Red light. White light. Blue light. I stand up, only to stumble. Something is stuck to me, stuck in me, running through my core and making me feel nothing nothing nothing. Nothing nothing nothing. I can't see, yet I can tell. The room is white and white and everywhere, until it's blue and blue and everywhere, and I shut my eyes to make it red and red and everywhere. It's all so much and claustrophobic, suffocating, and I'm nowhere near it. I'm worlds of worlds away.
I fall backwards. White and white. red and white. I've been here before, right?
Retch, red. Go back more. More more more. Go back to the blue.
Blue that fills my hands. Blue that fills my mouth. Choke on it. The blue and white, that's the answer isn't it? The blue and white that makes the red. Red means it's over, and you want it to be over, don't you? You've wanted red for a very, very long time. You want red now.
"I don't understand. Why would you do this? My-"
Those words don't matter. They weren't there during the blue. Focus on the blue. The blue happened slowly. First you choked. You choked and choked and then you didn't, you couldn't, you ran out of blue.
You waited and waited and waited. Life moved on around you. You moved on around life. You were supposed to, after all, people expected you in places at times. You waited.
You waited.
You waited.
You waited.
You waited.
You waited, so it happened. It happened when you were at the place you were supposed to be at that time.
That wasn't part of the plan. You never accounted for the place. You never thought about the time.
So you ran, ran ran ran, ran until you made it to white.
Retch, red. Now let's talk about that.
"Oh my god, --?! Somebody, get help! It's --! She's-"
Let's not talk about that anymore.
The noise was deafening, the red and blue has come back to bite you in the ass. You float along until it's white again. White and blue and red.
Maybe it's time you woke up now. You've done enough remembering, haven't you? Then again, you haven't even remembered that your name is-
"Pepper, wake up! Pepper? Pepper!"
Someone's shaking my shoulders. A cough busts out of me, tasting of sour bile. Everything is dizzying, everything is dark, but too bright, my eyes hurt. I fall forward. Was I standing? Why was I standing?
"Pepper, can you even hear me? Please, say, or do someting, just-" My shoulders are released. I can't see more than blurs. I reach for whoever left me. I don't even get that far.
"What?" I croak. "What's wrong with my..."
Nothing's wrong, is it? My paws are mine. I flex and stretch them. My eyes focus. The wall of black in front of me, that's Toothless, isn't it?
"I think she's coming to. Pepper? Are you with us?" B.B. stepped into view, taking my paws into his claws.
"...Huh?" I mumble. "Where... What happened to..."
"She's too disoriented, give her a minute..." Fishlegs urged the two dragons to give me some space. My paws were cold without anyone to hold them. "Here, can you drink this?" He tried to offer a waterskin, but I was too dizzy, shaking too hard, too much, too everything.
"Dog. Dog mouth." I somehow managed to say. Somehow managed to remember. "Can't-"
"Here." Astrid passed Fishlegs a scratched wooden bowl. While he fills it, B.B. takes my paws again, a careful arm around my back to make me sit.
"Easy now, you're gonna be okay..." B.B. murmured. Was it for me, or more for himself? I was handed the bowl, shakily bringing it to my mouth and lapping at it. It was cold. So cold that it hurt going down. I drank anyway. I needed to. I couldn't stop. Even after it was gone, I sat there, locked into position, tongue lolling out like it could just drop. Water and spit rolled from my lips.
"How're you feeling? Here, how many claws am I holding up?" Hookfang crouched, leaning in front of me and dangling his wings in my face. I choked on a wet, shaky laugh and tried to smack him away.
"Oh fuck off already." I wheezed, smiling weakly. "What was I... Doing?"
"You mean the thrashing, the screaming, or the standing up out of nowhere?" Snotlout said. Astrid jabbed him in the ribs. "Ow! She asked."
"Is this normal?" Astrid asked instead, rolling her eyes at her teammate.
"She's had a few night terrors before, but this one was... Pretty bad." Stormfly winced. "Usually she just does this cute little kicky-running thing in her sleep."
"I kick in my sleep?" I wondered aloud, the sentiment ignored in favor of, oh yeah, whatever the fuck just happened.
"You were remembering something, weren't you?" Toothless asked, voice low. "You didn't say anything coherent, but you were, right?" A cold wave of nausea rushed my ears, dizzying me further.
"Yeah." I said. "I'll... I'll... I'll tell you later." I swayed in place, like my body wanted to run away without me. "When I wrap my head around it." Yeah right. That one was going right to 'pretend it never happened' territory. Toothless sent me a knowing, furrowed look. Shut up, shut up.
"Right." Toothless stood, upright, flaring his wings out to the sides in a stretch. "The storm stopped overnight. Let's find food, then keep moving."
"Right. C'mere Pepper..." B.B. blurred down, pushing at my back until I dropped to all fours as well. The act was far more nauseating than before. I was picked up and dropped on his back, eyes wrenched shut. Right, moving, need the-
"No magic." Meatlug said, stopping me before I could even weakly raise the shard. "You didn't rest at all. You don't have the energy."
"I..." ...Couldn't argue with her. I shut up and let my snout droop between B.B.'s necks.
"...We should go." Toothless didn't even bother blurring down as he left, taking charge as was his modus operandi.
It smelled too much outside. Residual moisture from the rain. Soft earth clinging to anything that dared touch it. Cold carried in on the wind. Sun that did little to stave it away. Most of those don't really have a smell, do they? It was what I was picking up either way. I couldn't even begin to tell you when something began to change, when a cloying, heavy scent permeated the air. It was distinctly... Fruity. Fermented. Fuckin' nasty, actually. Eyes watering too much to see out of, I peeled them open anyway. Green, brown, and everyone around us.
That smell. It was so familiar. It was so bad. That smell!
"Mmmph." I groaned, pushing myself up to sniff the air harder. "What... Is it..." I mumbled, mostly to myself.
"Down, Pepper." Meatlug blandly chided. "Keep resting."
"But that smell..." I argued, despite all common sense. "You can smell it too, right?"
"Of course we can." Hookfang sighed, annoyance in his voice. "We aren't going over there, it reeks."
"...Don't... Don't move." I couldn't tell you what I was thinking when I slipped down off of B.B.'s back, much to his horror. Just that it was easier to stay on all fours and that I had to investigate.
"Pepper, what in high mountains has gotten into you?!" My poor frazzled mount tried to recapture me, but he was trying too hard to be delicate and I was trying too hard to find what and where that smell was coming from. Slowly, slowly, I got used to the light again. Verdant green and fresh, everywhere. New grass and gaps between clouds.
That busted, rotting fence, or at least the same wood, in a earthy pile next to the beaten, stiff path, packed dirt slick with mud that I walked right through. The grass was cold, tickling my paw pads. Thick trees growing closer as I sniffed and followed.
Beneath those trees, the smell. Scattered among green was the browning corpses of rotting fruit.
My stomach roared.
"Food!" I gasped, lunging snoot-first into the dirt. Apples, apples everywhere, and I was starving. Faster than anyone could try and stop me I pounced upon one that wasn't rotten yet, just bruised from the fall, and tried tearing into it.
Dog teeth were not designed for crushing firm fruits, just in case you were wondering how that turned out. Mine punctured the flesh and skin, turning in but unable to secure an edible, don't-choke-to-death sort of bite. I blurred up, needing hands and thumbs to dislodge the offending fruit from my gob.
"Are you alright Pepper?!" Stormfly shouted, jogging to catch up. When she noticed me desperately trying to squeeze the apple in my hands into the side of my jaw since I thought I could use my molars to chew, she stopped. "Oh."
"What's 'oh'? What's- Oh." Fishlegs followed up behind her, also bearing witness to my hungry glory. "That explains why the compass wasn't changing directions, at least!" Everyone else filed along and tried contributing to the conversation, but I couldn't find it in me to care. Desperation and frustration were bleeding together against my force of will, and I just kept trying again and again-
"Pepper, knock that off, that one's gross." Astrid walked across my peripheral, shuffling her hand along my head as she reached one of the unkept apple trees. She stabbed her rusty sword into the dirt, took a few steps closer to the trunk, and jumped, grabbing a branch with both hands and pulling herself unto its boughs with ease. From there, all she had to do was grab and twist a fresh apple from right in front of her, pressing her thumbs into the top near the stem to rip it in two. "C'mere, you can bite it like this."
I dropped my pathetic slobbery attempt at sustainence into the dirt, following her command. Hey. Don't judge. I know better than to bite a feeding hand. Most of the time.
Scurrying to sit beneath the tree and blurring down as I went, Astrid landed with all of her usual grace, holding one of the halves out to me. I gingerly gripped it in my teeth and ignored how hard my tail was smacking against the ground, relishing in the sweet juices and soft crunch, letting out a relieved sigh.
"Mmph, ish good..." I hummed, bringing my hands back just to keep it steady. I ripped into it like I wouldn't ever eat again. What with how this adventure was going, it wasn't exactly an unreal threat.
"Well we got her favorite." Hookfang huffed, hands out and able to perform our longstanding group tradition of facepalming when the mood strikes. "When are we gonna find an entire herd of pre-spiced boar..."
"This is a good source of food for our humans, don't complain." Toothless retorted. "We'll have to hunt as we go for ourselves."
"Not a problem." Meatlug said. Somehow, she already had rubble and grit smeared across her jaw. I was too preoccupied with sating myself to have thought to watch her... "I live for the thrill of the kill."
"Why don't I believe you?" Hookfang shot back.
"I'onno!" I gnashed my teeth around a tough core-y apple chunklet. "Miss Meatlug, you are one totally brutal babe. Don't let nobody tell you otherwise." I declared as I polished the fruit off, licking at the juices stuck in my paw fur.
"Thank you." She hummed and flexed a little.
"I'm not sure about your complementing skills..." Fishlegs chuckled weakly, passing behind me to reach into the tree for himself, passing up Meatlug's saddlebags into Astrid's impatient hand. As he went, he ruffled my ears. "Wow, your fur is super soft."
"Soft?" I sniffled. "I'm double-coated, 'course I'm soft."
"It's getting kind of long. And, dark..." B.B. noted, snaking up behind me and getting his own feel, scurrying away once I turned my head and nipped.
"It's cold out here, gimme a break."
"No kidding." Snotlout grunted. "I think I preferred the murder cave."
"There were several murder caves. Be specific, won't you?" Toothless paused in shaking down a tree to snark, the effect lessened by the armfuls of ripe fruit he was struggling to balance.
"Oh come on, you were there! The one where we had to break mirrors!" As the boys began bickering, I shuddered at the memory Snotlout had brought up. Having to double-up on myself was awful. So was everything leading up to it. Those mirrors that Fluffy had set up... My fur was longer and darker in those too.
My stomach churned. All of a sudden I desperately needed to look at myself. Now. I hucked the inedible bits of apple off into the bushes at mach speed, nearly beaning Hookfang in my haste to get to my bag, and the wall shard inside.
"Hey! What was- Pepper, don't you dare!" Hookfang roared and tried to lunge for me, not fast enough to stop me from using my energy. I didn't care, I just ate, it'd be fine. The motion was already done by the time his claws were digging into my elbows, and a wall just slightly taller than I was shot up from the ground, close enough to the tree to peel up a curl of bark from the scrape. Like the rest of the magics, it seemed all that truly mattered was intent. The wall reflected back perfectly.
I stared back.
Arms held captive by monstrous nightmare, disheveled and dirty, eyes reddened and ringed with grime.
And my back.
Was growing.
Hair.
Black hair. Like before. When I was me.
Not fur. The difference in texture was maddening. I struggled to free a hand to feel it, easiest to reach on the back of my neck. My collar nearly got caught on my nails in my haste.
"Fuck." I croaked, Hookfang finally letting me go as I slumped. "How long has this been happening?! That's not. Why is it hair. Why is this happening?" I babbled, paws raking through short choppy sections. It went all the way down. Soft undercoat, wiry overcoat, HAIR.
"Are dogs not supposed to do that?" Stormfly cringed. "I thought it was one of those things you don't talk about, like shed horn season." She walked over to the mirror, shooed Hookfang away, and pulled me into a stand, holding my shoulders as she stood behind me. "Regardless of how it, erm, looks, you're still lovely. We're all going through a bit of an ugly phase, but if you could stay with me even though I look absolutely dreadful like this, then I will return the favor." Her words only barely registered.
"Hck-No, Stormfly, it's hair. I'm not supposed to have hair, I'm supposed to have fur. Only fur. All the way around." I emphasized with stealing one of her hands and putting it on my side, then my back, back and forth. "Fur. Hair. Fur. Hair!" She yanked it back.
"You don't think this is a side-effect of using magic, do you?" Fishlegs worriedly looked around me, scanning my body like I might explode if he looked away.
"No. Yes. Maybe?! I don't know!" I shouted, blurring onto the ground and throwing my paws over my head. Might as well duck and cover.
"It might be... That..." Toothless muttered.
"You mean she's-" Snotlout almost blurted out until I screamed.
"NOT THE TIME." I howled, prompting the boy to shut up and Toothless into giving me a dirty look. Astrid dropped from a high branch to a lower one, glaring down.
"Not the time for what." She 'asked'. She wasn't asking.
"It's something from before this all started." Toothless answered for me. "It's my fault, I shouldn't have brought it up." He huffed, blurring down to sit over me. "The mirror maze... You had said something like this then, maybe that was some kind of warning. They showed me my future, after all."
"I'm great at not listening to warnings." I blurred up again to pull the mirror embedded in the tree down into the earth, feeling the nausea of energy drain fade as I took it back. "I thought that was just some scare tactic, how the hell was I supposed to know it'd happen?"
"Well don't look at us, we didn't know either." Snotlout said. He looked spooked. Just what had he seen before...?
"We aren't going to find any answers just staying here." B.B. craned a neck down, urging me to climb back onto his back. "Have we collected enough?"
"We're set." With a loud and heavy thomp, Astrid unceremoniously dropped Meatlug's saddlebags, the weight nearly catching Toothless had he not yanked his tail out of the way.
"We should keep moving. This gave me a bad feeling." Singlehandedly, Meatlug reclaimed her luggage. Or rather, she was on the ground and just picked it up with her mouth.
"Right. Follow the path for now." B.B. trotted after her the moment I was settled on top of him.
"I can make another compass you know." I said, knowing full well what their answer was going to be.
"Not without this, you're not." Astrid rolled her eyes, passing me another halved apple. "Side effects or not, if you're the key to all of this... 'Magic' stuff, then you're going to be in the best condition possible or else."
"Else what? I'm getting y'all home, show a little respect..." I grunted, so far below my breath that only B.B. could have heard me. He didn't say anything, but he did shuffle a wing to rub against my side. As close to a pet as I would get when everybody's tense like this. I slowly ate, letting it be an excuse to shut the hell up. Even after I had stripped the thing of edible flesh, my mouth remained shut as I thought.
My memories coming back. My hair growing back. Yes, it had to have been my hair, just like before, it was black and thick and it stuck out at angles when it was short like this in a way that no brush could ever fix. I scratched at it, absentmindedly. Dog nails didn't feel as right as they had just a day ago. I was caught even further in the inbetween. Girl or beast. Beast or dog. Pepper or...
"It's strange..." Fishlegs intoned, eyes trained on the uniform nature of the orchard. "This has to be man-made. Just like the mines where I was trapped. But everything has been abandoned for so long, how did anything survive long enough for the cats to reinforce it? Who built it to begin with?"
"You humans roost in huge flocks, but so far all we've seen are lonely nests." Hookfang hummed along. "You'd think we would have seen one of those... What do you call them. The things with a lot of nests in one spot, like home."
"A village?"
"Yeah, one of those!"
"You're onto something. Why would whoever lived here before plant an entire orchard if not to feed people? Somebody had to have planted it to begin with!" With a groan, Fishlegs rubbed at his face. "Where did they go?"
"Well, we haven't found any skeletons yet!" Stormfly chirped. "Maybe they just... Went somewhere else?"
"Why did you say yet?" Snotlout peered over at the nadder. She was blurred down with a bit of skip to her stride, not dignifying him with an explanation.
"I think there's something ahead." Toothless broke through the banter, holding his wings out to stop anyone from moving ahead of him. "There's rocks over the path..."
"Stones, it's paved." Astrid said, shouldering past him anyway to crouch and investigate, running her fingers over cobble and pinching the grit off. "That must mean we're getting close to somewhere important."
"The cats do love stealing important places." Hookfang nodded.
"We'll follow them, then." Toothless pulled his wings around himself, letting the group continue without him until B.B. brought up the rear with me. From there he walked alongside the zippleback, keeping his thoughts to himself. Not that they weren't obvious though. I can tell when I'm being glared at, believe it or not. Slowly, B.B. let the gap grow between the three of us and the rest of the group.
"Pepper... You'd... Tell me, at least, if something was bothering you, right?" He quietly broke the silence, one head keeping us on track with the group ahead and the other coiled about to look at me. "You know, I can help you if you're worried about our Ruffnut."
Would she fear me? There wasn't a way to know ahead of time. The only thing I could do was move ahead and face it when the time comes.
But fuck if it didn't hurt in the now.
"...I don't want to push you too much, Pepper." Toothless sighed after quite a few minutes of silence. "But this can't keep up forever."
"What do you mean?" B.B. asked, side-eyeing the night fury with the head that he wanted to keep on me. "I thought the hair was new."
"It is." Toothless confirmed. "I was referring to..." He unfurled a wing, using the arm beneath to gesticulate up and down. "All of this. The transformation, the rescuing, the cats. We're going back home at the end of it all."
"Mm-hmm." Man, that was some interesting cobblestone to look at instead of Toothless or B.B. "I know."
"So you are running out of time. There's only so much everyone can do when they don't have all of the scales on one lizard." Taking a sharp inhale, Toothless covered himself again. "Tell them."
"There isn't anything anybody can do about it, so what's even the poi-" I started to snap at him, but he interrupted me.
"Please." He ground out, eyes furrowed in on me and the waver of heat lifting from his mouth and nose. "Just... Get it over with already."
Shocked silent, I battled with my eyes to not water, with my breath to not quake.
"I don't know how." I said.
"I don't know either." He said, speeding up with his head down to reclaim his position at the lead, keeping a rather sizable distance between himself and Astrid, who had occupied his absence with gusto.
Everything was coming to a boil. Spilling over. Burning.
B.B. moved his head back to the front with his other. I rubbed my paws into my eyes until it hurt.
I couldn't just tell them. I couldn't, it wasn't possible. It was never supposed to come up again. But it was, so much, again and again and again. Haunting me so much that it's come back around to manifest on me.
I was supposed to take it to the grave. It was dragging me there instead.
"There's another nest!" Stormfly squawked up ahead.
"House." Fishlegs corrected. Staring forwards, the nadder had run so far ahead that she likely hadn't even heard him, leaving the boy to sigh and try his best to follow at a more reasonable pace.
"Another one over there too." Astrid pointed out. The path forked beyond it, but I could already see the beginnings of a village.
Or, more accurately, the ends of one. Everything was in just as poor condition as the farmhouse we'd camped out in, from rotting fences to cracking foundations, holes in walls and roofs caved in.
"There's a sign up there." I weakly stated, coming out as a croak as I directed attention up to the fork. "Somebody who can read should investigate that."
"Yeah yeah, we get it, no need to lay it on thick." Snotlout groused, walking up to it and trying to rub grime off of the signpost with the side of his fist. It didn't work well at all, only somewhat smearing what little actually was visible. "Ugh, stupid thing..."
"I don't think you'll be getting anything out of that gross wood. It's practically dirt again." Hookfang laughed over his rider's shoulder.
"Whatever, some of it's carved in still anyway. There's a bit left..." With a firm elbow to his dragon's side, Snotlout read what he could. "It says 'Sköll's Bounty', think that's the name of this place?"
"Must be." Astrid walked a little further, observing the rotting skeleton of what once was some kind of shed. She gave a testy kick to one of the last beams standing, and the whole thing shuddered. "Never heard of it."
"Me neither..." Fishlegs retreated slightly, eyes darting across the ghost town. "Just how far from Berk did we wind up?"
"Can't be that far, the weather's still the same." B.B. tried to reason, though one of his heads was scrunched down and muttering his thoughts out. "The seasons changing might be throwing us off, but even still, we set out knowing that the cold was coming... Did we get dragged that far by the cats' theft? Need to watch the sky better, soon as there's a clear night-"
"Beebs. Eyes on the road." I nudged him with my cold nose, alerting him to the fact that the group was moving on without us.
"O-oh! Right!" He yelped and sped along.
"This place is giving me the creeps." Fishlegs was telling the group, arms wrapping over himself. "How long do we have to stay here?"
"Really? I think it's great!" Stormfly blurred up some hands to investigate an abandoned house with its windows still intact, managing to wipe the crud away from a pane to admire her reflection. "A bit lonesome sure, but don't we fix that nicely?"
"We shouldn't forget what we're trying to do. We still haven't found the cat's next stronghold, another good source of food, or any other clues as to where anything might be." Toothless pulled her away.
"Let's rethink our strategy." Meatlug said. "We know there are only two places left where our humans are being kept, some sort of big house and a castle."
"I'm willing to bet one of these houses is the one we're looking for, then." Astrid glowered at the winding path and the spaces inbetween houses. "Should we split up to-"
"No!" The dragons and I all managed to say at the same time, the synchronism startling the humans.
"No more splitting up." I groaned, feeling dizzy at the very thought. "Fuckin' hell, not again."
"So we just all search this village one house at a time until we find something?!" Astrid snapped, not pleased with being interrupted.
"Of course not." Meatlug carried on, unbothered. "Just the big ones."
"There's gotta be some stuff around here we can use anyway." B.B. spoke over the rising tension between the girls. "If it takes too long we could use the shelter, in any case."
"I wanna steal stuff agaiiiiiiin..." I pumped a pathetic fist.
"You can't steal from the dead." Hookfang snorted to cover a laugh. "It's not like they're using anything."
"There are so many cultures that would take so much issue with what you just said." Fishlegs pressed a hand into his face.
"That's why they call it graverobbing." I winked. The effect was probably lost. The vibes were straight-up nasty within the party, I looked and felt like shit, and chances were everybody was feeling some kinda way about something or another.
"We're wasting time." Toothless reminded us. "If we can't come to a consensus, we should move out and keep trying to find some meat."
"But this could be our shot!" Hookfang gestured around us.
"And it isn't going anywhere." The night fury broke away from the group, walking off the path and inbetween two huts to get back into the forest as if he expected us to follow him. Reluctantly we did. Stupid protagonist.
"We don't need to head too far." B.B. intoned, sniffing at the air with his heads twisting in different directions, ultimately coming together to point off to the side that continued on to more sparse huts. Backyards weren't the first place I thought of when it came to hunting down game, but if this place was abandoned for as long as it seemed, then it had to be fair play. Nature was allowed to reclaim whatever she damn well pleased, after all.
"Very well. Spread out, remain quiet." Toothless directed, sweeping his wings outward and blurring down with the motion, fluidly dropping to hide himself among the overgrown grass. Hookfang and Stormfly followed his lead, positioning themselves in a wide V-formation. Stepping as quietly as they dared, the three of them slowly begun to survey the area. B.B. pulled back with me, holding his heads close to his body while he stopped moving as much as he could while still staying close to the advancing group. Meatlug, not really having a horse in the race thanks to her more sedimentary diet, chose to herd the humans as well as she could. She kept them quiet at least, and that served us well.
A while passed as we slowly started circling the outer perimeter of Sköll's bounty. Every now and again one of our frontliners would perk up, investigating a sound or a scent, though it was never more than common wild critters. Hookfang got particularly lucky and managed to sear a wolverine, but that wasn't something particularly safe for the humans, according to a rather impassioned rant from Fishlegs. Hookfang let me and B.B. have some though. It was kinda tough to bite through, and the flavor was all musty. Better left to the reptiles.
We got halfway across the abandoned village's outskirts when two things happened. We came across a fence, made of tall spikes of rusting iron, thorny bushes twisting around and inbetween and through yet not taller than the rods themselves. Behind it, a mansion. Nothing else to describe it, it was bigger than the great hall back on Berk yet smaller than the fortress we'd destroyed. From the outside it looked stable enough. Too stable, compared to the buildings surrounding it.
"That's a really big house..." Stormfly muttered, awe and intimidation making her take a step back.
Without question, we'd found where the cats were hiding.
That second thing, though? Something snapped. A branch, a twig, maybe even a rotting plank of wood from one of the houses or a fence that had gotten displaced. While we were distracted with the mansion's appearance, something managed to get the jump on us. A bubbling growl pealed from Hookfang's snout, bit back and silenced as all heads threw themselves to point at the intruder.
Some kind of ungulate. A deer? An elk? Hell if I knew and damn if I cared. Meat was meat and starved were we.
It stared at us.
We stared at it.
The trees overhead rustled with an angry cold wind. The screw-it-let's-just-call-it-an-elk bolted for its life, and with a shriek Toothless was after it. Spare plasma dribbled from his jaws as he tried to charge and run at the same time, somewhat more used to his altered form but just not there yet and the dissonance was enough for Stormfly and Hookfang to feel the need to step in despite their own bodily malcomforts. Stormfly's sharpshooting kept the elk from going for the treeline and Hookfang slithered off to try and circle it towards the ghost town. It made an angry, honk-y sort of bray and decided to come back around to beat past those of us on team backliners.
Or at least, it tried to. The cluster of humans plus Meatlug served to deter it enough from going their way, which left it hurtling towards B.B.
And me by extention, but I really don't think it noticed. I wasn't any more than a soft and fluffy capelet by this point.
B.B. clicked and growled at the elk with his sparking head as it got closer, spreading out his wings wide and low to intimidate. It brayed again, and rushed to the side to try and beat him back with its antlers. They caught on his gassing neck and he thrashed in pain, roaring and nearly shaking me off. I barked and tried reaching my muzzle out to chomp at it on instinct, accomplishing nothing thanks largely to my compact stature.
"B.B.!" Hookfang shouted, trying to get in close to free his friend, but his approach startled the elk into thrashing even more, getting even more stuck. B.B. jolted as he tried to surpress a recoil, sinking the fangs of his sparking head deep into his assailant's torso. It all but honking-howled, its fate sealed and its head still very much attached by the keratin structure to the great twice-headed monster of yore.
It was safe for the others to get close, at least.
"Haah, that smarts..." B.B. grunted, straining to balance the weight of the freshly dying victim against his throat. I slipped off his back and blurred my hands out, trying to reach up and grab one of the antlers. Somewhat futiley. All things considered.
"Crouch down! Gotta get this thing off you!" I bounced and flailed. He didn't do as I asked, raising the head biting down on the almost-a-corpse slightly to give himself more breathing room. "Beebs!" Toothless ran up behind me and wordlessly rumbled as he pulled me away.
"Just... Just a moment, Pepper..." B.B. spoke between heavy breaths. Hookfang growled at him, bracing his body beside his and slid his snout up and under the elk.
"Don't be stubborn now. Take it slow..." The nightmare chastised him and bit by bit got him to unclamp his jaw. "I got it, there you go."
"B.B., are you okay?!" Stormfly ran to stand with me and Toothless between her and the afflicted zippleback. "Oh, sternenstaub, your scales..." She fretted, unable to focus between his heads and the ripple-lines of peeling keratin, streaks of red starting to blot through.
"It's fine, it's fine." B.B. huffed. "I'm fine, I promise."
"Wow! Totally believe you. Stop standing-" I grabbed his shoulder and tried pulling him down. He didn't try when I wanted him to do it, but when Hookfang started lowering the elk he didn't have a choice. I tamped down a whine and B.B. wound up kneeling, the elk in the grass beneath him, his other head resting just nearby it.
"Can't leave you alone for a minute." Meatlug said as she walked up, the humans following behind her. "Guess that's coming off the way it came." She blurred up for the extra height and settled her hands on the elk, pushing it down slightly. B.B. exhaled deeply, ready to yank his head back out.
"H-wh-wait, wait!" Fishlegs flailed slightly, unsure whether to try and physically stop them or shield his view from the oncoming gore. "Can't we just break an antler off?!"
"I like that idea!" I yipped, immediately running and grabbing the one on the inside. "These things come off normally, right?"
"It's a little late in the year for that..." Toothless grumbled under his breath, holding the other antler still to keep them from rubbing against B.B.'s scrapes. "Can you feel anything coming loose?"
"No, no, it's still- Grgk!" B.B. snorted a thick stream of gas out his nostrils from how hard he gagged from just talking with that head. I had to leap away or risk getting choked out. He switched back to the other one, shooting an apologetic glance my way. "It's on there."
"Hold on... Ugh, we don't have any kind of saw in here?!" Astrid dug through the bags on Stormfly, stabbing swords and axes into the soft ground around her.
"We stole what the cats stole..." Stormfly tapped her claws together, looking at the ground.
"Don't use any of those on food anyway, you don't have your tetanus shots." I sniped, feeling too on-edge to wither away at Astrid's glare.
"What's... Tetanus." B.B. 'asked'. "Just talk. I'm thinking. Distract."
"I'd bet she doesn't even remember-" Snotlout made to jab, but I snapped my teeth to interrupt him.
"I do this time actually!" I growled. "It's the kind of sick you get when rust gets inside you."
"That's... Close enough." Fishlegs praised me, scratching my head. "Good dog."
"Best dog." I jammed my paw into my bag, coming out of it with the construct crystal. "Think there's a kind of magic tetanus equivalent?"
"If we don't have it already..." Hookfang shuffled, a resigned look in his eye as he glanced at my grip. "Whatever you're gonna make, make it good."
"No pressure." Meatlug said. I loved her, but god damn did she need to work on her comedic timing.
"Absolutely not." B.B. snarled, stabbing dual glares at Meatlug and Hookfang. It made Hookfang flinch back, and even Meatlug's nonchalant stoicism was snapped out of her as she gasped softly. "She isn't 'making' anyth-hnk-" He twisted the wrong way, catching over and opening a cut further. A steady trickle of his blood was sticking to him in beads, gathering up on the elk's antlers wherever they managed to inch in.
"Hey, take it easy!" Snotlout rushed in, though he too was easily forced aside just by the zippleback armed with a nasty side-eye. He didn't fully retreat, he just came up to Hookfang's side and rubbed over the back of his dragon's neck, but that was all out of him anyway.
"Why can't Pepper make something to get this done? It'll be quick, really." Stormfly quietly asked, clicking her teeth and trying to slide closer to bump her nose against B.B. reassuringly. He pushed her away as well as he could.
"The new shard. It ran out of stored magic a... A long while ago, it's only pulling from her now. Her energy." He pushed against my shoulder with his free head, far too weakly for my comfort. "She's only just gotten a little bit back. Can't do that to her."
"But it's worth it if it's for-" I tried arguing, only to get shoved again and rumbled at.
"You're right, you're right, but we can't leave this on you." Toothless took up the argument for me, readjusting his grip on the elk to avoid getting blood on his claws. "Look. One spell. That's all she'll do."
"Yes! Yes, that. I can make something super fast and-"
"Healing!" Fishlegs interrupted me. "It- It should be the healing. We don't have the supplies to, to do anything else." He looked away, trying his hardest to not make it obvious it was the crime scene in front of us making him lose his nerve.
"Much. Better." B.B. agreed at last, nodding to the shaking teen. "...Hold it down. On three."
Meatlug and Toothless shifted slightly, fixing their positions as Stormfly and Astrid joined in, grabbing legs and pushing them into the ground. Hookfang bullied Snotlout into action, making him grab and yank at the other antler to help Toothless ease the pressure. He himself braced beneath B.B.'s gassing neck just beside me, ready to take up the act of pulling should B.B. get overwhelmed. Fishlegs knelt by his sparking head, holding it in his arms and gently rubbing his hand down the neck.
"We're ready." Toothless said.
"One..." B.B. intoned, a cue for me to start pooling my energy into the crystal shard before it could come out as a healing mist. Then, he growled. "Blitz it. Three." He didn't bother with a proper countdown at all in the way he said, just reeling his stuck head back and planting his feet a solid extra inch in the dirt. There was a squishy scraping sound as the elk was pulled off of his neck, and I did my damndest to ignore the few rows of scales clinging to its sticky, blood-coated antlers. I plugged my nose and put my everything into running the healing spell, almost collapsing into Hookfang as I held my arm up and out and towards B.B. He had indeed wound up dropping his neck, his nose only not falling into the dirt thanks to the nightmare repositioning himself. Even while the wounds closed up, loose blood was still sliding down, dripping where it may. Some of it on the ground, a little on Hookfang, still a little more onto the elk while the others tried yanking it away.
"This should keep us going for a while, at least..." Stormfly tiredly attempted to soothe the tensions, taking up the elk's back two legs and hovering it over the ground while Astrid readjusted her grasp on the front two. A bit pointless, since Meatlug was supporting its back. Blood and what might have been B.B.'s spit was beading around its puncture wounds, the surface tension breaking and letting it spill once Toothless and Snotlout dropped its head down into the grass. They'd all carried it a good couple feet away from B.B.
"That's. That's enough." B.B. said, pulling his head away from Fishlegs and trying to walk backwards to stop using Hookfang for balance. He thwipped his tail in my direction, trying to get me to stop running the healing spell. Hookfang wasn't willing to give up though, and neither was I. The healing stopped on its own before, so I clearly wasn't doing enough with it yet. "H-hook, Pepper, knock it off."
"I'll stop when you can stand on your own, sure." Hookfang sassed him, sliding away slightly only to duck back down to catch the zippleback when he stumbled from the absent crutch.
"Then, Pepper-!"
"No!" I groaned, my head feeling waterlogged from the constant magic use. "You're not better yet! You- This is- Probably, I mean, but this one's gotta be ours. What that map said, what Tiger said, there's only this one stop here and then Whittney."
"Do you mean-?" Fishlegs asked, eyes widening as he turned to look up at the mansion.
"Yeah." I cut the magic flow before my vision could get spotty, stumbling forward into B.B. He raised his wing to let me fall into his side, bringing it back down to cover me. "I'd bet anything that Ruffnut and Tuffnut are in there."
"You really think so?" B.B. asked. Hookfang lowered him to let us sit together, nodding to Fishlegs and jerking his head back to the others, where they'd already started trying to deconstruct the corpse for easier carrying. When it was just me and B.B., I blurred down, exhausted.
"It's more reasonable than thinking they'd just throw Hiccup in here instead of him being guared by the big bad herself." I chuckled. "He's the biggest bargaining chip of the lot." B.B. curled his heads in, lying down and pushing me into doing the same. I rested my head over my front legs, resisting the pull of sleep.
"You've got a point there. Only hatch of the flock alpha..." He laughed breathily, only to cough from his scarred-up neck. "Then they must be here. Our kids."
"They gotta be."
"I can't wait for our family to be whole again." B.B. sighed, his exhale rustling my hair. "I haven't stopped worrying about them for even a moment."
"...Family, yeah. Ours." I mumbled. I hadn't let myself think about it, but throughout everything... B.B. was pretty much the only constant. Every day back on Berk, I had pretty much grown up with him in the doggy sense. He's seen me go from puppy-puppy to puppy-doggy. Even here on this abandoned, nameless island, he's been the one to talk me up when I shot myself down, to vouch for me when Toothless was getting too pushy, to help me keep my cool when stuck on top of, over, and under the sea.
...Yet I still couldn't bring myself to tell him the truth. The dragon who has been nothing less than my big brother.
"Are you tired? You used too much magic today, you should sleep." B.B. moved his wing up to cover me a bit more.
"You have too many injuries left over. You should sleep." I threw back at him. He laughed, softly, but I could feel him rumble.
"Why don't we go together, then. We're safe enough here, we can be woken up to move inside once they all burn that beast." B.B.'s eyes turned to Hookfang, who was laying on his stomach pulling up grass and dirt to make a pit. The kids had taken some of Stormfly's spines to tear into the elk carcass, carving it into manageable chunks. Snotlout even managed to skin the pelt off in a single useable piece... Impressive. He probably planned on keeping that. I, personally, planned on chewing those damn antlers down to nothing, so judgement was outside of my purview.
They could make do without us for a little while.
"You got yourself a deal." I sighed and snuggled into B.B., feeling his heads and tail push in around me. Enveloped, on all ends.
And where this all would end was beyond me.
Sure enough our brief nap was interrupted once everything had gotten cleaned up, squared off, and most importantly cooked to prevent spoilage. Fishlegs and Stormfly at least had the herewithall to look apologetic for disturbing us, but the weather was starting to look like it'd get nasty again so we had to move. There wasn't going to be any good point to risking pnumonia, not when we were this close to our next goal.
On that topic, Toothless wanted to make an actual plan regarding the mansion interior. Couldn't really blame him. We'd been flying by the seats of our butts for too long, and it was taking its toll. The least-dilapitated building left in Sköll's Bounty was this dusty, glass-fronted number that had an unintelligible sign hanging over the door. Rusted hinges stood no match to Meatlug, and we were inside what was now clearly an abandoned pub.
"Oh yeah sure, you can leave behind tapestries and furniture and nasty waxy candle chunks and entire fuckin' mining facilities..." I was underneath the bar counter. Looking for freebies. "But when it comes down to booze of all things, you pack it up before you fuck offa the face of the earth!" I popped my head up from below, startling Fishlegs and Snotlout.
"We do not need alcohol." Astrid glared at me from down the counter, sitting on it with her arms crossed.
"You don't know that." I countered, pun intended, myself. "It's antiseptic!"
"You might be thinking of a different kind of alcohol..." Fishlegs chuckled weakly, leaning over the countertop to watch me dive back down.
"Yeah well maybe I wanna poison the cats' water supply then, eh? After all of this bullshit they're putting us through, they don't deserve functioning livers." I dug through cabinet after cabinet, opening doors and finding empty crates and dry bottles, yet nothing that could be of use. We already had weapons, as fun as it would be to break a bottle to make a shiv. Just another way this world was testing me. Can't swear uncensored, can't prison-style stab anyone. Regular-style stabbing would have to do.
"Do you seriously think that you could find their water supply?" Snotlout groaned, back leaned against he counter. "And forget about poisoning it, they'd probably get you before you could even open a bottle."
I regular-style threw a cork at his head. It pinged off his helmet and bounced onto the floor.
"Found ammo." I sassed. He turned around and damn near climbed over the bar to glare at me.
"Are you quite done over there?" Toothless called over his shoulder, standing upright with his claws pressing into a table the other dragons had gathered around. "Hookfang's almost done drawing the outer perimiter."
"Perfection takes time!" The nightmare grunted mid-work, his pointer claw flamed up and carving into another table, thrown onto its side and propped against the wall.
"Alright fine, we're coming." I said and blurred down to save myself the indignation of crawling. Squeezing under that little lifty-not-door part, I settled myself next to where B.B. was resting on the ground. He pushed one of his noses inbetween my ears, ruffling the new hair growth, and I snorted and shook out my head.
"And there we are. Not my usual style, but a finished piece none the less." Hookfang joked, haughtily buffing the nail that was cutting through old planks like room-temperature jello against his chest.
"I prefer your avant-garde work." Meatlug played into his bit. "Truly ahead of our time."
"Anyways." Toothless cut in. "This is a drawing of that very large house-"
"Mansion." I interrupted.
"Mansion." He said, testing the word on his tongue reluctantly. Eyes rolled, he stretched a wing out to act as his pointer. He tapped along a rectangle shape Hookfang had drawn in around a smaller, boxy parallelogram. "This 'fence' here surrounds all but one point of entry. Every path here seems to connect to the one leading through the gap, but while that does make it harder to miss, it also means that there is no other way to get to the inside. We can expect guards, or some form of fight."
"What if we waited until nightfall? Or better yet, for this next rain to begin." Stormfly looked out the window, eyes skyward. The dark clouds were tinging the world around us in dark tones, and the advancing threat of getting caught in it was only growing as the evening stretched. "We could use the cover of darkness to conceal ourselves!"
"Felines have excellent night vision." Fishlegs corrected her, cringing afterwards as if he hadn't meant to speak. "And, um, even if we did get there while it's raining, then wouldn't we still have to fight whoever's inside?"
"Right." Toothless nodded to him, subtly prodding Meatlug to get out from under the table to stand with her boy. She yawned wordlessly and got started on that, moving as slowly as she pleased. I looked at her funny. Her agenda looked a lot different from mine. "-If only it were possible to get over the spikes and thorns, but we still can't fly." Toothless had been continuing on, so I had totally missed on that train of thought.
"M'workin' on it..." I grumbled, crossing my paws and dropping my snoot into the crook. B.B. silently laughed at me, I could feel his barrel moving.
"We'll be fighting one way or another." Astrid climbed onto a table, sitting down and keeping her sword close. "What makes the difference between fighting inside or outside with the cat monsters?" That's right, she was too new to the adventure to have had to fight off a cat swarm. Snotlout's done it twice, technically, if a lot of one cat counted, then once again with Fishlegs in the party...
"There's good points for either." Toothless admitted, slapping the table drawing again. "If we allow the fight to come outside the mansion's doors, the cats will all be funneled in our direction, we will be able to pick them off one by one if need be. However, that also means we won't be able to get inside until every cat is taken care of. Not to mention being at the mercy of the clouds and rain."
"I'm tired of cold and wet." I said, thumping my face against B.B. to try and leech off his warm dragon body some more. Just he thought of being drenched again was giving me shivers.
"We all are." B.B. reassured, letting me get closer and readjusting himself to cover more of me.
"But bringing the battle inside has its own complications." Toothless continued on, wing scraping up to land inside of the box shape. "We don't know what the interior layout is like. It could be just as bad as fighting in that place we found Snotlout, where we didn't have anywhere to run and get distance."
"I wish I coulda seen that..." Snotlout sighed under his breath.
"Yeah, it was kind of fun at first? But then things got, uhm... Not." Stormfly let out a nervous giggle. "I wish we could avoid a fight altogether."
"It's that fence. If it weren't in the way, we'd be able to sneak around and find another entrance, or go through a window!" Fishlegs paced away from the group. "We really can't get over it?"
"I could make a-!" I tried to offer, only for B.B. to roll over and smother me with his wing, body, and arm.
"No." In intimidating unison, everyone shot me down.
"Rmp." Still squished, I tried wriggling out. I stumbled out from underneath my zippleback prison, flipping onto my back and accidentally getting my hands out. Might as well use them while they're here, right? I stood up, rubbing my head to try and fight off a headache. "Come on. I'm rested and everything just so I can do this stuff when we need to. It's not like I can just keep stocking up energy, I have a maximum capacity!"
"I don't like this-" Astrid dismissively waved her hand, looking at my upright posture with an open distain. "Magic, business, at all. Whatever it is you're doing with it, still came from the cats. Just look at what it did to everyone. Look at what it's doing to you." At her words, the dragons recoiled, some more than others. "The less of it that goes around, the better."
"Well if we want to lose it, somebody here has to use it." I grabbed a shard at random from my bag, dangling it from my claws. "Since I'm already the only one that can touch them, I might as well finish the job."
"Careful where you aim that." The human girl scoffed. I bore my teeth, but dropped the rock back into the bag.
"Can't go over, can't go through, there is no around..." Hookfang dramatically flopped onto one of the upright tables, laying supine across its top with his wings dropping to the floor. "What else is there?!"
"Under." Meatlug droned.
"Funny, Mee. Last I checked there was ground there." Stormfly huffed. "What would that even do for us, we'd dig a tunnel? When it's this wet?"
"It's something." Meatlug shrugged, wandering over to the table Hookfang was laying on and resting against it as well, head propped up next to his.
"...That is one sturdy table." I muttered under my breath. B.B. raised a head to look, being the only one who heard me.
"Actually..." He stood up, staying quadrupedal, then using the table as well to leverage an upwards blur. Only then did it groan, shaking Hookfang to an upright sit.
"Hey, I was contemplating here." He complained halfheartedly.
"Contemplate with company, stand up." B.B. prodded him until he stood up on the table, nearly bashing his horns into the ceiling. B.B. climbed up after him, needing to keep both heads ducked. The table creaked and complained, but didn't buckle.
"Make room!" I yipped, hopping up after the dragons. I booped Meatlug nose-to-nose as I passed her, and she smirked.
"Well, would you look at that." She said, backing off. I grabbed B.B. and Hookfang's hands in mine and raised them above my head.
"LET'S STEAL TABLES!" I cheered, my tail wagging hard enough to add to the creaking. "We can use 'em to make stairs!"
"...It's always going to be stealing with you, isn't it?" Fishlegs laughed incredulously. "Alright, let's do it! Anything to not fight that many cats all at once again."
"Finally, as long as we can do something." Not wasting any time, Snotlout went to start carrying one of the longer tables from the back over to the door. He'd have struggled less if he had gotten it from underneath, but any labor I didn't have to do was just fine in my book.
"Very well then. If we act fast, we should be able to find whoever is captive and get them and the next magic piece overnight." Toothless said, tucking his wings tight against his back. "Let's move!"
Between the nine of us we dragged five tables all the way from the tavern all the way across Sköll's Bounty town proper to the side of the mansion's fence. Not the side where we'd had the little incident, the one opposite to it. It was a little too fresh to just go back there. We managed, though. With almost two of us to a table each! We would have gotten six if Toothless and Fishlegs had let Meatlug take my dare for carrying two at once by herself. One wasn't even a sweat for her, come on... Admittedly I was not much help. Little dog. Little arms and legs. Inefficient worker that makes Pepper.
That did mean that I got to run ahead and find somewhere nice and flat and relatively free of thorns!
"Over here, there's a dry patch!" I waved the group over, reaching inbetween the bars of the fence to try and pull at the brittle, thorny vines that had died in this one spot. The pokey pointy bits were all too close together to get a solid grip on, but they did give way when pinched and pulled between my nails. I yoinked a strand of vine and held it aloft between my paws. It wasn't magical in nature, not even a little bit. I sighed, letting Stormfly pass by with Toothless to set the first table down.
"Here, try catching the legs up between the spikes on the fence, it should keep us from getting snagged-" Fishlegs was taking a lead on construction, B.B. being his second set of hands on the next table. "If we position it well enough it should still line up with the other tables, even if at a small incline."
"I like your funny words, table man." Hookfang snorted, nearly stopping in his tracks if it weren't for Astrid's death grip on the other end of the table they were carrying together dragging him along. And speaking of dragging...
"Shut. Up." Snotlout huffed at Meatlug as she casually held her table up on her shoulder, watching the score lines he'd put in the ground with his with a passive interest.
"I didn't say anything." She said. Absolute deadpan. What a queen.
"You're thinking it."
"Oh. Sorry. I'll think it quieter."
"You're not even gonna deny it?!"
All in all a huge success, really.
The tables were stacked in a rudimentary pyramid, step-shaped to lend to easy climbing. We all climbed up and jumped back down, the other side of the fence really cementing it that this was it. Our next big trial. I blurred down, getting up close to the mansion's exterior walls and keeping my ears peeled. It'd totally screw us over if we jimmied a window open only to find a room full of cats. I tried to put my ears to the side as I peered into the closest window, grimy glass obscuring my vision into a room kept dark from the overcast and gloom skywards.
Rumble...
Speak of the devil. Inner-monologue of the devil. Details!
"Just in time." Toothless sarcastically groaned. He'd been spending too much time with his boy. "Can you get this open, Pepper?"
"If I can't, this can." I stuffed my paw into my bag, successfully grabbing the maker-shard based on feel alone. Probably not a good sign that I could do that, but at least I looked cool doing it! With a scrunch of my brow I had an enchanted, open-anything magic light crowbar in hand, and I lodged the end between the window pane and the frame, yanking hard. "Open sesame-" It cracked open with a poof of dust right in my face, making me drop to the side kneelng to hack it out while Toothless finished the job and crawled inside. "Gh-HAUGH. Tofu. Hwack."
"Thanks, Pepper!" Hookfang clapped me on the back as he passed to get in, garnering another wet cough. Meatlug went after him, offering her hand to help B.B., Astrid and Fishlegs through.
"Yes! Thank you-" Stormfly moved to give me an appropriately thankful hug, but she flinched back from the dusty mask on my fur. "Oh. Um. I'm sure you get it. Onwards!" And then she ditched me to follow the others.
"Abandoned by beautiful women in my time of need." I sighed and despawned my crowbar. I tailed behind Snotlout and heaved myself up and over the lip, landing chest-first into an especially dusty bedroom. A simple bedframe sat next to the far wall, stripped of sheets and mattress, the foot next to the door. I used a chest of drawers next to the window to pull myself upright, earning a faceful of dingy tattered remnants of curtains.
"Not what I was expecting." B.B. kept his heads close together, shuffling towards the door in the shockingly small room. "You'd think such a large structure wouldn't be so..."
"Cramped? Gross? Me neither! We should leave." Stormfly was practically in a ball herself, arms clenched tight over her shoulders and head ducked down, eyes flicking over the room as if it were to collapse on us at any second. Now that I knew what to feel for, the magic suspending the mansion was easy to find, loosely woven throughout the bricks and beams and lathe.
"Why would such a small bedroom be in a wholeass mansion like this? I thought we'd be rifling through some rich jackass's leftovers." I wondered, pinching away the schmutz that was stuck to my beans. "This is just sad and creepy. Screepy."
"Maybe this was just a servant's quarters." Astrid offered, though one hand stayed firm at her hip near her weapon while she trudged to the door, reaching for the knob. I heard something distantly thunk and creak, and the dragons all raised their heads in time with me. We were all alerted of the same thing, but what was it? Toothless growled and halted Astrid from leaving he room, blocking the door from opening with his arm.
"We're being watched again, aren't we." He groaned, shooting me a look. I raised my paws and crossed them.
"I just got here, man." For real. Back in the mines I had a lucky guess, and it wasn't even until after we had some bullshit happen to us.
"There's only one way to find out." Hookfang said, cracking his neck from side to side and flexing his shoulders. He knocked into Toothless' side to get him to stand down, grinning at Astrid as she let out an annoyed sigh and followed through with her plan of getting the hell out of this room. We filed out into a corner hallway, right at the outer end of the junction. The plank floors were weathered smooth, a moth-eaten rug the only thing between us and the faded laquer. The doors ahead of us looked dark and heavy, well-made. Enough so to survive until the cats reinforced them, maybe even afterwards once we got through and left everything in a heap of splinters and rubble. The doors to our immediate right, the same hall our entrance belonged to and including it, all of its doors were looser and bare.
"So, which way do we head?" B.B. asked, one head staring own each corridor.
"There's this trick to getting through labyrinths without getting lost, you just head right every time you reach an intersection." Fishlegs pointed down the grody-lookin' hall. "We're bound to find something eventually, but it may take a while..."
"Great, we gotta turn this whole place upside down just for some cat with an ego problem." Snotlout trudged along the way the other boy directed, completely missing the irony. He came up to the first door after ours and opened it, staring inside blank-faced, then closing it again. "Nothing." Then he walked to he next door, repeating the process. "Nothing." And then on the third door he stopped, whistled, and said, "Well would you look at that. Nothing!"
"We don't need to look everywhere." I rolled my eyes, spawning in a new compass with the exact same perameters as the last few. If it ain't broke, ya know? "What do we ask it to look for?"
"It couldn't tell us about ups or downs when we had it pointing at Mee, B.B., and Toothless in the murder cave." Hookfang said and scratched at the scales around his muzzle. "Think back to what Tiger said, few days ago. Some cat named... What was it."
"It was Twiggy, or something, right?" I mumbled. "Ziggy, Biggy..."
"Twigzy." Toothless reminded us. "Point it at the fastest route to them." Without even waiting for my input, the needle swung around and pointed down the hall that seemed cleaner.
"Hey, I made you, little ingrate." I held my construct up and shook it lightly in my fist in feigned annoyance. "Least you could do is show your god a li'l deferrence."
"Perhaps it knows something you don't." Toothless smirked and started off in the direction we were led. "Come on, time's wasting."
"Fii-iiine." I huffed, hiding my own smile and jogging to keep up with him. B.B. caught up to us and gave us each a confident smile for each head.
Finally, we were getting somewhere!