Chapter Text
Now…
The sound of Toothless roaring made Astrid startle and Ryder look upward, his eyes narrowing behind his helmet.
“Your dragon,” he said without looking at her. “Astrid, Stormfly should join Toothless, at least for a while.”
She furrowed her brows and covered the mark of her dragon on the back of her hand. Even while knowing the man sitting beside her on the boat was from Berk and knew exactly who she was, Astrid couldn’t help but find her insides coiling at him using Stormfly’s name so casually, like it was common knowledge. She hadn’t told him what her dragon soul’s name was, yet he knew it. He knew more about her than she did about him, which was unnerving and put her on edge.
Still, she ploughed on.
“Why?” she demanded.
He finally tore his gaze away from the sky to look at her. “We’re nearing the area around the nest. The queen’s call is stronger around here, so it’s harder for the dragons to resist, and that includes dragon souls. The safest bet is to let them fly around to stay out of the queen’s grasp. Toothless knows this—he’ll guide Stormfly so she makes it out safely.”
“What queen?”
“The one at their nest. I told you Toothless and I were on our way to try and stop the raids. We were going to kill her.”
Her grip on her hand tightened a little at the news. “But… but what if something happens to them when we’re not around to—”
“Toothless knows how best to avoid the queen’s immediate range,” said Ryder, his voice urgent yet compassionate. “He’s not gonna let anything happen to your dragon, Astrid. He’s gonna make sure they both make it to Berk safely. Please, trust me.”
She gulped at the sincerity in his voice—no matter how distorted it was. With her heart pounding, Astrid mentally poked at Stormfly, silently asking her if she’d like to join Toothless and go through with this. The ease with which the Nadder accepted the plan, popping up in the air beside Astrid with her wings flapping to keep her above the water, made Astrid once more question everything she knew about Ryder. How come he and his Night Fury had such an effect on her dragon? How come Stormfly trusted them both as much as she did? Who was he?
Even more shocking—instead of instantly flying upward to catch up with Toothless, Stormfly cooed and chirped at Ryder, her voice fonder than Astrid had expected it to be while interacting with a stranger. Which, once again, made her wonder how much of a stranger he actually was in the eyes of her dragon.
The man chuckled a little and reached out a hand to caress the Nadder’s snout, making her preen and trill happily before she finally pulled away and shot up to catch up with the black dragon soaring above them.
Biting her lip, Astrid kept on rowing silently for a minute, then turned to Ryder sharply and asked, “What’s the deal with that queen, then?”
“Huh?”
“The queen. The one in the nest. You said you and your dragon were on your way to kill her before I flagged you down. So what’s the deal? How’d you find out about her? What’s her deal?”
He let out a long exhale. “O-oh, man. That’s—that’s a long story.”
Astrid blinked at him expectantly.
“Imagine a mountain with eyes, teeth, legs and wings,” he said eventually. “One that breathes fire and has no mercy.”
“Dragons don’t have mercy,” she countered, because that was all she could focus on when her brain was struggling to picture such a dragon.
“Correction—the queen doesn’t have mercy, and the dragons she controls are bound to her, they can’t do anything against her will. They have to obey her orders, and so they attack human villages in order to give her food. If they don’t, she eats them. I saw it happen. She—she snatched a Gronckle and a Zippleback out of the air and gulped them down.”
Astrid shook her head. “That’s…”
Ryder’s eyes met hers, the intensity in them making Astrid reel back a tad. “If you pay attention to the dragons who raid Berk—really pay attention to them instead of swinging your axe at them—you’ll see it. They’re starving, they’re hurt, they’re desperate. That’s why dragon souls look so dazed after raids. The queen’s reach expands to get them to do her bidding, and then they snap out of it once the raid is over. None of it is their fault, they’re as much the victims in all of this as the people they attack.”
Frowning, Astrid’s shoulders hunched as a memory sprang into her mind—a memory of Hiccup standing in the kill ring during training, holding his shield uncertainly while looking around at the scoffing, skeptical looks of his peers and Gobber. The way he’d timidly brought it up, spoken about something that made them all snort incredulously since of course Hiccup of all people would come up with such a bizarre and ludicrous idea.
“Like a beehive,” she mumbled, one of her hand rubbing the pendant hanging from her neck. “They’re the workers and she’s their queen…”
“Exactly.”
Guilt filled her lungs. “Hiccup tried to bring up this possibility once. We laughed at him.”
“Well, it is kind of outlandish.”
She squinted down at her feet. “How could he have even thought of it? Do you think he’d found the nest too, somehow? That maybe he actually knew this was the case, like you?”
The man was quiet for several moments, then he asked, “Only a dragon can find the nest. How would he have found it?”
Astrid shook her head. “I guess it’s impossible… not when he didn’t have a dragon soul. And he may have been a little crazy, but I don’t think anyone back on Berk is crazy enough to fly on the back of a dragon. No offence.”
“None taken,” he said lightly. “I get it—it’s not for everyone. Although it’s the best experience. Kind of a shame so many people can go through it and—and choose not to. You have no idea what you’re missing out on, m’la—Astrid.”
“I’m fine with both my feet on the ground, thank you very much. But if I ever lose my mind, I’ll call you.”
“I answer to dragon calls,” he joked.
She hoped he was joking.
Giving him a sidelong look, Astrid chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully then said, “Can you show me?”
“How to make dragon calls?”
“The queen, you muttonhead.”
He froze. “You want—you want to see the queen? W-why?”
Astrid rolled her shoulders uneasily. “I guess it’s just one of those things you can’t just wrap your head around unless you see it with your own two eyes. Come on, a dragon the size of a mountain? You’ve got to admit it sounds absurd. You know what they say—seeing is believing. And if this monster really does exist, I want to see it with my own two eyes, then report to the chief.”
Ryder turned to face straight ahead. “That’s a really bad idea.”
“What? But—”
“Listen to me, Astrid—if you told Da—the chief that you know where the dragon’s nest is and that there’s a giant monstrous dragon there that would kill everyone on Berk, he’d hear the first part of what you have to say and ignore the warning. He has this… this problem with listening to other people. Trust me, if you bring it up, he’d send half of Berk or more over to the nest and they’d all die.”
“An army of Vikings would die by the queen’s hand, but you and your Night Fury would be able to kill it? Are you even hearing yourself?”
He shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know that we’ll make it,” he said honestly. “Toothless and I kept on postponing this again and again because no plan ever came close to being good enough. I kept on coming up with ideas and scraping them. But the thing is… people keep on getting hurt. Dragons keep on getting hurt. It’s a cycle that won’t reach an end until the queen is dead, so we have to at least give it a try. We don’t have any other option here. Not unless we want to let the war continue.”
“But you won’t accept the help of an entire tribe,” she said flatly.
“I would—if their leader wasn’t the type to ignore warnings and throw his people into the fire obliviously, believing they were invincible. Look, I’d love the help, but the only chance of getting past the queen is by riding a dragon. Do you have any dragon riders back on Berk?”
Astrid scowled at him.
Ryder’s eyes crinkled. “That’s what I thought.”
She scowled some more.
“I still want to see that queen,” she told him after a long pause.
He groaned and threw his head back in exasperation.