A/N Thank you, everyone, for your exceptionally kind feedback! I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying the story so far, and I love to see what you're thinking after you read the chapter.
This chapter is a bit slow, but it provides import dialogue/sets up later events. We haven't see too much of some of our favourite Dragon Riders, but that will be changed in the coming chapters.
I hope you enjoy! Be sure to let me know what you think!
(Thanks to AquaJinx for catching a mistake involving Meatlug.)
HTTYD doesn't belong to me.
Getting something stuck in your teeth is always a miserable affair. But, now, if a dragon gets something caught between its teeth... Everyone suffers.
Astrid retched as Meatlug's rancid breath washed over her, her pink maw wide open for easy access. I should've just kept flying, she thought as she used the blade of her dagger to try to pry a stone from between two rear teeth. I could've pretended to not have seen Fishlegs flagging me down.
But she was glad to help in Hiccup's stead if it meant that he would go unbothered a little while longer. She'd seen something in his eyes, back at the smithy- something dark, and very unlike Hiccup. Was the same man who'd once refused to slay a dragon- the same man who abhorred needless death and destruction- really going to let Ryker die? Astrid Hofferson didn't have the same rigidly north-pointing compass that Hiccup possessed (case-in-point: she herself had nearly killed Ryker on sight), but that was one of the reasons that she respected him so much.
Hiccup will change his mind, Astrid thought as she sat back on her haunches, loosed stone in one hand and the other hand scratching the appreciative dragon's jaw. Meatlug prodded the space where the pebble had been stuck experimentally, then surged forward to accost Astrid with her slimy tongue, murring with pleasure. He'll change his mind, and when he does we'll be ready.
"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Astrid!" Fishlegs cried gleefully as his dragon's affections were turned on him. Astrid brushed a strand of hair from her eyes, huffed, and smiled.
"Ah, what are friends for, if not for picking chunks of rock out of their dragon's teeth?"
Just off to the side, Stormfly suddenly straightened up, eyes alert.
"What is it, girl?"
Astrid followed Stormfly's gaze to the path leading into the pavilion to where Toothless could be seen hurtling towards them at terminal velocity, churning up clouds of dust in his wake, eyes wild. Astrid immediately stood up, dreading the worst, and both she and Fishlegs exchanged worried glances as Toothless bounded into the clearing.
"Toothless?" Fishlegs asked. "What's wrong?" Toothless growled in agitation, pulling on Astrid's arm with his gums back in the direction he had come.
A thought struck Astrid like lightning. "Is it Hiccup?"
Toothless released her and bobbed his head in affirmation.
Astrid wasted no time in mounting Stormfly and rocketing off into the air. She heard Fishlegs and Meatlug right behind her, and on the ground Toothless managed to keep pace, vaulting fences and enclosures like they were nothing.
Gods, thinks Astrid, please don't let Hiccup have gotten into trouble again.
Hiccup was underwater.
He wasn't, really, of course, but it was as good a description of his current state as any. His eyelids were leaden, refusing to respond, and his extremities, too (his arms and legs felt like they were trapped in Deathsong amber), rendering him only capable of lying still and listening to his surroundings. The only problem was that the sounds were incoherent, warped and muffled and small. It was like he was deep under water trying to eavesdrop on a conversation in a boat- and on top of that, the sailors were whispering.
Then, suddenly, he was wet; actually wet, this time. He jolted as something hot and slimy enthusiastically slapped at his face. A tongue? Oh, euck-
Hiccup stirred, a moan wrenched from his lips. The voices quieted. A moment later he was able to move his hand to push away the concerned Night Fury threatening to drown him in saliva; he tried to speak, but only succeeded in coughing, which in turn led to choking. Someone cursed under her breath- Astrid?- and propped him up as he struggled to regain stability in his shuddering lungs. Hiccup hugged his middle as he shook, blush rushing thick and heavy in his ears. His temples throbbed with steady pulses of pain, and his skin was clammy and slick with sweat. He felt like he had a Monstrous Nightmare sitting atop his chest, as difficult as it was to draw breath.
"Just breathe," he heard another voice, male this time, soothe. He opened his bleary eyes and saw that it was Fishlegs, blinking down at him, his expression inscrutable. Toothless was laying on his middle, his forelegs draped over Hiccup's legs like a sentient belt. Astrid knelt behind him just out-of-sight, her arms warm around him as she braced his back. "Breathe, Hiccup. Don't worry about talking right now."
Like a true Viking, Hiccup always had been bad with instructions. "What..." he managed to choke out before he erupted into another series of body-wracking coughs. His eyes began to water, and his chest ached. "What happened?" he asked, his voice raw. He struggled to make eye contact with Astrid even as she continued to very pointedly avoid his gaze. Fishlegs was just as shifty-eyed, looking quite literally anywhere except into Hiccup's eyes.
"Uh..." Astrid hesitated, looking to Fishlegs as though for backup. There was something very wrong, Hiccup knew; if not for the pain in his head and chest, then for the way Astrid was clinging to him the way a child clung to his "little-Viking's first axe." She held him as though he was a bundle of sticks with no lashing: threatening to fall apart if she didn't hold him tightly enough.
A quick sweep of the smithy with his eyes brought all of the memories flooding back. He remembered Ryker; he remembered his fainting spell; he remembered gasping for air, and urging Toothless to find Astrid...
He remembered the water that tasted just a bit odd.
Astrid struggled to restrain Hiccup as he attempted to vault up off of the floor in a sudden excited flurry of arms and legs.
"That son of a-"
"Hiccup, you need to lay down-"
"-half-troll, mud-crawling-"
"Please, you just woke up-"
"When I get my hands on him... I'm gonna-"
"Hiccup!"
Hiccup thumped back onto the floor, Astrid's hands pressing down on his shoulders. He shot her a sullen look. "That bottom-feeder poisoned me," he rasped wearily, the fire gone out of him like breath to a candle flame. He went limp against Toothless's side. "All those lines about needing my help, and... he..." He stopped, silenced by the morose look Fishlegs was giving him. "...What?"
"I checked your canteen you had with you," Fishlegs said. "It was definitely Hel's Brew he dosed you with."
All of the oxygen was sucked from Hiccup's lungs, even though he'd suspected as much. "Oh," he said simply, numbly. Then, "But I didn't drink much at all. Maybe-"
"I don't have to tell you how lethal it is, Hiccup," Fishlegs said, fitfully twisting the end of his tunic between his thick hands. "Even a small amount can kill a grown Viking in a few days." Fishlegs looked at him mournfully as though Hiccup was already dead and gone to Valhalla. Toothless whined pitifully, tousling Hiccup's russet hair with a warm puff of air.
"A few days" echoed in Hiccup's mind.
He vaguely remembered Gobber's words on the matter of Hel's Brew, back when they had attended the Viking sea-burial for the poison's victims. "Gets in you, gets in your lungs, makes 'em shut down on you. Right nasty way to go. Reminds me of a beached cod."
Oh, Thor.
"Okay," Hiccup said, struggling to keep panic from creeping into his voice. "Okay, well, I guess I'll just go back to Berk. Gothi's dealt with this sort of thing before." "Easing them into the afterlife," she'd called it, all those years ago- Hiccup remembered thinking about how morbid of thing it was to say.
Astrid and Fishlegs shared another look. Even Toothless looked the dragon equivalent of abashed. "Oh, for the love of- is there something you three want to share with me, or are we just all going to keep staring at each other all morning?" Hiccup burst out in exasperation.
Timidly, Fishlegs admitted, "We kind of held a meeting without you."
"And we decided we're going to get you the cure," Astrid said peremptorily. For a long moment Hiccup just stared at her.
"...You're what?"
Astrid spoke quickly, trying to make her case before Hiccup could tear it apart. "The twins and Snotlout have gone to get Ryker from his holding cell. He said he knew where a cure was-"
"Astrid, that's gotta be exactly what he expected us to do!" Hiccup interjected loudly, wincing as his headache sent a wave of nausea rolling through him. Hiccup wished that he was standing so that he would be at eye level with the two. "What if he has an ambush waiting for us wherever this place is? What if this is all a trap?"
"We thought of that," Astrid said. "We're not new at this, Hiccup."
"Don't you think he wants to live, too?" Fishlegs put it in his two cents'. "He's got the same poison killing him that's kil- uhhh- that's in you."
"So he says," Hiccup protested even as prior experience told him that this was a lost battle. They were going to go, with or without his blessing. Still, he persisted, if for nothing else than the sake of good ol' Viking stubbornness. "If he really wants to live, then why poison the one guy he asked to save him?"
"So tha' you'd feel inclined to get the cure, obviously," a gruff voice pipped up from the doorway. Flanked by the twins and Snotlout, Ryker looked smug despite his ashen palour and dark-ringed eyes. (Hiccup wondered if he was as cadaverous in appearance as the Grimborn. He hoped not.) Toothless growled, extending his wing defensively over his rider, and Hiccup appreciatively rubbed at Toothless's side. "Pardon me for doubting your altruism, Hiccup, but it's always good t' have a back-up plan. If you were poisoned, I knew your friends get you the cure."
"That's pretty smart," Snotlout commented. Astrid glared at him. "What? Well, it is."
"Who said you're even getting the cure when we find it?" Astrid said hotly. "We can just as easily leave you to die." From where he sat on the floor, Hiccup had the perfect view of Astrid's white-knuckled fists.
"Astrid-" Fishlegs protested, seeing the flaw in her reasoning, but Ryker beat him to it.
"I'm the only man in the world who knows the location of and the ingredients for this cure, let alone the type o' dragon you'll need to complete it. I'll tell you how to get there on the way, and I'll show you where the main ingredient is when we arrive. Not a moment sooner. Let me die and your future Chief dies, too."
A heavy silence fell over them then, broken only by Hiccup's violent coughing. Even Ruffnut and Tuffnut exchanged somber looks.
"Fine," Astrid snapped after brief internal deliberation, much to Hiccup's chagrin. "But that doesn't mean I won't decapitate you with my axe after." Her fingers twitched as though itching to unsheathe her axe and finish him then-and-there.
"By all means," Ryker grinned, then dissolved, himself, into a coughing fit.
"This is going to be dangerous."
"I'm sure."
"The very definition of reckless."
"Yep."
"You can't trust him."
Astrid ignored him. She already knew that- of course she did- but what other option did she have? She wasn't going to lose Hiccup.
It was a half-hour after Hiccup had been found on the floor of the smithy. In one of the Edge's many storage buildings, Hiccup was sitting slumped over at a table, watching with distant eyes as Astrid rummaged through the various crates, packing provisions and food into a basket that she would later attach to her saddle. As she ran through her mental checklist, Hiccup prattled on, hoping to dissuade her.
Odin's sake, he was a persistent one.
"-across the archipelago. And you're just going to leave me here to worry? You could be attacked by dragon hunters, or eaten by a new type of dragon, and I would never even know."
Astrid paused, a blanket halfway to the basket. "Actually, you're gonna be going with us."
"What?" Hiccup's brows knit together in surprised confusion; this was the first he'd heard. "Why?"
Astrid's lips pursed into a thin line. "Because this island is at least two days away." And you'd be dead before we made it back was left unsaid; unspoken or not, it weighed on them both.
"But..." Hiccup scratched absentmindedly at the back of his neck, looking down at the dragon curled protectively around his chair. "I can't ride Toothless like this."
In the last few hours Hiccup's condition had worsened; his strength attenuated, he could hardly walk alone without his legs buckling beneath him. Even breathing was as laborious a task as cleaning a Zippleback. (Fishlegs had suggested he rest, though he'd declined. Though Hiccup didn't want to admit it, he was afraid that he wouldn't wake up.) He didn't trust himself to work the gears for the tailfin, much less to stay seated in the saddle- it would only take one black-out session and he and Toothless would hurtle towards the earth like a javelin. He couldn't- wouldn't- risk Toothless's health for his own selfish cause.
Toothless seemed to understand his concern. He sat up erect, his green eyes almost daring them to separate him from his rider. Astrid smiled at him, walking over to scratch the underside of his head.
"I've already thought it through," she said. "Stormfly is going to follow behind, and you'll ride behind me on Toothless. No one gets left behind." After all, how could she possibly leave Toothless at the Edge? His best friend was dy- was very sick. Hiccup needed Toothless as much as Toothless needed Hiccup.
Toothless appreciatively lapped at Astrid's face with his forked tongue, earning weak spluttering and a curse or two.
Hiccup tried to bite back a frown, not even noticing the comedic scene. He'd run out of arguments, but he still felt anxious. "Astrid, I just... I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to any of you because of me. There's a reason no one else would do this for Ryker, and we don't know what it is yet. We could be flying into- into- to anything."
Astrid walked over to him, dropping onto his lap and mussing his already messy hair with her fingers. Hiccup relaxed minutely into her touch, one of his hands settling familiarly onto her waist. "We're a team, Hiccup. We can handle it. And even if we can't, we'll make it work." Glimpsing his troubled expression, Astrid pressed a kiss to Hiccup's too-warm forehead. "It'll all go as planned. You'll see."
As she stood to finish readying for the journey (partly so Hiccup couldn't see the doubt flicker across her face), Hiccup released a heavy sigh that morphed into a hoarse cough.
"You're not going to let me die in peace, are you?"
Astrid smirked. "Not a chance."
Ryker rested his head against a bale of hay, staring boredly at the ceiling of his little enclosed paddock as he processed the day's events.
So far, so good.
He'd dosed the dragon rider with enough of the poison to make his dire situation imminent and spur his friends into action, which had worked just beautifully. Really, a strategy worthy of- well, not worthy of Viggo, that was for sure. After all, even if Viggo had been known as the brains of their alliance, Viggo was dead and Ryker wasn't.
Ryker coughed, his shoulders bucking with each spasm as his arms were tied behind him.
Okay, so he wasn't dead yet.
Luck and foresight combined, he'd managed to make it this far. Now he just needed to keep everything from unraveling when he revealed the key ingredient for the cure to the Riders. He'd managed to keep them from asking questions- or demanding them at the blade of another axe- for now, but when they reached the island he would have to tell them the whole truth.
He only hoped, for his own sake, that Hiccup Haddock's friends loved him enough that they'd be willing to betray him.