~Ouroboros~

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1st – 14. Shackles of My Body

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I was lying on the ground inside my cove – the exact same cove I had first decided to live in when I had first come to this island was now my (temporary! Only temporary…) prison.

When I had first woken up I was able to push aside all the pain and aching that had taken residence within my body, and caught some fish from the pool. Even in the condition I was in it wasn't too difficult to capture ten or so decent sized fish as long as I took my time at it, which did wonders to fill up my empty and grumbling stomach. Waiting calmly for the fish to swim by was made difficult because the paw that I had nearly bitten through still sent stabs of pain every time I placed a bit of weight on it, but I did my best to ignore it. It would require at least an entire sun cycle for the lacerated tissue to heal back, and until that happened there was nothing I could do but dull the pain.

Of course I had to consume even more of my muscles to be able to move after my escape, but that was a small price to pay for survival – I had no questions about my life expectancy if I had not done that. Still, that left me about as well muscled as a newborn dragon. Perhaps I over-exaggerate – but sad to say, not by much.

Having sated my hunger, I knew that there was nothing to be done until at least several hours passed – enough for me to digest the fish and at least have enough nutrients in my body to start healing and rebuilding it.

Another sharp stab of pain from my chest caused me to groan and focus back on not breathing in too deeply. Although I had managed to instinctively harden the bones in my body before the impact after my fist fall – as witnessed by several shattered trees that I went through on my way down – I still had heavily bruised most of my ribs.

Still, that would have been acceptable and easy to heal if it wasn't for my panicked retreat afterwards. Having used all of my strength to just keep my body running meant that each time I crashed along the way had led to more dangerous injuries. Case in point – my three cracked ribs and nearly shattered shoulder. I could have very well died if I had not landed into the lake when I crashed down into the cove (the distance down being more than enough for that); and it was only luck that had prevented my wings from getting clipped or smashed and broken along the way, as without even the minimal strengthening that I usually use to protect them I could have very well ended up losing an entire wing.

Not that it would have mattered…

I flinched at that thought. The very first thing I did upon waking up was carefully check my body for the reason why I had been unable to maneuver properly in flight and had almost instantly stumbled across my tail, along with its single fin – the other having been sheared clean off either during the fall or sometime later.

I do not know what led me to catch something to eat and then find a place to curl up and rest afterwards, my mind was simply too numb to care. My life was over – it did not matter whether I succumbed to my multitude of injuries (as unlikely as it was), was found again by humans and killed (a chilling thought, and yet quite possible since I had let the youngling escape with its life), went insane from wanderlust which now that my mind was clear of that pungent darkness was once more slowly approaching, or went insane from my loss of flight as all dragons are susceptible to.

As my mind subconsciously turned to healing my overstrained heart – possibly the second worst injury I had – I could not help but curse myself for holding out any hope in this situation. I was too young, if not in body then definitely in mind, and it showed now more than ever in my unwillingness to simply end my life.

I was scared alright!?

To older dragons death may seem as just another step in the cycle of rebirth, which perhaps was why they were capable of just taking that last step so easily – but I just couldn't do it.

Couldn't give up hope that all of this was just a nightmare that I would wake up from.

Or perhaps shake the fear that whatever came afterwards would be worse than the situation I was in.

Trying not to aggravate my wounds any more than I already have, I didn't even bother trying to get comfortable before closing my eyes and attempting to sleep. Healing always works faster without your mind's interference after the first time you consciously do it – your body knows better than you where to direct your energy; quite unlike most of the other skills which require conscious commands.

Perhaps it was just my hunger that had prevented my tail from healing…

Oh the lies we tell ourselves to keep us going…

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I awoke to the sound of birds somewhere above me and the sight of the all too familiar cove. It took but a single moment to remember everything that had led to me coming back to what was once my home on this island, and a moment longer to realize that I was no longer feeling the sharp stabs of pain every time I took a breath.

From the sun's rays shining down upon my body and the state of my wounds I knew that I had slept for the remainder of the day as well as throughout the entire night. It had taken that long for both my body and my mind to mostly heal from the actions I forced them into after my awakening from the darkness. On the outside I likely still looked like I was still heavily injured – what with patches of scales missing and scabbed over gashes all over my body; but all of that was mostly superficial as my organs and skeleton structure that have taken heavy damage have healed themselves to an acceptable level. As long as I did not attempt to do any more serious stunts within the next few sun cycles, I knew that everything would be healed completely.

Well, everything except for my scales which would have to grow back naturally over the next few moon cycles… that, and…

My left tailfin – which I could still feel on my tail, even though the slight imbalance in weight told me otherwise.

With my good mood sufficiently destroyed I opened my eyes and looked at the single tail fin that had been covering my eyes from the glare of the sun above. The only thing left of the other tailfin was a deep scar running along the other side, the skin of which had closed in taut over the bones while I had been asleep – stretched so taut in fact that without the scales which would grow over the wound in time, I could easily spot the locations where my fin bones used to connect into.

By now I was hyperventilating. It was one thing, no matter how horrifying, to see my tail fin replaced by a gaping and bleeding wound – but it was another thing altogether to see the healed scar tissue that had replaced it. The fleeting hope that the fin would grow back was completely shattered, and any hopes of flight along with it.

Even as the darkness closed in on me again I could only focus on that single thought – everything was over.

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Perhaps it was the first sign of insanity that when I had woken up the next time I was giddy with excitement. Sometime during my dives between sleep and awake I had decided to teach myself how to fly with only a single tailfin – no matter how impossible my knowledge of flight told me that was.

The sun was already high in the sky when I picked myself up and went off to catch myself some fish. Too impatient to start flying again, I had only managed to catch a single fish before I couldn't take it any longer and proceeded to stretch out my muscles. While it would take a moon cycle or so with a proper diet to get back the musculature I had before, I was in much better shape than when I had first arrived on this island all those Cycles ago – I hadn't after all consumed enough to completely cripple my body.

No, my ripped off tailfin was enough by itself to do that.

I forcefully pushed that thought down and with a running start jumped into the air – a picture perfect take off if I do say so myself. The next few wing beats were performed spectacularly before my tail once more sliced without resistance through the air and down below my body, causing me to perform a partial vertical loop and take drastic measures to prevent myself from landing on my back – possibly tearing at my wings.

The next few attempts were not any better than the first, though they were slowly turning out to be more and more frantic, complete with roars and guttural clicks of disappointment every time I was forced back down.

By now my muscles were screaming at me to stop, and I did – more out of surprise that my stamina had plummeted that low than because of their aching. Perhaps I had overestimated the condition of my body. Curling beside one of the trees within the cove I took a brief rest, absentmindedly feeling myself furling and unfurling my tailfin – the one that wasn't there.

The sun was halfway down from its pinnacle when I stood back up and made my way towards the water pool. This time there were no fish swimming close by, and all of a sudden it dawned upon me that considering the size of the pool before me, I might actually consume all the fish that lived within it in a course of a single moon cycle.

A strange sense of fear set in that I had never experienced before in my life. It seemed as if the walls of the cove were closing in on me – leaving the boundless skies above as the only method of escape – a method that was forevermore denied to me.

Not even thinking clearly I threw myself upwards towards the nearest stone wall, beating my wings to bring me as high as I could before I either lost control or crashed into the wall.

The later came first as I felt my claws attempting to dig their way into the rocky formation – trying to bring me just a little bit closer to the edge – just a bit closer to freedom. Releasing shrill cries of frustration I clawed at the stone beneath me with increasing desperation. It was a failure of course; my claws slipped downwards, blunting their razor sharp edge as they ground along the stone wall. I didn't care about that though – the walls all around me seemed to shrink my world into just this single cove that in itself seemed to shrink in on me – smothering me in its hold, much like the egg shell did when I had first gained consciousness. I broke out of that world in the end – shattering the eggshell and spilling out into the endless world outside. Now though… the endless cliffs holding me down to this small portion of the world seemed impossible to overcome.

Feeling myself slipping further I let out one last cry before pushing off and attempting to change my fall into an acceptable glide down – all my thoughts focused singularly on my flight, giving me a much needed reprieve from my fears. I was only partially successful, not having had time to properly align myself without the help of my tail – the landing was horribly inelegant, and yet it gave me hope. It had been a much better landing than the first few I had.

Starving rabbit for a starving dragon and all that, but still…

That thought made me remember just why I was trying to get out of the cove, and as the walls loomed over me once more I straightened out and searched for a place where the stone wall was lowest before positioning myself and running towards it, launching upwards when I was roughly two wing beats away from it.

This time I hit stone further up the wall, and proceeded to attempt to scramble my way upwards, cumulating with a similar failure to the first try. The landing however turned out to be worse than before as I came to a stop with my face plowed into the ground – my legs having folded down under me from the speed I was moving combined with their currently weak muscles.

I tried one more time, but out of terror at my situation jumped upwards much too early, causing myself to lose control before even reaching the wall I was aiming towards and crashed down into the ground instead. It didn't matter that much though, even before this last attempt I knew that I was not getting out that easily.

Giving up for now (and it was definitely only 'for now' – I was going to make it out if it was the last thing I did!) I pushed down the strange fear of the cove around me that I had developed. With it gone I could feel my empty stomach roiling inside me along with the now constant aching from my muscles. Standing back up was much harder than before, and I could not afford to strengthen them to make it easier on myself – for at least half of the next moon cycle I would have to abstain from strengthening my body so as not to cause irreversible harm to myself through getting my body… addicted… to being strengthened, which as I had been taught could easily lead to not being able to move without it.

Not that it matters to me – doesn't it?

Plowing on with my aching muscles I made my way to the pool and crouching down attempted to at least catch some fish. Luckily for me a small school of them was swimming by and three quick bites downwards resulted in a single decent sized salmon each for the first two bites before the rest scattered away. I knew that the third was nothing more than wishful thinking, having learned that through experience during my second winter – but I was hungry and looking for a miracle.

It would be some time before the school felt safe enough to approach once more, so I decided to just lie here and –

The sound of a branch falling down the cove wall brought me out of my thoughts as I snapped my head upwards and slightly to the left, zeroing in on where the sound originated from. Out of everything that I had expected to have come to visit, the human hatchling was most definitely not it. Lying down frozen on one of the boulders along that section of the wall with his front-left paw reaching out in what must have been a failed attempt to grab hold of whatever had fallen down, he looked just about as frightened as he must have been a sun cycle ago when I held him under my claws.

Looking at the hatchling I wondered what exactly he was doing here. From his words before, it was possible that he had returned to finally kill me – perhaps bringing his sire along with him, though from the distinct lack of yelling and shouting my memories showed me these humans started their assaults with, perhaps not. Was he foolish enough to try and take me on by himself in some misguided attempt at gaining favour with his sire?

I wasn't sure what I would do if that was the case. It went against my beliefs to kill a hatchling – as my sire had taught me, it was forbidden to kill hatchlings and expecting mothers of soul bearers, no matter the reason; and I followed that belief even so far as to spare hatchlings of soul-less creatures as well whenever I could.

I waited some more for the human hatchling to make a move, either to flee or to attack me, but after a while the nagging pain from my legs snapped me out of my thoughts. Dismissing the human as inconsequential I shifted my weight off my damaged leg. Glancing down towards the water and spotting several stupid salmon that had decided to return so quickly, I made two rapid strikes towards them. With my mind still at least partially focused on the human I failed at getting either, and disgruntled at my inability to even focus properly when needed stalked off to rest, not even glancing back when I heard the hatchling scrambling about.

After finding a good position to sleep in I opened my eyes and glanced back towards the hatchling, only to capture his back retreating into the narrow opening partway up the wall to the right of where I had first seen it. While I could reach the opening, it was too narrow for me to fit through or even use as a ledge to jump up from.

Some part of me worried about being stuck inside a place with no way out – a place that I now knew was known to the humans that for some reason or another decided upon exterminating all the dragon races; but another part of me whispered that even if they came, they would just bring with them death – the same death that I was too scared to accept.

I closed my eyes.

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The wind split against my wings as I soared above the clouds. The sun was still in its zenith above me, making the white clouds below me look almost as an endless ocean, only broken in places to reveal the deep blue of the actual ocean waters below. Folding down my wings I angled down, barely controlling my descent with my wing- and tail- fins.

The euphoric feeling of flight – of danger, and freedom – the knowledge that I am one of the few masters of the air capable of doing this, solidifies itself and I can no longer hold it in. Starting almost silently, my screech quickly gains volume and pierces through the world – telling everyone who can hear it that an eternal wanderer was making its signature attack run.

A few seconds before reaching the cloud layer below me I release a fireball and watch with satisfaction as it explodes after barely piercing the clouds, scattering them to the sides and replacing them with the blue-red fireball that begins to quickly dissipate – but not quickly enough as I plummet my way through it and down into the clouds below.

The world turns white as the thick fog around me blocks my view, and I fly through it, subconsciously dodging the rock outcroppings that seem to pop up along my path. The euphoria I had felt what must have been only moments ago is gone, replaced by anxiety – something about the white fog around me is wrong…

As if in response to my thoughts the world seems to invert its colors, and I find the flame of my mind – beautiful and mesmerizing blue of the deep sky when there are no clouds blocking your view – floating within the pitch black fog.

Overwhelming terror grips at my heart as I feel something approaching me, and I know – know with certainty bordering on wanderlust in its final stages that I must escape before whatever is hiding inside the fog around me gets its claws into me, chaining me down to insanity. My wings open back up and with a roar of exertion I force myself to fly. I do not know towards where, but as long as it takes me away from whatever is behind me, it does not matter.

The black fog thins out and I fly out of it towards a single island surrounded by the fog into which I dare not return. There is but one way to go, but looking at the caverns leading further into the long extinct fire mountain I can't help but think that proceeding onwards is just as dangerous as returning to the fog behind me.

I fly into the nearest cave.

Left, right, straight, straight once more then left again… I lose count of the number of passageways I cross leading off into the darkness, with me flying along the only the only path lit by an eerie white glow. Something within me screams out that this is because everything is inverted – begging me to turn around and take one of the other paths – but I do not listen, or more specifically, I cannot hear its frantic cries. The whiteness around me is deafening.

The tunnel opens up into a large cavern and I can't prevent a sense of deja-vu that passes through me. I have been here before… I glance around to try and remember and spot the strange black fog below me, covering the entire base of the cavern. The world is back to its normal coloring, and yet the fog below still retains its chaotic black coloring. Primal terror grips at me as I make the tightest turn I can without ripping apart my wings… and feel something burning behind me.

Turning back I feel my eyes grow wide and my entire body numb over – my left tail fin had caught on fire and was burning up – burning and destroying any chances of my escape along with it.

With a screech of terror – a screech within which anyone could hear my hopelessness – I feel my tail dip under me as I start falling…

Falling towards the black fog below.

I fight against it, but there is nothing I can do.

Still, I try harder.

Somehow, my attempts break me from my uncontrolled spin and into a dive – one that I know I cannot get out of.

And then the dark fog below me spreads away and for a moment I feel relief – relief that turns into even worse panic as I realize why it did so.

Below me I can see several tall stalagmites arranged in a mocking curve of a dragon's jaw – with one of the two largest teeth aligned perfectly underneath me.

There is no time to do anything, no time to try and break myself out of my fall – even if my body wasn't frozen in terror. I cannot break my eyes away from the tip of the stalagmite underneath me. Cannot think of anything except-

There are only a few body-lengths left until –

The tip of the stalagmite touches my chest, right in the middle of the spot where for some reason my scales seem to be missing – but I do not get any time to ponder this as I can feel it pushing inwards…

My body burns with pain as it is pierced completely through, impaled upon the stalagmite it could not avoid. As the flame of my mid flickers and begins to die off I feel some measure of relief knowing that at the least it is all over…

With death will come a release from this –

No more terror – no more pain…

And then, as the dark fog closes in on me, I realize just how wrong I was.

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I wake up in the darkness, and even though my eyes can still clearly see the cove under the pale moonlight of the goddess, I can't help but jerk my head around in a vain attempt to find the darkness that had almost devoured me. Pointless really, because except for me, some fish, and perhaps several birds there is no one else within the cove.

It takes me a few moments to calm down and lie back onto the grass in an attempt to sleep, but not until I roll to the side and twist my head around to check on my chest into which only moments ago the stalagmite like tooth had been buried into. The patch of missing scales along with the scar and dried blood almost causes me to freak out before I remember that there is a perfectly normal explanation for how I got it.

Well, perhaps not normal, but definitely natural.

Turning back and curling into myself I close my eyes and attempt to sleep again. With the amount of adrenaline flowing through me it does not surprise me that sleep is long coming – it had been many Cycles since I had last dreamt.

Just before falling back into the embrace of the goddess of the moon I hear words along the wind – or perhaps it was nothing more than a fragment of my soul's past memories crossing my mind.

:: so close… ::

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I wake up once more to the dull pain of my muscles. In hindsight it was not a good idea to have strained them so much right after they had been healed, and I promise myself to take it easy today – catch enough fish for my body to continue healing and then rest some more; any more attempts at flight would be postponed to tomorrow.

Throughout the entire day I do little else than attempt to fish and lie around. I had been expecting the human hatchling to return, possibly with others to end my life, but unfortunately I was not disturbed. There was little to do, and I found myself thinking more and more about the events that brought me here. Thinking about where I went wrong, and what I could have changed to not end up like this.

The next thing I knew, it was already dark. Trying to remember what I did between the last point I remember and now was useless, and it scared me more than anything else. I did notice that one of the nearby trees had a large section of its bark clawed away, along with a portion of its actual trunk; and that sent a chill down my spine – the claw marks were my size, and yet I do not remember placing them there.

I turned around and walked away so as not to see them, even though I knew that that would do nothing to solve the problem.

And so another sun cycle passed. I fell asleep still wondering about what was going on with me – after all how could I remedy my situation if I did not understand what was happening in the first place?

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This time my muscles did not pain me as I woke up – while I was once more ravenously hungry, it was clear that my body had healed itself to a point I could attempt to fly again.

Strangely enough I feel almost peaceful – the emotions I felt during the course of the last few days pleasantly blurry in my mind.

Making my way over to the pool I wonder how much longer it would take for me to begin to feel the insatiable (in my condition) desire for the skies which would mark the first step towards insanity. I fear for that moment, and yet at the same time it would be a relief to finally get it over with.

Perhaps it was this waiting that would drive me insane first…

Leaning down towards the waters below I searched for fish within striking distance, but most of them were too far to offer even a remote chance of success. I do not know how long I waited, for some reason the fish seemed to be avoiding coming close, but some time later the nearly still water surface caught my attention and looking into it I gazed into dull green eyes that seemed so out of place on the face of the black dragon staring back at me.

There was no blazing spirit within them, no pride – not even sadness or anger at its inability to fly could be seen within them. Worse still, there was no hope. These were the eyes of a broken creature – eyes that clearly showed that everything it had lived for had been ripped away from it, leaving nothing behind but a being whose heart still beat, but whose mind had long since died.

They were my own eyes, and staring down into the calm waters below I could barely recognise myself staring back.

I should have expected it, after all there was nothing new that I could see within them that I did not already feel inside me, and yet I recoiled away – my crippled tail curving around to slap at the water surface with its single fin, causing the waters to ripple and breaking apart the image that had captivated me. My stomach rumbled again as if to remind me of my need to eat something, but any hunger that I felt was long since gone. Trudging back with my tail dragging behind me I laid down behind some rocks along the side of the cove where the high walls provided enough shade to lessen the glare of the sun.

I now knew what the other dragons who have been in my position have felt to make them accept death so easily – I had been wrong; anything was better than living a cursed existence trapped inside the body I had seen in the calm waters of the pool.

My mind turned back to that single lesson that my sire gave me the last time I had seen him – when he had burned the cave in which I spent my second winter. He warned me that every dragon needed to know when to accept death, be it from age, injury, or even through battle. Those that do not are cursed to a fate worse than death – fated to live on as creatures of their instincts; their thoughts and minds sealed away, watching and unable to do anything as their body slowly reverts into that of a beast.

I had not taken it seriously then, but now…

I can still remember that feeling of helplessness as my body moved heedless of what I wanted the moment that human hatchling released me – released me after I had come to accept death. I was able to break out of it that time, but I wasn't sure I could again – and I knew that without flight it would inevitably come again.

Now that I think about it, perhaps that was what the blank in my memory from last sun cycle was.

If I had the ability to, I would have stopped my heart here and now, but I was far too young to do something that went that far against my body's instincts. For a moment I toyed with the idea of trying to slash my way through my neck and bleeding out – that or just trying to claw out my heart the old fashioned way; but I doubted that in the state I was in I had enough willpower to actually go through with it.

So instead I just continued to lie there, waiting for my body to simply waste away from the lack of food and drink. If I was lucky, it wouldn't take too long.

The world blurred around me as time lost its meaning, in an emotionally detached state I noted the pangs of hunger I felt – my body having long since used up yesterday's fish to further heal itself and was begging for more – but all of that no longer mattered to me.

With full conscious control over my body – which I am still far away from – I would literally be able to put it into a suspended state to wake back up even after several full cycles without food or water. With only the subconscious control all of us are born with, I could last perhaps half a moon cycle or less in the same conditions. At the moment though I was stopping all of that, meaning that in the condition my body was in, it wouldn't even be a full sun cycle before it could no longer support me – leading to unconsciousness, soon followed by death.

I do not know how long I stayed in this state, but I knew it wouldn't be much longer. Just a little bit longer and then… death.

For a moment my resolve shook before the image of my dull eyes staring back at me flashed through my mind, reaffirming my decision.

Subconsciously loosening the hold on my mind and watching as it began to slowly sink down into the abyss below – the realm of the goddess of the moon, and the last resting place for our souls – I felt my mind's flame slowly begin to go out. This time however, the darkness I was sinking into did not push at me or attempt to sink itself into my soul – instead it curled around me, gentle in its embrace, so unlike that cursed fog that had kept me in captivity for so long.

From my memories before closing my eyes for the last time, my end would happen during the moment when the sun goddess relinquished her hold upon the world. It seemed… right somehow that the goddess of the moon would embrace me at the same time in both mind and body.

Not long now… I thought as I fell further into the eternal abyss.

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A/N

Just covering Toothless' days alone in the cove. Hope you all like/approve. Next chapter will be out same time as always.

I have been asked if this is a retelling or a different story, and in case I did not make it exactly clear with the prologue I will make it clear now: The story is going to be drastically different once a certain point passes. There will be minor variations that will grow in size starting from the forbidden friendship scene and cumulating in a drastic veer off from the original story line somewhere around just before the final battle. That will in and of itself mark the end of the first third of the story – the plot of the entire story having already been written down (and requiring me to just flesh it out from bullet points into actual storytelling)

Still, I can see where the confusion could have stemmed from considering that so far the story is almost a complete retelling except for the added Toothless POV scenes + backstory.

If any of you have questions / comments, leave a review and I will PM back.

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Saienai