Colossal Cave Chapter 3
Toothless took one look at the Red Death and shouted, "It's a trap!"
"Thank you, Captain Obvious!" Guana snapped as she broke away.
The Night Furies scattered in panic at the sight of that huge head emerging from the hole in the ground. Some clawed upwards, seeking safety at high altitude; some spun on a wingtip and raced back the way they came; some took wild evasive action. Only Chief-night-fury, Mother-of-twins, and Toothless had ever seen a live Red Death before, but the others had seen the skeleton of the one that the first three had killed, and they had heard the stories. They all knew what they were looking at now.
"Hey! What's the problem?" Forked-horns called, confused.
"Did you bring us here just so your Mother dragon could add us to her slave collection?" Mother-of-twins demanded.
"We trusted you!" Hiccup added angrily. "Was this whole trip just a big lie?"
"Whoa! Slow down!" the Nightmare shouted. "What in Tannin's name are you talking about?"
"We're talking about that enslaving, cannibalistic monster over there!" Six called from high above them.
"Hey! That's no way to talk about our Alpha!" Icebreaker shot back. "Show a little respect!"
"I think I know what has happened here," the Red Death said in a slow, resonant voice that vibrated the air around him. "They must have had a bad experience with another of my kind, probably one of those nest-queens who enslaved smaller dragons and ate those who failed to provide enough food. We will have to reassure them that my mate and I are benevolent." The huge creature ponderously climbed out of the hole until its full length was visible. It stretched out its wings, worked them back and forth a couple of times, and furled them again.
"Night Furies!" he called, carefully keeping any vicious-sounding edge out of his voice. "Thank you for traveling so far to visit our home. Please let me assure you, you are in no danger from me, and you will not be subjected to any kind of Alpha control. I will treat you like the special guests that you are."
"So you say," Bang shouted back from just over the crest of a hill, so the monstrous dragon could not see him. "But we've heard about what your kind are really like. Should we entrust our lives and our freedom to smooth words?"
"No, wait a minute," Toothless said as he circled the Red Death at what he hoped was a safe distance. "There's something different here. You've never served a Red Death; I was forced to serve one for many years. That Mother kept to herself and never spoke to us 'lesser' dragons, unless it was about some specific kind of food that she wanted. This one is actually talking to us."
"He talks to us all the time," Likes-to-swim added. "Both of them do. They're no different from any other Alphas, except they're bigger."
"That's not enough to convince me," Mother-of-twins called.
"Or me," Hiccup added. "Everybody, up and circle! We need to decide what to do here." The Night Furies quickly climbed to half a mile up, got into a circle formation, and glided around and around while they talked.
"I think we came a long way for nothing," Chief-night-fury began.
"Less than nothing," Mother-of-twins added. "If that dragon wants to add us to his collection of slaves, then we need to get out of here before he tries another trick."
"No! Wait!" came the voice of Icebreaker, the Raincutter. "Please don't go! We need you here!"
"You need us here?" Guana scoffed. "Why? In case your Red Death gets hungry and wants a snack?"
"No, you're wrong!" the Raincutter pleaded as he reached their altitude. "All of us have complete free will! The Alphas only control us if someone gets too aggressive. They never do anything unkind or cruel."
Chief-night-fury considered that for a few seconds. "Toothless, you were right. There is something different here. I remember serving the Mother, and how much I hated every moment of it. There weren't enough fish in the sea to induce me to say one kind word about her. But these dragons are saying nice things about this one. I don't –"
That was when Six exclaimed, "Hey! There are only seven of us here!"
They quickly counted noses. Lady-night-fury panicked. "First-girl! Where is she? Where did she go?"
"I thought she'd outgrown the disaster-prone stage," Toothless muttered as they looked all around... and their hearts sank into their feet when they saw her. She was hovering right in front of the Red Death's head.
"Hi, big dragon," she said cheerfully.
"Hello, small one," the enormous dragon answered with a touch of amusement.
"You can call me First-girl," she said. "That's what everyone else calls me. How old were you when you got your adult name?"
"How old was I? That was a long, long time ago. Let me think." The Red Death blinked all of his eyes several times. "It was in my thirty-fourth year. I went for a walk one day, I wasn't watching my step, and I got all four of my legs stuck in tar pits, three in one pit and one in another. My mother had to pull me out by my tail. She named me Tarpits that day, and I have answered to that name ever since, to remind myself to watch where I'm going."
"Your thirty-fourth year?!" First-girl was shocked. "You had to wait thirty-four years to get your adult name?"
"Considering that I will probably live for a thousand years or more, thirty-four was barely beyond a hatchling's age," the huge dragon rumbled.
"I hope I don't have to wait that long," she said heatedly.
Tarpits chuckled deeply. "Young dragons. Impatient, every one of you. Once you have passed your century mark, you'll understand the true meaning and value of time... but until then, everything has to happen now! Be patient, small one. Your time will come."
"That's what Dad keeps telling me," she grumbled.
"Then you would be wise to listen to him," the Red Death nodded.
Toothless risked a fast swoop past them, shouting, "First-girl! Get out of there!"
"Why?" she called back. "I'm talking to this dragon!"
He made another quick pass. "Don't you remember what I told you about the Red Death that enslaved me?"
"You've told me about her lots of times," she shouted as he pulled away, "but just because one of them was bad, does that mean they're all bad?"
"Out of the mouths of babes and hatchlings," the much bigger dragon added with an approving nod. "Please do not fear me, Night Furies. We have brought you here for something very important."
"Whatever that is, we think preserving our lives is even more important," Hiccup called.
"Exactly," rumbled the Red Death. "That is why we wanted you here. We want to preserve your lives."
"What?" That wasn't anything close to what Mother-of-twins was expecting to hear.
"That doesn't make any sense!" Faithful-brother burst out.
"If you will land and let me talk to you, I will explain everything," the huge dragon said.
"I don't think we should trust him," Mother-of-twins advised.
"What harm can it do if we just listen to him talk?" Bang wondered.
"If he adds some flame to his talking, he could hurt us quite a bit," his sister rebutted him.
"He didn't do anything bad to First-girl," Bang noted.
"Yet," Lady-night-fury added nervously.
"This whole situation doesn't add up, unless we're totally wrong about this big guy," Hiccup mused. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. We'll land, but we'll spread out so he can't flame more than one of us at once. We'll listen to what he has to say. The moment we see or hear something we don't like, we're out of here and we'll never come back."
"You won't be sorry," Icebreaker chimed in. "You really won't."
"We'll see," said Toothless.
They settled to the ground in a broad arc, keeping at least a hundred feet between each of them. First-girl landed right next to her father; he urged her to put some distance between them, but she stubbornly stayed close to him. The Red Death sat down with a thud that shook the ground. The three dragons who had guided the Night Furies here landed at his feet; they looked tiny next to him. About a dozen other dragons fluttered up out of the hole in the ground and landed nearby as he spoke, sitting at his feet.
"Thank you for being willing to trust me, even a little bit," he began. "I'm sure you have good reasons for being nervous around me. I'll dispense with the meaningless chit-chat and get down to the explanations that you flew for eight days to hear." He swung his knobbed tail so it lay straight behind him, and set it down with another thud. "I'm sure you have noticed that the humans are taking over the world?"
"There sure are a lot of them," Astrid said noncommittally.
"They are spreading across the entire planet," the big dragon went on. "For a species where each breeding pair usually produces only one hatchling every year or two, they seem to breed faster than Gronckles! Hot or cold, wet or dry, lush or desolate... there are no places where they don't settle and thrive. They're everywhere! And wherever they go, they push the dragons out, or they kill us outright. We can win an occasional battle, but they are winning the overall war. They are not willing for us to co-exist with them."
"That's true in most cases," Hiccup exclaimed, "but not all of them."
"In all my centuries, I have never met a human who wanted to get along with dragons." The Red Death's tone was sad.
"We have!" Six said. "We live in a village full of humans, and most of us get along just fine with most of them."
"Some of us used to be them," Faithful-brother added with a grin.
The Red Death shook his head. "A few minutes ago, you thought I was lying to you, and you didn't like it. Now you are lying to me, and I also don't like it. Peace between dragons and humans is not possible. Your own actions prove it."
"What actions are you talking about?" Astrid asked.
"When my scouts found you, you were laying waste to a human village, using your fires to destroy all their man-made devices."
The Night Furies looked at each other blankly. At last, Toothless figured it out. "They must have seen us while we were taking out the Outcasts' heavy weapons."
"That was a preemptive strike," Hiccup explained. "We weren't taking lives or destroying anyone's property. We were just keeping a hostile tribe from hurting any dragons."
"So you admit that there are human tribes that want to kill dragons?"
"Well... yes, of course there are," Chief-night-fury admitted. "We're trying to convince the tribes around us that we can coexist, but it's slow going. Like you said, we dragons have to be patient."
"For some of us, our patience has reached its end," the Red Death said solemnly. "I have lived for over eight hundred years. I have known countless thousands of dragons in my time... and I have seen far too many of them cut down by human weapons. Some of them were my friends. All of them died for the crime of being the wrong species. Humans kill dragons! They're proud of it; they enjoy doing it; they teach their children to do it. They cut our heads off, mount them on spears, and parade them through the streets of their towns while the other humans cheer. Even if your own tribe is peaceful, you admit that it is an exception to the rule."
"We're working to change that," Bang said heatedly.
"But how many more dragons will have to die before you succeed? If you succeed?" The Red Death seemed to be pleading with them.
"What other choices do we have?" Hiccup answered, craning his neck to look up at the dragon that towered over him. "Should we go to war against them to protect ourselves? Like you said, we'd probably lose, even though our own track record against them is pretty good. Should we run away? Like you said, there's no place we can go where the humans won't find us. Our only –"
"I have found a place," the Red Death said flatly.
"Where?" all the Night Furies chorused.
"Just beneath your feet. This hole in the ground is the entrance to the largest cave system I have ever seen or heard of."
"But you'd still have to fly out of the cave to find food, go on mating flights, lay eggs, and get some exercise," Hiccup pointed out. "And if you're flying, then it doesn't matter how remote this cave is. The humans will eventually settle near here, they'll see you flying, they'll find your cave, and you'll have to deal with them somehow. When that happens, will you fight or will you fly?"
"No, that's not how it's going to be," Forked-horns cut in. "I know you don't understand what we're doing here. Can we show you our nest? You can answer all your questions with your own two eyes."
The Night Furies hesitated. This Red Death sounded far more reasonable than the one they used to know, but it could still be a gigantic trap of some kind. Did they dare trust him?
"I'll go," First-girl said brightly. Before Toothless or Guana could say anything, she was in the air and diving into the hole.
"Come on!" Toothless shouted. "We can't let her go in there alone!" He was the second one in, closely followed by all the others.
The entrance tunnel curved around and around like a gigantic corkscrew, then went nearly straight down for a quarter of a mile. At last, it turned horizontal and opened into an absolutely mammoth cave.
The ceiling was so high, they couldn't see most of it, and the floor dropped away steeply as well. The other wall of the cave was far out of sight. Stalactites and stalagmites stretched from floor to ceiling in many places, looking like support pillars. The entire cave was dimly lit by some kind of fungus that coated most of the rocks; the light was yellowish from the ceiling and greenish from the floor. They could hear rushing water somewhere in the distance. They also heard the chittering and calling of hundreds and hundreds of dragons. Over twenty different species were visible near the entrance alone, including one or two that Hiccup had never seen before. Some were resting on the ground; others were flying between the stalactites as though they were pylons in an obstacle course. First-girl quickly joined them in their wild flight.
"Welcome to our home," said Forked-horns as he entered the cavern just behind them.
"I like the open floor plan," Hiccup nodded.
"Everything a dragon needs is here," the Nightmare said as he landed on the floor. "That sound of running water you hear is an underground river. It feeds into a series of underground lakes that have enough fish in them to feed ten thousand dragons for ten thousand years. There are hot springs in a smaller cave off to the left; it's a perfect place for incubating our eggs. The fungus on the rocks emits light when it gets warm enough, and all these dragons throw off enough heat to keep the fungus permanently warm. It also purifies the air somehow, so once we close off the entrance, we won't die from bad air."
"What do you mean, 'once we close off the entrance?' " Mother-of-twins demanded.
"That is the master plan," Tarpits said as he ponderously entered the cave. "We are recruiting multiple breeding pairs of every dragon species we can think of. Once we have enough, we will seal the entrance from within. No humans will ever find us after that! Dragonkind will be safe forever. We can live here in peace and safety, reaching our full lifespans without ever being cut down by spears or swords. Humanity will never plague us again!"
Mother-of-twins tried to wrap her head around this idea, and failed. "But you'll be trapped!"
"You mean, we'll be safe," Icebreaker corrected her.
Chief-night-fury needed no prompting to take his mate's side. "You'll never see the sun or the stars again!"
"We'll never see a net or a spear again, either," Likes-to-swim replied.
"How do you plan to seal the entrance?" Faithful-brother wanted to know.
"There are rocks in this cave that are seamed with metal ore," Forked-horns explained. "When the time is right, we'll pile them up in the entrance. Then the Nadders, the Smokebreaths, and the other dragons with superheated fire will blast those rocks and melt some of the ore. It will flow, solidify, and weld the entire mass into a solid plug that no one can move."
"That sounds like it will work," the former smith's apprentice said thoughtfully. "I wish my brother was here. He'd love to work out just how much heat you'd need for each type of ore."
"What about mating flights?" Six asked suddenly. "You've got a tall cave in here, but it's not tall enough for the high-flying species to do a free-fall while they're mating."
"There will have to be some compromises, I admit," said the Red Death. "Mating will have to take place on the ground, not in the air. There is nothing in our biology that forces us to mate in the air. It's simply more convenient to do it that way, instead of going through the mating dance and then finding a place to land."
"It's also a lot more fun that way," said Mother-of-twins with a touch of mischief.
"Fun is good," came another rumbling voice. A second Red Death loomed up out of the darkness and stood next to her mate. "But fun has its limits. What we're talking about here is the survival or the extinction of our kind. This isn't the time to talk about having fun."
"Please meet my mate, Bigsmark," Tarpits said proudly. "We rule this nest together, and we came up with this plan to save the dragons together."
"Bigsmark?" Six wondered. "That's an uncommon name."
"My father named me Big-marks because of the large dark-colored marks on my sides," she explained. "But I was still young, and when I tried to say my new name, it came out Bigsmark. So that is what the dragons call me. May I ask your names?" Chief-night-fury made the introductions.
"So you brought two Alphas, representing two nests? We had no idea that there were so many Night Furies out there! We thought you were almost extinct."
"Well, we certainly aren't commonplace, but our numbers are slowly rising," Hiccup admitted. "And, for what it's worth, there are two other nests that are also ruled by our group of Night Furies. One is on the island where you saw us wrecking the Outcasts' heavy weapons. The other is a few days away, near a mountain lake. We're all tied together, either by blood or by Power."
"I'm glad to hear that your numbers are rising and not falling," said Bigsmark. "But that doesn't lessen our wish to preserve your kind and keep you alive. May I show you around our domain?" They began walking toward the sound of the rushing water.
"Speaking of kinds, is this cave big enough for your kind to fly in it?" Six asked.
"Yes, but just barely," Bigsmark replied. "When one of us wants to stretch our wings, we ask the other dragons to ground themselves so there aren't any mid-air collisions. There definitely isn't room for both of us to fly at once."
"I've got a question," Bang said. "Where did all these dragons come from?"
"Many different places," Bigsmark answered. "We have visited over a dozen nests and asked for volunteers who want to escape from the genocidal war that the humans are waging against us. We will turn no dragon away, but we're now focused on finding breeding pairs of the uncommon types that aren't here yet."
"And that's why you invited us here?" Hiccup asked.
"Correct. We're very much hoping that two or more pairs of Night Furies will volunteer to join us, so your species will be preserved, no matter what the humans do. We're having good luck rounding up the other rare types, so we're optimistic about your kind."
"They even got a pair of Stormcutters to join them!" came a familiar voice from overhead.
Hiccup looked up and gasped. "Mom? Cloudjumper? What are you doing here?"