Chapter Text
Now…
Astrid cursed once she got close to the prison, seeing all of the dragon souls flying nearby and fighting the Outcast guards. There were also distressed calls from within the prison—familiar voices of people crying out while being attacked by their own dragon souls without being able to escape.
An irritated growl escaped her lips as she ran forward and bending down on the way there to pick up a discarded shield someone must have dropped at some point. She couldn’t risk attacking the dragon souls with her axe, after all. So protecting herself was the only way she could possibly get past them.
The guards were too busy fighting off five dragons to stop her. She slipped past them and rushed into the prison. A hallway presented itself to her, with cell doors lining the walls. In each cell the Berkians screamed and yelled as they tried to handle the dragons trapped inside with them. From one of the cells Gustav was attempting to slip out through the bars, although he was clearly stuck.
Fumbling with the keys, Astrid approached the nearest door and started trying to unlock it. A few people noticed her and started shouting unhelpful suggestions and insults. A shriek from further down the hall made Astrid’s hands tremble before she managed to remind herself of her training—she had to keep calm, think clearly. They needed her.
Finally finding the correct key, Astrid listened to the click it made before the door slid open. The Vikings rushed out, including Fishlegs who looked like his life was flashing before his eyes. He looked at Astrid like she was the most incredible sight in existence, then wrapped her in a bear hug. A second later he yelped and backed away, looking frightened by his own actions.
“Listen to me,” she told him as she turned to the next door, already working on finding the key, “you have to make sure everyone gets to the forest. They can’t go to the town and try to fight the Outcasts. With the dragons and the armed men running around, we wouldn’t stand a chance. We need to regroup and then get ourselves some weapons. There’s a place in the forest we can use until we’re ready, but they have to stay out of sight for now. We don’t want Alvin to rush over here.”
Fishlegs gawped at her. “B-but—the dragons are—there’s a raid!”
“I know there’s a raid! We’ve been waiting for a raid so we’ll have some cover,” she snapped at him. The key clicked and another door opened. “Just lead them to the forest, Fishlegs. It’s our best bet right now. YOU HEAR ME? FOLLOW FISHLEGS TO THE FOREST!”
“Are ye out o’ yer mind?”
“We want ter get our home back!”
“Get this dragon off me! It’s chewing my leg!”
“It’s chewing yer boot, laddie.”
“Oh…”
Astrid moved on to the next door while ducking under a Terror that was finally released and flew outside and toward the chaos. A few people managed to snag their own dragons before they could help with the raid, but most of them watched in mild despair after their escaping dragon souls.
“We don’t have anything to fight with! We need weapons if we want to take over the island again!” Astrid said with as much authority as she could muster. “Our only chance right now is to retreat, regroup, make sure everyone is accounted for—”
“The chief isn’t here!” said Phlegma as she walked past Astrid. “They took him somewhere else.”
“Aye,” Gobber said, waving his prosthetic through the bars above Gustav’s head. “We don’ know where they keep ‘im, but ‘e’s not with the rest o’ us. We need ter find Stoick and—”
Flicking the hair away from her face, Astrid said, “I know. He’s at the arena, caged like one of the dragons. He’s being rescued right now, too.”
“Rescued by who?” demanded Tuffnut. “Do we know anyone else who hasn’t been captured? Ooh, ooh! Is it a guessing game? Can I guess? Wait, I need to count everyone first… let’s go to the forest so I can count!”
“Someone’s helping you?” Fishlegs inquired.
She shot him a look. “You’re still here?”
He squeaked and hobbled away, calling for everyone to follow him into the forest. Tuff and Ruff followed him soon after, helping him round everyone up and—by the sound of it—knocking out the Outcast guards.
A hook landed on Astrid’s wrist as she went to open the cell of Gustav and Gobber. “Yer got someone ter help ye? Who is it?”
That painting on the shield popped in her mind and she shook her head mildly. “A friend. I think.”
“Ye think? Well, now ah feel much better then.”
She ignored him.
“Astrid, babe, I knew you’d come rescue me!” Snotlout’s voice came from behind another door. “I mean, I was going to perform this spectacular rescue mission soon so we were never in any real danger, but I just knew you would come.”
She ignored him too.
Soon enough all the cells were open, all the Berkians free and only some of the dragon souls still around, fighting against their humans who were trying to keep them close while also not letting them harm anyone around. Much. Astrid was relieved to see that the twins and Fishlegs managed to steer the Berkians away from Berk and into the forest, where they kept on streaming toward, with her bringing up the rear.
Once she reached the tree line she cast a look over the burning village, her eyebrows dipping at the sight of the dragons fighting the Outcasts. She tried to look for the chief’s flaming hair and bulking figure; maybe spot a pair of green eyes belonging to Toothless. She knew better than to expect to see much of Hiccup when he was wearing his black armor, so she didn’t even look for him.
Either way, she saw nothing. Not in the arena and not in the trail leading from it to the forest.
Hoping they were safe, she followed everyone else, then started pushing herself to the front, knowing Fishlegs and the Thorstons had no real idea where they were going. While walking ahead, she tried to make sure she could see everyone she could think of—her parents, Silent Sven, Gothi, Mulch and Bucket… It looked all right to her, but she’d feel much better after properly checking for attendance.
“I need to warn you before we get to our sanctuary,” she said once she was positive they were far enough away from the village so that even the struggling dragons with them wouldn’t alert anyone. “Preferably before we get there.”
“Wha’ is it, lassie?” said Gobber as he hobbled forward. “There aren’ any more Outcasts in the forest, are there?”
She shook her head. “It’s more complicated than that, honestly. See, the person helping me—he’s…”
Most of them were listening, she could tell, waiting to hear what she had to say. A few of the younger kids were already complaining about being hungry and thirsty. Mildew was whining in the back, looking as dreadful as ever while warily eyeing the dragons accompanying them.
“…he’s a dragon rider,” Astrid finally said.
He’s Hiccup, she wanted to say. He’s alive, he’s back, he’s helping us. But I don’t think he wants to stay afterward.
“A dragon rider?”
“Blasphemy!”
“Odin, help us!”
“Shut up!” she shouted. “Do you want to get caught again? Besides, this guy is helping us all—he’s trying to free Chief Stoick as we speak. I know he doesn’t follow our rules and beliefs, but he’s an outsider who’s risking his life to assist us. And… and he only had one thing he wanted in return.”
“I forgot my wallet back home,” said Snotlout dryly.
She shook her head. “He didn’t want money.”
A gasp cut through the forest. Astrid turned her head to see her mother staring at her in horror. “Oh, Astrid, tell me you didn’t—”
“That wasn’t it either,” she said quickly. Her mother sighed in relief. “He wanted us to stop killing dragons. And seeing as I had no other choice and no one else who was willing to come and help us, I accepted.”
“Stop killin’ dragons?”
“Is ‘e mad?”
“They’re the ones attackin’ us!”
“Clearly, ‘e’s tryin’ ter get us all killed one way or another, lass,” sneered Mildew.
She gritted her teeth. “Well, I learned a lot from him—enough to make me see the dragons attacking us aren’t the problem. I know they’re wild dragons who keep on invading Berk for food, but they only do that to serve… something else. Some kind of monster that lurks in their nest and forces them to do her bidding. The dragons themselves wouldn’t have needed to attack us otherwise.”
There were murmurs of distaste and disbelief, but Gobber and her peers looked at her with wide eyes. After all, she was quoting the person who’d suggested this ludicrous idea to them all years ago. They were familiar with this theory, even if not actually willing to take it seriously. And now she was repeating it, bringing it up again as fact. She could see their doubt, but also a hint of wariness and dawning realization that maybe… maybe Hiccup had been right.
“I saw it with my own two eyes,” she insisted and a hush fell among the others as they kept on strolling forward. “I know he’s telling the truth. I know the dragons can be pacified, calm. I know they don’t want to hurt us if they don’t feel threatened. And… and there’s a whole bunch of them at the cove we’re going to right now.”
There were more shouts of outrage, but mostly uneasy murmurs about how they were going to die no matter in which direction they went. Astrid sent a brief glance back at the lot of them and sent a quiet prayer to the gods for at least not sending a bunch of armed Vikings toward the agitated dragons back at the cove. That would have been a disaster.
Fishlegs tentatively said, “Er… when you say there are dragons there… you don’t happen to mean dragon souls, right?”
“Wild dragons,” she said. “And we calmed them earlier. They didn’t even join the raid in the end. I saw it happen—it’s possible to reach them, to get past the queen’s call. We just need to learn how to do it.”
“Wow,” he awed.
Sidling up to her, Gobber gave her a skeptical look. “And yer sure we can trust this… dragon rider you’ve brought along with ye?”
Flashes of the past disasters a much younger Hiccup had caused streamed behind her eyelids. It brought a smile to her face, no matter how upset with him she was for lying to her face and not coming out and admitting the truth. Honestly, she was just relieved to have him back, no matter what he was doing with his life.
“We can trust him,” she promised. “He’s skittish and gets along better with his dragon than with people, clearly, but he’s a good person and he cares about Berk. Plus, he’s an enemy of the Outcasts so he has another reason to be on our side.”
He hummed a little. “And yer sure those beasts yer takin’ us ter won’t finish us all off, eh?”
“As long as you don’t provoke them, they have no reason to attack you.”
“Well, at least nothin’ ‘ere is borin’.”
Despite their general discomfort with the idea, the Berkians kept on following Astrid, most likely because they felt like the dragons and she would be easier to handle than the Outcasts. They complained and moaned about having no weapons to fight the dragons off with—Snotlout mentioned being strong enough not to need a spear to fight a dragon—but they walked in her footsteps like a herd of sheep walking toward the slaughter.
Once they reached the cove, Astrid kept her attention on the people as they climbed down toward the dragons, most of which were still very much awake, looking both terrified and in pain. The fact that they were still resisting the queen’s call was good, but Astrid could tell they were on edge, especially now that they had even more company—people they must have remembered as their enemy.
Approaching the nearest Monstrous Nightmare, Astrid tried to stifle down her own apprehension in favor of smiling at it as calmly as possible. She murmured reassurances to it, the way Hiccup had done earlier, then sighed in relief when it crooned back and lowered its head back down, as if accepting that there was no threat near. A few other dragons in its vicinity copied it, apparently taking its cue.
“See?” said Astrid, relief coursing through her as she turned to look at her people. “They’re not going to hurt us. Just get comfortable and get some sleep if you can. We’ll need all the energy we can get to take back Berk.”
Although hesitant, the Vikings spread around while keeping as much distance between them and the rest of the dragons. Some of them stirred in response but most barely batted an eye, which seemed to help the feeling of the people as they started whispering between each other again.
“Amazing,” she heard Fishlegs muttering.
Gobber was staring intensely between a few dragons, as if trying to remember where he knew them from. Then he shook his head and turned around to settle down on an empty patch of grass.
“Ruff, Tuff,” Astrid said, walking toward the twins, “I have something I need you to do.”
“Say no more, we can certainly make a boar pit,” said Tuffnut.
“Although it might take a little time,” said Ruffnut with a look around. “We don’t really have boars here… maybe it can be a dragon pit.”
“A dragon pit—it has a nice ring to it.”
“Guys,” Astrid groaned. “I need you to go back to the village and sneak as many weapons as you can out of the forge without getting caught.”
Matching devilish grins spread across their faces, sending a shiver down Astrid’s spine.
And then a familiar whistle reached her ears and her head snapped up. Cries of: “Night Fury! Get down!” came from the cowering villagers, but Astrid ignored them in favor of running toward the dark shape that approached the cove, barely visible against the black sky except for the stars it concealed. And then it descended and Astrid ran forward to greet Toothless and chew out his rider—
But once the Night Fury landed, the figure that scrambled off his back wasn’t of the lean, tall and masked rider that usually occupied that seat but of Stoick the Vast. The chief put as much space between himself and Toothless as possible, giving the dragon a hateful, wary look. Yet he wasn’t attacking him, so he clearly realized Toothless was trying to help, no matter how draconic he was.
Completely disregarding Stoick, Toothless crooned and warbled in distress, his green eyes wide and his pupils narrower than usual with pure panic. The second he noticed Astrid, he bounded toward her and rumbled, hissed and whined at her with a kind of urgency she wasn’t familiar with from him. His entire body was agitated, his wings ruffling, his tail swishing, his paws dancing over the ground like he wanted to move out of there already.
“Hey, hey, Toothless, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“Toothless?” someone spluttered.
“It’s a Night Fury!” another one hissed.
A third person hummed a little. “Isn’ tha’ the dragon soul tha’ used ter live ‘ere?”
The dragon ignored them all in favor of crooning miserably, his head moving this way and that as he tried to tell her something. She had no idea what. He wasn’t her dragon soul, he was Hiccup’s. Still, his distress was infectious. She could feel Stormfly’s concern and restlessness buzzing in her skull in response.
“I don’t—I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me. Toothless, Toothless, hey, listen—where is he? Where’s your rider?” she asked.
His eyes seemed to become even more frantic. She could’ve sworn something in them broke at the mention of his rider. It made her stomach clench and her brows furrow. When she tried to put her hand on Toothless’s muzzle to try and get him to calm down just a little—or maybe just to offer some comfort—he pulled away with an angry hiss.
“Alvin has ‘im,” said the chief.
Astrid whirled around to face him. “What?”
“Aye. He was caught trying to sneak me out. Alvin’s men grabbed ‘im. I was already out and was going ter help, but the lad told ‘is beast ter take me away,” he explained. “I suppose he has ter be brave ter come close ter a Night Fury of all dragons. But we can’t worry about that now. We need to take over Berk and—”
“No! No, no, we have to save him!” said Astrid as she started walking toward the opening of the cove. “He came here to help us, now we have to get out there and help him! Alvin hates him, sir! He’s going to do—I don’t even know what to him. We must rescue him—”
“Astrid, I appreciate everythin’ the lad had done fer us, but Alvin has ‘im now. Our duty is to Berk and its people. That dragon rider will either manage to free ‘imself or we’ll free ‘im once we take over our island.”
Toothless growled at him, shaking his head as if to dismiss the chief’s words. Or maybe to tell himself that no, he couldn’t shoot him for speaking about his human so flippantly even if he wanted to do so very much. Either way, he looked even more upset than he did before.
“No, I’m going to save him now.”
“Astrid, the village—” the chief tried to speak, but she whirled around and cut him off.
“It’s Hiccup, all right?” she snapped, her fists clenched. “That dragon rider—the person Alvin has and would either torment or kill or the gods only know what—it’s Hiccup.”
Everyone stared at her in shock.
“Hiccup?” echoed the chief, grief in his eyes.
Behind Astrid, Snotlout let out an obnoxious laugh. “Hiccup? But he’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Hiccup is alive?” said Fishlegs excitedly. “Really?”
“The lad is back?” muttered Gobber. “Well, isn’ this day full o’ surprises, eh?”
Straightening up, Astrid met the chief’s gaze and said, “Hiccup’s dragon soul is Toothless. They ran away together. I found him by chance, but I’m not going to let the Outcasts hurt him. Even if he doesn’t want to stay in Berk, he’s one of us, a part of the tribe. And I’m going to try and rescue him, just like he helped me do with the rest of you.”
Inside her head, Stormfly chirped encouragingly, now resting over Astrid’s heart.
Toothless nudged Astrid’s hand, then gestured back at the saddle on his back, as if inviting her to sit and let him take her over to Hiccup already. She didn’t hesitate—she climbed on and tried to quell down her apprehension regarding flying again—and this time without anyone to hold on to other than the dragon.
“Ruff, Tuff—the weapons. Everyone else should rest,” said Astrid. “We’re going to take our island back. Hopefully without losing anyone.”
“That was really Hiccup?” Stoick managed to choke out as Toothless’s wings spread wide. “He came ter rescue me? Us?”
Astrid nodded.
His expression became stormy. “I’ll lead the attack on the Outcasts, then. You… you go save ‘im, lass.”
“Come on, Toothless,” she said.
The dragon didn’t need any further prompting—he took off at once, knocking the breath out of Astrid and setting off into the sky and over toward Berk and his human.