His first shot struck near the root of her left wing. She roared with rage. "Come out and fight, you little morsel! I can outlast you! I can stay in the air longer than you ever could!" That's about to change, he thought. He looped under her, glided and half-flapped to regain his altitude, and dove on her again. This shot hit her halfway out on the right wing. He was choosing specific targets as he dove; he couldn't pick his marks in advance because he couldn't count on her to fly a straight, predictable course.

After five hits, she lost her composure and roared. It wasn't any kind of speech; it was a bellow of pain. She drew in a huge breath and spat out flame in every direction, hoping to hurt him by the sheer volume of her fire. He nearly flew head-first into it; only a wild maneuver enabled him to miss it, and it still burned his tail painfully. The real harm was that she'd thrown him off his carefully planned flight path. He'd have to flap hard to get back into the battle, and she could probably hear him and home in on him if he did that. If he didn't flap, he'd eventually glide out of the clouds, and that would be the end of that. It looked like he'd gambled and lost.

Then he saw a flash, and heard the Monster scream again. What in the name of…? He looked up, and barely saw another silhouette, small and fast-moving. The Monster's silhouette changed its aspect; she was turning to close in on her new assailant. He seized the moment to flap and climb until he was on the same level as his newly-discovered comrade in arms.

"Myrkrid! You came back!"

"Don't talk! Shoot!" she ordered, and turned to the right.

"Shoot her wings!" he called back. He banked to the left, waited until he saw the flash of his mate's next attack, then dove and blew yet another hole in the Monster's wing. Working in tandem, they swiftly shredded every one of their enemy's major wingsail surfaces. She might not even realize that there were two of them; she repeatedly tried to close in on her most recent assailant, rather than track down one or the other of them. The next time he saw Myrkrid nearby, he whispered, "It's time! She's about to go down. We can't let her glide down – she has to dive!"

"How are we going to make her do that?" Myrkrid asked quietly.

"Live bait," he answered. "Get up above the clouds and stay clear; this is the really dangerous part."

"I'm already in this a lot further than I wanted to be," she replied. "I'm not leaving you now."

"Then follow me!" He pushed over into a dive, and allowed the wind to whistle across his sub-wings. The Monster would hear that and know what it meant. He was counting on it. He heard the wind on his mate's sub-wings just behind him. They whipped past their enemy's huge mouth, and felt a blast of air pull them back as she tried to inhale them. They were moving too fast for that. "What's the matter, old woman?" Dimmadreki taunted her. "Can't you handle a couple of small dragons?"

"You are going to die, Worthless One!" she screamed, put her head down, and followed her tiny opponents as they plunged earthward.

The Night Furies' wings were whistling at full volume now; they needed every bit of wing surface to avoid tumbling out of control, especially Dimmadreki, who felt pain with each motion of his burned tail. The holes in the Monster's wings were whistling as well, but she didn't seem to notice. They burst out of the clouds, and she quickly homed in on them. "I'll kill you!" she screamed. "I'll kill you both!" She swiveled her head toward the closest Night Fury, which was Myrkrid, and Dimmadreki heard that hideous rushing sound again.

His mate wasn't looking behind her! Of course she wasn't – she didn't dare look in their enemy's eyes. He made a quick spin, ignoring the pain in his tail, and fired one more desperate shot straight into the Monster's mouth. He wasn't sure what would happen, but he had to do something! His shot burst just before the Monster exhaled her fires, igniting them prematurely, and the conflagration set fire to some of the gases she hadn't yet exhaled. With flames streaming out of her mouth, she plunged downward, ever faster, ever closer to them.

Dimmadreki glanced away from her, toward the ground… and the ground was way too close! "Pull out!" he screamed, not caring if the Monster heard him. He broke left, Myrkrid broke right, and the Monster realized, with a scream of terror, that she could not pull out of her dive. They'd perforated her wings in too many places. With a final cry of despair, she slammed face-first into the ground, and all her fiery gases ignited at once.

With a huge fireball and a blast louder than any clap of thunder, the most feared dragon in the Northland met her end. The cloud of black smoke that marked her final resting place rose up in the air and folded in on itself until it looked like a dark mushroom.

The two Night Furies circled the spot. They were buffeted when the shock wave from the explosion hit them. They waited until the smoke dissipated; then they landed next to the ruined remains of the Monster. They didn't get too close; even in death, they feared her. They were both puffing from the exertion of their battle in the air.

"We did it," Myrkrid finally gasped. "We actually did it."

"You came back," Dimmadreki forced himself to say. "Why?"

She steadied her breathing and gazed into his eyes. "Because I realized that, for the first time in my life, I'd found someone who meant more to me than propagating the species did." They closed their eyes and rested their heads against each other in silence.

That silence was broken by the most extraordinary cacophony they'd ever heard. It was the sound of over a hundred dragons bursting out of their nest, feeling and knowing freedom for the first time in years. Some just flew away from that place as quickly as they could. Some turned loops and spins and Immelman turns and any other maneuver they could think of. Some flew over the dead Monster and released their droppings. Some flew down to sea level to catch fish, knowing that they could finally eat whatever they caught. And a few, including Tannlaus, landed near Dimmadreki and Myrkrid.

"Did you do this?" the newly-freed Night Fury asked.

"We're still in a daze, but... yes, we did this," Myrkrid replied.

Tannlaus shook his head vigorously. "All those years in slavery, and I never even knew it... now I understand why you had to leave me. What you two did today is going to be passed down to the next generation, and the one after that, for as long as any of us are alive! I still don't understand..." Then he wrenched his eyes off of Myrkrid to stare at Dimmadreki. "Are you the one that Tannin told us about? Are you the one who's a dragon and not a dragon? Is that how you did it?"

"Well, all the votes haven't been counted yet," he said embarrassedly, "but I know I'm a dragon with the mind of a human, and I know the Monster couldn't enslave me or control me, so... it's possible."

"It has to be him," Myrkrid added. "No other dragon could do what he did today."

"I couldn't have done it without you," he said.

"I couldn't have done it at all," she came back. "I'm sorry I doubted you earlier. I'm convinced now – you're the one who's going to set all the dragons free, one nest at a time." The other dragons cheered and stamped their feet, adding a few puffs of flame to their adulation.

Dimmadreki was stunned and slightly embarrassed. He'd come a long way from Hiccup the Useless!

"Will you tell us your story?" a young Zippleback asked eagerly. "It must be amazing."

"That could take hours," Dimmadreki began.

"...and we can't stay that long," Myrkrid finished. "We have to find a safe place to live until it's time to lay our egg."

"Why not stay right here?" he countered. "This nest is safe now. We've made it safe." She glanced up at the top of the cone, and nodded.

Suddenly, they were distracted by the sound of dragons fighting. Two Gronckles were about to attack each other for some reason; they were circling each other and looking for rocks to eat. They were on the verge of lunging at each other when a firebolt burst between them. Tannlaus strode up to them angrily.

"For Tannin's sake, you two!" he burst out. "This is your day of independence! You're free! Can't you think of a better way to celebrate than getting into a stupid fight? Go catch some fish or something." The two lumpy dragons pulled back from each other, made some threatening noises, and went their separate ways. Tannlaus turned back to the other dragons.

"I'll admit, I'm going to miss the peaceful nest that the Monster enforced. That's about the only good thing she ever did, and she did it by using her power over us, but without her, we're probably going to revert to squabbling and fighting over every little thing. That's how we live."

"Does it have to be that way?" Dimmadreki asked. "You just did a nice job of ending that fight. Why don't you keep peace in the nest?"

"You mean, become another Monster? No, thanks!"

"No, don't be a Monster! Be a servant-leader," Dimmadreki explained. "You're a Night Fury; you've got the intelligence that the other dragons lack. You'll catch your own fish, like any self-respecting dragon, and fish is all you'll eat. You won't bully anyone or force anyone to do anything. But if the dragons have problems, they would agree to bring them to you instead of fighting, with the understanding that your decision is final. If they do fight, you obviously have a talent for breaking them up. You could be just what this nest needs."

Tannlaus looked dumbfounded. "That's quite a promotion you're asking me to accept."

"Hey, if I can adjust to the idea of freeing the dragons all over the world, then you can adjust to leading one nest, can't you?"

"I suppose," Tannlaus nodded. "But there's one other question I have to ask." He turned to Myrkrid. "Now that I'm not enslaved any more, is there any way that you and I could ever...?"

"No." She shook her head firmly. "With you and me, it was nothing but our obligation to our species. I liked you then, and I like you now, but that's all. With Dimmadreki, it started as obligation, but now... I love him. That's the end of the story."

"I understand," he nodded sadly. "Love is special. It doesn't happen very often among our kind. I won't mess with that. I wish you both the best."

"Thank you," she nodded. "We're going to need those best wishes before we're done."

The Night Fury couple caught themselves some fish to replace the energy they'd used up during their life-or-death battle, found an unoccupied ledge in the volcano that was big enough for two, and began adjusting to living in a nest. It was Dimmadreki's first real experience being surrounded by dragons for any length of time, but after all the changes he'd already been through, adjusting to this one was almost easy. There were a few fights here and there, but Tannlaus broke those up quickly, and the other dragons began adjusting to the fact that a Night Fury was now in charge.

Dimmadreki found it awkward to even chat socially with his mate's ex. Tannlaus did nothing to make him uncomfortable, and after a few days, he realized that the older Night Fury meant no ill will toward him. If the circumstances had been different, maybe they could have been close friends. Perhaps, given enough time, they might become friends anyway.

Once the other dragons of the nest learned who was responsible for their sudden freedom, they couldn't thank him enough. Some of them wept in frustration when they recalled the things they'd been forced to do, and the friends they'd seen die, now that their minds no longer belonged to someone else. All of them tried their best to express their gratitude to Dimmadreki. He found that the less-intelligent breeds, like the Gronckles and Nightmares, expressed themselves in simpler and more heart-felt terms than the smarter Nadders and Zipplebacks, who struggled to find the perfect words to say. He found the whole thing slightly embarrassing; he was used to getting attention only when he'd messed something up.

"If you're right about your destiny, then you'd better get used to this kind of treatment," Myrkrid cautioned him. "There are five more nests out there, all full of dragons who are going to be just as thankful when you liberate them. Maybe more than five; we don't know anything about the Bewilderbeasts and how they run their nests."

The two of them spent much of that first night telling their life's stories to the other dragons. They had a rapt audience who asked many questions. It wasn't possible to tell the entire story in one night. In fact, they weren't even finished after two nights. In fact, over two weeks later, they were still relating some of the details when a sudden urge came over almost every dragon in the nest, and they went flying away to the northwest, to a secret location that all of them except Dimmadreki seemed to know about.