Carried Off, a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl

Eret subplot, part 2 (rough draft)

Eret barely slept, especially since one dragon or another always seemed to be watching him whenever he opened his eyes. When the sun rose, he felt even more exhausted and stressed than he had the evening before, and it certainly didn't help when Hiccup chirped out an order and dragons started converging on Eret. "No- No! Get back! Hiccup! Hiccup-!"

"You're fine, Eret," Hiccup said, not even bothering to glance back as he disappeared into the depths of the caves.

Dragons herded Eret after him until Eret was practically running, less to keep up with Hiccup and more to keep out of reach of the creatures behind him. He burst out into a sudden blaze of sunlight, shielding his eyes and wondering miserably what new horrors were awaiting him.

Several minutes after his eyes adjusted, Eret was still standing there, staring, open-mouthed. He had never seen so many dragons before in his life...and he had also rarely seen anything more beautiful in his life. He had never expected to find himself experiencing those two things at the same moment.

After a while, Hiccup approached and gently touched his arm. "Follow me," he murmured. Eret drifted after him in a wordless daze, snapping out of it only when he saw the king.

Eret had seen the dragon alpha before, an enormous creature rearing up out of the sea like a destruction-spewing mountain. He'd seen the great beast raging, roaring, flashing its fangs and destroying ships with a single sweep of its tail.

He had never seen the king at rest, reigning in his own beautiful domain, watching over the comparatively tiny dragons bowing to him and romping across his body.

"Alpha," Hiccup called, bowing.

Great aquamarine eyes turned to him. "Hiccup." Amusement wafted into Hiccup's mind. "You have brought your captured thing to show me?"

"Be gentle with him, he's frightened," Hiccup said, not without his own amusement. He knew exactly how Eret felt. He also now knew how the alpha had felt, compassionate and protective toward a terrified, helpless, lonely creature.

The dragon trapper was on his knees, not in obeisance but simply because he was too weak with hopeless awe to keep standing. "Hiccup," he said faintly at the approach of those enormous jaws, but like Hiccup before him in the face of such overwhelming power, he had no will to resist as he was consumed.

His alarm and physical discomfort was immediately swept away by a firm pressing against his mind, as if something...someone...was demanding to be granted access to his inner self. Eret was terrified. For all his cocky bravado, he had always been intimidated by those much stronger than him, and he gave way almost immediately. For a split second, he expected to be torn apart mentally as well as physically, but instead, he was filled with a strong pulse of righteous anger, of grief and remembered shock and a demand for him to account for himself: "Why?"

The dragon knew. Eret felt as if the king somehow knew everything he had ever done, every cruelty he had ever committed, every moment he had ever shamed himself or betrayed those he cared about.

Trembling, he completely surrendered, subconsciously condemning himself as a creature too vile and worthless to live, but that was not what the king sought. There was a sense of impatience and frustration. "No. These broken humans, they make themselves nothing...! You, 'Eret,' this sound-name for you, one who hurts and enslaves my little ones. WHY?"

Eret had never thought of it as slavery before. He had never thought of himself as being enslaved before, until he sensed the anguish of Drago's captives and realized it was exactly how he himself felt. "Enslaved, owns me, subdues me, hurts me, trapped, never escape, never escape, never escape...!"

"How does he catch you and hold you without chains? Why does he hurt you his own flockling?"

For some reason, Eret found himself thinking of the brand on his chest. There was a pause, as he sensed the king absorbing this and all it entailed. Punishment, domination, ownership, cruelty, pain...

"This terrible thing, this 'brand,'" and then for some reason the king was thinking of Hiccup, screaming, flesh on fire. Eret was astonished to 'see' such a thing, as if Hiccup had been juxtaposed into Eret's own memory of the branding.

"Hiccup doesn't have a brand! He was never Drago's."

"Humans, these cruel human monster-queens, they torture their own flocklings and tear their hearts to pieces..."

Eret sensed movement, and panicked until he realized he was being released. Squeezing his eyes shut against the sunlight, he shivered uncontrollably and flinched when he felt a human arm curl around his shoulders. "You're okay," Hiccup murmured. Eret had a hand pressed to his face, but couldn't stop the sounds he was making, sniffling like a child, he wanted to hide until he could get control of himself again...

But Hiccup had no scorn for those tears. He said nothing derisive as he helped Eret to his feet, did not mock or even tease him. "The first time's the worst, it'll get better the more you talk to him. You can lie down in here, and later I'll show you where you can wash up. There's actually some hot springs here, believe it or not..."

Eret barely heard him. Exhausted from the sleepless night and from the encounter with the king, he slept like the dead for several hours.

When he awakened, he found himself alone except for the Rumblehorn, who pinned him with a direct stare as soon as Eret shifted. The trapper stared back for a few seconds, then sighed, finished extricating himself from the furs he'd been wrapped in, and ventured toward the mouth of the cave.

There was no sign of Hiccup or his entourage, but the dragons were still out there, flying and frolicking in their sanctuary. The king was still there, too, though far away, grumbling at a cluster of agitated dragons halfway across the nest.

Eret wasn't sure he quite dared to set foot outside the safety of the cave, but he was so hungry. He eyed the Rumblehorn, who was accompanying him like a prison guard. "Food," Eret tried, not having much hope of success. "I'm hungry." He pantomimed it. "You have anything for me to eat? Fish, seal, whale?" He sighed. "I haven't eaten in so long, I can't even remember- What are you doing?!"

The dragon's eyes had rolled back and it was making a huffing, hacking sort of noise. Just when Eret wondered if it was about to keel over dead, the dragon expelled a portion of saliva-covered fish at the man's feet.

Eret stared at it, trying not to throw up.

After a while, the dragon nosed the vomited-up fish closer in Eret's direction and barked.

Eret backed away.

The dragon growled.

Eret whimpered and wished he'd never brought up the subject of food at all.

Just then, Hiccup came swooping up on the back of his Night Fury, with the small dragon and the two Scuttleclaws alighting around him. "Good to see you awake," he greeted.

"He threw up at me!"

Hiccup laughed. "Lunch. Eat up, Eret."

"Are you crazy?!"

"He's hungry," Skullcrusher complained to Hiccup, "but he won't eat, this crazy human!"

After Hiccup had soothingly explained the situation to Skullcrusher, and after he had forced Eret to take a single bite so as not to be horrendously rude, and after Valka had eagerly descended on the remaining portion and Finn had snapped it up right from under her nose and Valka had screeched and attacked him and Finn had successfully fended her off, Hiccup procured some human food for Eret, which the trapper gratefully devoured.

To be continued...