The final confrontation. This is the chapter before the last. Serious (mythical) animal cruelty ahead.
Berkian Eddur - 1
Becoming Lífþrasir
Fimbulend
Fire began raining down from the sky mere instants after the second horn had gone off. The village of Berk had been mostly emptied, but the few stragglers that were left, packing belongings or guarding assigned outposts, or even looking for that last, stubborn sheep head, were thrown into a near-panic as a wave of dragons approached as if to raid.
The chaos was curbed almost immediately as the whistling heralding a night fury was heard, and immediately, the dragons charging in a raid-like attack began falling out of the sky as they were shot towards traps.
"Contain them!" Cattongue shouted as Thuggory rose beside him and nodded. Cami gave him a rakish smile and dove after them, Sting spitting gobs of acid at startled beasts that pushed them into awaiting traps and snares. "We have to make sure that they don't attract her here! They know they usually raid here, but she's following the scent trail! If we can neutralise them before the Red Death gets here, she'll pass over the village!"
"We'd better do that in a hurry!" Heather yelled, rising on Clover and then coming back down in a neat arc, "That thing is getting closer and closer!"
"Roger that! How many more dragons?!"
"Captured twenty, eleven more to go!" the big blond guy answered - Fishgills. Cami couldn't quite remember his name. His wife was more awesome anyway. And her brother.
"Right, we need to get them under control, now! Toothless!" A roar of assent, and then they were rising and coming back down, Thuggory blasting randomly and Hiccup picking them off as she and Fishgills made sure they stayed in their traps by bludgeoning them or herding them with acid.
"Fishlegs!" Oh, that was his name! "Are the braziers put out? Tell me they were put out when the Horn went off!" Hiccup asked as soon as the last dragon had been trapped.
"I don't know, they should have been!" the blond called. "I'll go make sure!"
"No!" Hiccup yelled, swooping beside the other man and dropping a moderately sized package into his hands. "Oh no! Snotlout was supposed to do it! Give those to Astrid and Stoick!" Cami smirked - he was calling her by name again; so much for keeping his distance. She hadn't yet figured out what happened this morning with Snotface though, so there was that little piece of information to squeeze out of him later. "Thuggory, go check the braziers, and if they're on, have Fanghorn blast them out! Then get into position at the peak! I'm going to reel the shark in!"
"It's too soon!" Fishlegs yelled. "The others won't be ready yet!"
Hiccup swore colourfully. She'd remind him of that one later, and Cami chuckled appreciatively at the shade of red he would go.
"I'll lead it once around the island! I hope to Thor that it follows me!"
"Stay alive!" Heather called after him as he dove away, and the whistle of their sudden burst of speed made everyone wince.
Thuggory dashed off, Heather screaming a similar warning after him to which he responded in kind before she too streaked off towards her designated place. Cami decided that she had no instructions to go to her post just yet - not when there was that mysterious package to deliver. And maybe she could spy that silly one-legged blacksmith somewhere and wish him luck, too. That awesome man and his incredibly nifty all-purpose hand weren't ready to go down in battle yet - she prayed to Odin, at least. He still had to teach her a few of those card-tricks first.
"What are you doing?" Fishlegs yelled at her when he saw her following.
"Escort duty!" she yelled gamely. "That seems important." A nod towards the package. "And no offence but your forte seems strategy, not offense or defence!"
"Technically, strategy can include both," he replied in annoyance as they circled, looking for the big lug Stoick. Finally, they spotted him running towards the Peak, a purple dragon at his heels as Astrid hovered cautiously overhead.
"Sir!" Fishlegs gasped as if he'd been the one running, quickly dropping in front of the chief and handing him the package. "Cattongue told me to give you and Astrid this. It seems important."
Astrid landed beside Cami, descending from her nadder and jogging over. Cami did the same under her own power, using the distracted chief and Hooligans to snoop and satisfy her own curiosity. It contained three notes, one of each of them with a diagram on the third paper, a small handful of chalky earth, and what looked like a bridle made of out that shiny light metal Hiccup loved so much for Fireworm.
"Oh no," Astrid said as soon as she'd read her note. "He's planning to do something utterly crazy!"
"But it just might work!" Stoick said, a devilish grin of bloodlust spreading under his beard. He turned to the nightmare. "What do you say, girl, do you think you can fly me slowly to the place I direct you to? We will not be flying till the battle's end, so please do not take off until I tell you to." The dragon nodded at him, and … was it looking at him adoringly? Gods of Asgard, did Hiccup get it from his dad, or had that guy done something to this dragon too?
Cami gave Stoick a once over. Huge, smelly, cranky and hairy. Nope, had to be option two. Hiccup had definitely taken all that made him awesome from his mum. Obviously.
Two roars were heard, and Cami swore.
"So the braziers weren't off," Fishlegs said, biting his lip. Stoick went stock still, and ran a hand down his face.
"We have to go, now!"
With more grace than she thought he owned, he got the equipment on the dragon and hopped onto her; she took off, cautiously, as if she was carrying a precious egg or a young. Thor, that dragon was almost infatuated with her preposterously large rider.
They followed, speed rising to breakneck level as Stoick quickly understood what to do and Astrid confidently lead the way on her sharp, fast nadder. Thuggory caught up with them, almost standing on his thunderdrum as they hurtled madly towards the valley.
"We have to hurry, he won't hold for long!" he yelled above the wind.
"Why?!" Astrid asked, her voice high. Cami eyed her with interest; that was not mere curiousity.
"That monster is swimming, and it's following Toothless well enough already as it is," he yelled, "But I have sharp eyes - that thing's wings are almost healed. If it gets annoyed enough, it can probably take off, and then there will be no way we can contain it!"
"We'll just have to repeat performance!" Cami yelled, petting Sting who gave an approving roar.
"There won't be time! He's is holding it off until the beach is set!"
As soon as they arrived at the peak, Stoick looked around, searching for Gobber, who waved him over from what looked to be a make-shift smithy. Well then, good for him; Thor be with them all, and mostly with the smith.
"Cattongue set me up with this; says it works as well as any forge if this little guy here can help me heat the metal up." He nodded towards Gustav's baby nadder, who chirruped in response and puffed its chest out. Cami could have sworn the nadder was a female; huh, apparently not. The boy was also standing by, looking eager to help as he carried water-filled buckets and bustled around. "Are you going with his hairbrained idea? I've informed all the rest, and they seemed glad of it, but he's putting himself in unnecessary risk!"
"We can help if -"
A roar sounded, one that chilled everyone's blood with its familiarity and closeness. They rushed to the peak's cliff edge facing the ocean, the entrance of the water into the beach a strip that formed a natural port and cradle against the stagnant air sheltered by the sheer cliff drop. Cami whooped despite herself as she saw Hiccup and Toothless whizzing in and out of sight on and around the massive dragon's body.
Toothless was flying faster than she'd ever seen him. He veered at a second's notice, and the signature purple blasts came in shot after shot after shot. The Red Death roared again, and the smaller dragon barely got out of the way of its fire as the massive head rotated this way and that, sending the wall of flame she had seen before up and around the nimble black shape.
"GET MOVING!" Astrid suddenly yelled, whirling on everyone in way that brooked no argument. "Do all the dragons have their filters? Put the filters on your dragon's ears, NOW!" Damn, Cami would have extended an invitation to her as well if she didn't know that joining the Bog tribe was the last thing that Hiccup wanted her to do. "Drop those sacks in the sand, slowly! Don't let them open!"
Ropes began descending into the beach below, each one carrying a sack at the bottom that was deposited as gently as possible on the sand below and then the rope abandoned. Cami was glad for the lack of wind that avoided the delicate cargo from swinging. The sacks, all in differently stained in bright colours, and the brightest ones are the ones Cami is itching to see in action.
Hooligans, Bogs, Meatheads and UglyThugs were bustling to put a pair of filters on every single dragon's ears, and not a moment too soon.
"He can't hold on any longer, Toothless is slowing down! He's tiring out!" Thuggory yelled, looking at Stoick frantically.
"I'm giving the signal. EVERYONE, IN POSITIONS!" Stoick yelled, and the bustle wound down to snap actions of weapons being unholstered and harnesses being tightened. With a nod, Stoick let his arm drop, and three horn blasts sounded from the hills above, where Hiccup had left them with one spy glass each to keep everything in view while keeping out of the way, as that job was assigned to the more aged fighters who couldn't participate directly.
The night fury immediately swerved and high tailed it towards the entrance of the beach, causing the tensions to rise to a near breaking point as the anticipation of battle mounted. The Red Death followed, maw open as it roared menacingly in an attempt to intimidate, eyes unhealed as its last remaining pair focussed intently on the black speck of Toothless's shape. Cami resisted the urge to swear and shudder at the malice she could feel radiating off this dragon.
"FIRST WAVE!" Hiccup yelled from atop Toothless as soon as the Red Death's tail cleared the entrance to the beach, and it was like a dam had been broken. A machine launched, a whistling noise almost akin to the night fury's whining dive cut the air, and in true form to the Vikings of Berk's years' experience in dragon combat, a massive muzzle slammed down onto the Red Death's jaw, clamping it shut. Dragons took off with roars and calls, and the Red Death threw its head this way and that as its prey was confused amongst a myriad of other, multiple coloured dragons.
It tried to lunge, tried to snap a few up into its mouth in an attempt to muscle the contraption off its face, but immediately the clanging started, big, concave domes being beaten savagely by Gronkle tails as the younger fighters supervised the situation and the strongest ones swerved them to keep the monstrous dragon always at the centre of the sound wave. The ear filters on their own dragons held as nadders rose like fire arrows, led by Astrid, and they began relentlessly shooting spikes into the delicate cliffside, already weakened earlier with blasts and carefully dug tunnels courtesy of their whispering deaths. Even now the rumble of tunnelling dragons began to vibrate the ground beneath their feet. This change of plans was awesome.
Hiccup began herding the monstrous thing as he whistled, and the youngest new recruits began to release packs of terrors that immediately tried to fly away. The tiny dragons had been tied to specific rocks in the cliff side with sturdy ropes, lynch pins Hiccup had called them, and as soon as their frantic flapping began to tug relentlessly, the nadder spikes in the rocks began to create fissures. Meanwhile, the nadders were aiming for specifically coloured sacks, releasing a noxious smelling gas that made the creature shrink away and quiver its nostrils in obvious discomfort.
The night fury began to dive in and out like an attacking swallow, and the Red Death found itself trapped in the basin of Troll Peak's almost closed beach. As it slammed first into one rock face, then another, a lot of the Hooligans began to understand why their machinery was all so far back and sometimes on platforms made with reinforced wood.
The whispering deaths made it out of the cliff sides facing the sea, leaving two holes behind them. As soon as Cami saw this, she whipped out the tiny horn Hiccup had given most of them and blew.
"INCOMING!" he yelled, and with a flip that served as run-up, Hiccup dove towards the Red Death, avoiding a head-butt skillfully and blasting it into the rock face on the right. Turning on himself in the air, wings spinning around Toothless' body as he cut the air whistling in order to sharp turn, Hiccup blew his own horn, and Thuggory got up high into the air with the last rope tied to a massive rock as the clanging on the massive domes redoubled, and Toothless blasted the opposite wall three times successively.
A snapping sound like a whip was heard, and the cracks and fissures on either side of the beach's entrance began to expand and join, snaking along the white chalk walls like black worms until the rumbling of growling, thundering rocks took everyone's breath away. The cliff face on the far side, where the beach led into the sea, gave out, and with a cacophony that almost drowned out the clanging, the entrance to the beach collapsed in on itself, leaving a pile of rubble large enough to have the beast trapped within what was now a cul-de-sac.
Thuggory had Fanghorn roar three times, and the Zipplebacks took off, led by Phlegma (and she had to say, Hiccup sure knew how to choose his lady friends) and Cami whooped as she joined the fray, a few more changewings rising with her. Instantly, the difference in the beast's attitude began to have an impact as it desperately tried to back out of the trap they had snapped on it, and found that it could only drive against the cliffs and collapse more rubble; but it could not get out.
The Zipplebacks began the rather more sneaky task instantly, while the changewings began distracting the beast with splashes of acid and disappearing acts, working with the nadder riders as more and more of the beast's scales began to be flaked off and nadders' poisoned spikes began to find purchase in the softened acid-attacked flesh. Unfortunately, its desperation lent it more strength, and with a gargantuan effort it manage to force its jaw open just enough, metal twisting and turning around its muzzle and forcing some of it into its flesh in an effort to kill them all. As soon as it began roaring and inhaled deeply, Hiccup blew his horn four times, and all the dragon riders shot out of the wind-less beach and into the gale above, just in time to avoid the stream of fire that always followed the Red Death's loss of patience.
This time it worked against it, as through the inferno, sharp-eyed nadders and their riders began to target the yellow stained sacks, hidden away into spots where they would not be incinerated, and the potent smell of sulfur began to choke the uncirculating air of the beach, enhanced by the heat produced in the Red Death's fire. Cami swerved to come between Astrid and Heather, who were both shooting relentlessly and ignoring the heat rising from the beach as anything and everything flammable, from plants to the sand itself, caught fire, and even though the flames died quickly as they ate all their oxygen, the heat was intense.
The Red Death was wheeling about frantically, trying to find a way out as its armoured head beat against the rocks and tried to escape. Its efforts were in vain, and Hiccup wasn't quite through with it yet.
"Now, everyone, go for the eyes! SECOND WAVE!"
The nightmares went up, and suddenly there were fireworks as all the acid that they had poured began to smoulder and glow like angry ambers or charcoal left in the wind. Heather and Astrid dove, together with all the other nadder riders, and spikes began to fly relentlessly, some bouncing off the still armoured parts of its body, others finding their mark in softened scales and flesh. A horn went off from the hill, three short blasts, and all the riders began to put their masks on, as they had been trained, covering their mouths and noses. Cami joined in, letting Sting pour more and more acid as she and the other changewing riders rotated their positions from offence to defence. All the acid poured in was then spat on by the nightmares, whose viscous fire clung to the acid, but somehow didn't manage to ignite it.
Almost all the nightmares, led by Stoick, rose into the air carrying a rope each, and collectively lifted what looked like a larger version of all the machines around the battle field. This, however, looked like it packed the meanest punch of them all. Hiccup flew behind it, throwing himself off Toothless who stayed hovering nearby, and began to pull and push and prod and crank levers. Cami stopped in her job of distracting the massive dragon to rise above as a fresher changewing and rider dove in her pace, and could see Hiccup bodily hauling himself up to the seat that contained the final trigger. With bellows and gestures, Stoick kept the entire fleet of nightmares steady and aimed at the creature as if he had been doing it all his life. With a yelled warning, Hiccup finally launched when he was perfectly aligned.
The moment was breathless as the massive metal wire net unfurled, the weights at the bottom jangling. The Red Death didn't have time to move more than one step forward before the contraption made by Loki's inspiration descended upon it. Hooks the size of a small hall dove into anything solid they could find with their own weight and speed, and the massive dragon was pinned down under the weight of the rocks themselves as the pronged hooks sunk deep into the earth, and their shape prevented them from rising back up without digging out the cliffs themselves. Only the Red Death's head had remained uncovered, and no amount of struggling managed to liberate any more of its body from its squashed position against what was left of the ocean water and burnished, scorched sand.
"Disengage!" Hiccup ordered, throwing himself off the contraption and onto Toothless just as the nightmares let go of the rope, letting the poor beautiful weapon shatter onto the rocks below.
The Red Death screamed in anger and panic, and raised its large head to aim upwards, first trying to snap a bite at a few of the flitting dragons, and then taking a breath in that was deep enough to turn all of Berk into a crisp, dry land.
But when it exhaled, the fire it breathed was not the usual never-ending jet of flame. It barely passed its mouth before it disappeared, extinguished and dead. When Hiccup crowed in victory, Cami realised the crazy man had somehow accounted for this.
And then the Red Death started rumbling. The vibrations of its call began to shake the rocks, a few loose pebbles crumbling down to splash into the sea beyond the blocked entrance. Some of the dragons began to falter, but a shake of the head and a steady hand from their riders quickly brought them back to.
"That won't work, you horrid monster!" Hiccup roared, furious beyond anything Cami had ever seen him be. "Go for the eyes! Take them out now!" He drove Toothless into a dive, and right away began blasting in random directions so that the beast left itself horribly exposed every time it swerved to try to keep up with the agile night fury.
Within moments, Astrid had blinded its remaining right eye while Heather managed to out its left. Not to be outdone, Cami dragged Sting into it and had her pour as much acid into the fresh wounds as she could.
The Red Death screamed, banging its head about randomly now, and trying to snap at anything that passed it by, even if it was only a flying piece of debris that its own gyrations had sent shooting from the cliff face. Another horn went up, and the frantic clanging on the metal shapes resumed, this time at a frantic pace, and this time the Red Death moaned almost pitifully as it lurched and threw itself about in a disoriented way to try to get away from the noise.
"DISTRACT IT!" Hiccup yelled, and he and Toothless dove in, and out, and in again, wrapping sturdy, three-foot thick steel-reinforced rope around the dragon's limbs moving too quickly for it now to catch the movements of its enemy in its blinded state, though it flared its nostrils and came close to snapping them in half.
"Get away from him!" she heard Astrid scream, and she and her nadder dove in too, spikes becoming embedded even in the creature's unburnt hide as Hiccup gained enough time to finish tying all the ropes around the monster's various limbs.
Suddenly, the club-like tail swung, taking part of the net and hooks with it, and Cami dove with a screaming warning. Hiccup's agile dragon got out of the way; Astrid was not so lucky as she lost her grip on her saddle and fell.
She'd never seen Toothless fly so fast, even today, as he saved Astrid from the waiting jaws of the monstrous thing. As soon as Hiccup had her safely deposited on the far side of the peak, Cami spotting him flinging himself off his dragon to hug her, of all the sappy things, before he pushed her towards Stoick who landed beside them, Hiccup was up again like a streaking shot from Hel's own crossbow.
And she knew that body language. Hiccup was done playing cautious. He was about to get mean.
"Get ready! Cover me! HELGA! GO NOW!"
Cami didn't know all the stages of the plan, but she spotted a young girl aboard a whispering death duck behind its spikes as the dragon descended into the closed off beach as far from the Red Death as they could before the dragon dove into the rock-face with gusto.
The Red Death turned at the noise, but Toothless and the nightmares began blasting it relentlessly making it turn its body this way in that as far as the still steadfast parts of the net allowed in literal blind panic, snapping at them randomly and dangerously, and still trying to ignite the flames that only somehow managed to reach barely past its snout. They were, however, still hot enough to fry anything they hit alive, as an unfortunate terror discovered.
The whispering death suddenly shot out of its own entry hole back within the beach's enclosure, and Hiccup began to yell horsely.
"Get clear! Get out, now!" They all shot upwards obediently, and he gave five, short horn blasts. A massive flat disk made out of reeds was wheeled towards the edge of the peak overlooking the beach, almost large enough to cover the entire basin of the beach below, and it was wedged into a metal contraption with weighted circumference that allowed the men to lower it slowly by cranking a lever.
Hiccup called out, and three nadder riders directed their dragons to aim at a number of ropes connected to the ones tied around the beast. As soon as they were cut, the tension on the reinforced three-foot cable increased, and Cami realised that the other end of the rope disappeared downwards into whispering death holes made in the ground, and they seemed to be weighted, as none of them budged as the angry dragon began pulling and shrieking.
Half-way through, the lever dropping the reed disk jammed.
Hiccup swore spectacularly, landing beside the men and trying to lend a hand uselessly. Cami and Thuggory also landed, and Stoick ran up.
"What is it?" he demanded urgently, Astrid close on his heels with blood still pouring sluggishly down her face from a wound on her forehead.
"It's not jammed, the metal's melted on the inside," Hiccup said through gritted teeth, and Cami immediately realised how hot the temperature around them was, and not because of all the exertions and the battle rush. "Get out, all of you! I'll get under the reed and blast the rope holding the whole cranking machine up. That will close it over the beach anyway."
"No, you can't!" Astrid yelled, stepping forward. "You'll get trapped in there!"
"No, I won't," he said firmly.
"I will do it," she said fiercely. Hiccup grabbed the hands that were trying to grasp his front and pressed them back gently, pushing her towards Stoick who grabbed her instantly.
"You can't! Only Toothless and I are agile and experienced enough to get out of there on time, and only I know where that rope is, because I did it myself!" He turned to Thuggory. "The timing has to be perfect, you hear me? I want you to take Fanghorn to that rock face and blast where Helga tells you to. As soon as I hear that I'll shoot from the inside and get my ass and Toothless out of there. You two have to move as soon as it's done. Now go!"
"No, you're an idiot, you're going to get yourself killed!" Astrid yelled, fighting against Stoick's grip with everything she had even as he dragged her away. "Don't you understand that Berk needs you back!"
Cami raised a brow at the normally cut and composed girl as actual tears began to surface in her eyes while she struggled to get out of the vice grip she was being held in. It was no use, Stoick pulled her decidedly away. Hiccup's hand rose for a split second, palm glancing her cheek softly, and Cami felt like a thief in the night all of a sudden, witnessing an intensely private act that cracked something in her chest. It certainly cracked something in the Hooligan girl's.
"I'll BE back," he assured her, and hopped onto Toothless, taking off before more words could be said. Astrid roared angrily, but still couldn't struggle out of Stoick's grip as they all moved away as quickly as possible. Thuggory and Fanghorn took off with the girl and the whispering death, and every person who did not have a dragon was picked off the ground by those who did. All of Berk's fighting population, together with all the Bogs and Meathheads and Uglythugs who had come to lend a hand, cleared out. They rose off the ground, riding high enough for the cloud banks to be at their backs in cold biting curtains of moisture on Heather's frantic orders; but everyone's eyes were still glued below.
Toothless disappeared into the beach, still mostly visible behind the half-lowered reed. The beast was a lot more alert with the clanging noises gone and attacked right away, forcing the night fury and its rider to manoeuvre in the tight space, twisting and turning into knots and bends that for anyone else would be impossible. Cami bit her lip as they narrowly avoided being bitten in half.
The roar came from Fanghorn, followed by the noise of crumpling rock, and then the strange, whistling noise of air being pulled into a tight space. Fumes she had not realised were present moved in the sudden air-rush within the beach as Hiccup took out the dagger on his wrist and flung it at something.
The lid began to fall, and the sleek black shape shot out at the last second, then turned, and fired a single, almost anti-climactic shot into the closing space of the beach.
The moment the reed lid had settled the metal on its outer circumference fastened deeply into the ground and sealed the entirety of Troll Peak beach, and the centre of the reed mat was sucked inwards as if pulled by an invisible rope. Then with a thunderous roar, a terrible whoosh of air was heard and the beach exploded from within as the Red Death roared in the way it usually did when it shot flames. The rocks around the area where Helga's whispering death had tunneled, and that Thuggory had blasted, collapsed in on itself as a massive fireball first raised and then consumed the reed mat.
All the riders began to struggle as all their dragons banked in the sudden rush of hot air rising towards them, but everyone's eyes, including the dragons', were glued to the Red Death, being cooked in its own fire as it's frantic movements brought the cliffside down on it, all the ropes Hiccup had tied to its limbs were tugging at sharp metal anchors that had been placed inside the rock of the cliff during the preparations, sharp anchors coming free, bring the rocks down, and embedding themselves in whatever they found with the violence of rebound. The Red Death perished screaming, covered in flames and sharp metal wounds, only to be swallowed by the falling rocks around it that melted and engulfed it in an embrace of lava and molten earth.
But much more terrifyingly, much lower than all of their dragons in altitude, the night fury and his rider struggled to right themselves as they were buffeted by the violent winds of the explosion. They swerved and resisted for as long as they could, but then they bungled a right turn. Toothless was finally flung out of control and careening outwards towards the ocean when a much tinier speck shot off the dragon's back, also hurtling towards the water.
"NO!" Astrid screamed. "HICCUP!"
"WHAT?" was Stoick's answering roar. But Astrid never replied as his suddenly slackened grip let her finally escape him, and she threw herself off the nightmare.
"Stormfly!" she called, and her nadder was there, catching her and shooting off after the two at speed Cami had only seen from Toothless.
"We have to get to land!" Heather yelled suddenly, directing her nadder towards the closest safe landing spot away from the roiling rubble and lava.
The light was waning, sunset suddenly fully upon them as the battle drew to a close that left most of them breathless and boneless with fatigue and fear. Cami saw two other dragons shoot off after the nadder - Stoick on his nightmare, and Fishlegs on that gronkle, and she had Sting stand by, just in case.
She was the first to spot Astrid coming back, Hiccup bundled in her arms, red water dripping after her like she had been soaked in wine, visible even in the waning light. A glimpse at her face told Cami everything she needed to know.
"Toothless needs to be brought out of the water," Astrid almost sobbed. "Stoick and Fishlegs are trying, but …"
"Leave that to me. Now you, go! To the healer, go, go!"
Astrid nodded, some light between madness and determination re-appearing in her eyes as she urged her dragon froward, her voice still audible moments later as she shot away, urging and begging her very willing dragon to go as fast as she could.
Cami turned around and whistled to Thuggory, "Hey, we need to get Toothless out of the water!" He rose, accompanied uncalled for, but not unwelcome, by the twins on their zippleback, and then of their own accord, by every single other dragon and rider.
Cami turned Sting around and went to save a friend, praying to Loki that he wouldn't take her favourite mad boy away so soon, and trying to banish the copious amount of blood she saw trickling down from the nadder's seat.
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1 The title means; Long End, or Long Awaited Ending
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Ah, I am so, so cruel to Stoick… poor dear. His punishment, of sort, for driving his son away hereis finding out like this; it's something I find almost too cruel. I'm sure most of you understand.
Ok, a note I did not want to make, but I find myself forced to:
I have not read Hitchups, and I do not plan to. It is not, not, not a comment on my opinion of the author and her work – Arctic is someone I met on tumblr and she's a lovely lady (hey there, archnemesis!), and her one-shots for Hiccup/Astrid are well written and some of my favourite. However, from what I saw of the story line in her art on devArt, and from the page on TV Tropes, it simply does not seem like the kind of story I would like. Again, this is just a personal preference, and I totally think that Arctic Repartee is awesome. I only leave this note because I've recently received a review saying that I 'borrowed' from Hitchups – and not in a negative way. But it annoyed me, as I always make extra sure to reference stories that have influenced my fandom headcanon in my footnotes, and since I have not read Hitchups, it would be impossible to be influenced by it; and had I been, I would please like to assure everyone that I would have marked what the influence was, and given it proper credit in the footnote, as I have done with several other stories. I have also been receiving a lot of PMs telling me that I should read it, and I would really like it if it could stop and if my readers could respect my choices. Please? Thank you.
On another note, and talking about TV tropes, I'd really, really like it if one of you did me a favour. I would like to add reens' 'The Choice' and Foxy's 'Chasing Thunderstorms' series to the Recommendation page of TV Tropes, but that website doesn't like me at all. I've opened about four different accounts on different emails, and I never manage to successfully edit a page. I would be very grateful if they could be added, as both authors deserve the plug, and their stories are so truly enjoyable.
The last chapter will be up next Thursday 27th March. The three epilogues will be up on the 28th, 29th and 30th. I thank you all for all the lovely, insightful reviews and a special tip of the cap to all my sharp, sharp readers, who kept me on my toes and excited when they got all my hints and clues.