TTEOTNF-Chapter 11: Downed

Downed

Two years later…

Thorer snarled and snapped viciously at the large number of muscular, purplish phantom Vikings closing in around him. Their sticks with sharp rocks on the end jabbed at him, making him back away. He spread his wings out, trying to make himself look large and threatening, and hoping it would be enough to deter these creatures.

But they didn't seem to notice. Their faces, ghostly and terrifying, showed nothing but rage and a lust for blood. They were all shouting in what seemed to be a mixture of hollers and shouts. It didn't feel like a language at all. They were just mindless killers.

Pretty soon, Thorer had backed up against a rock wall. Feeling his panic rising, he spread his wings out and attempted to fly away as fast as he could. However, just a few moments after he lifted off the ground, something came up from behind him and entangled itself around his body, forcing his wings to fold up against his body. He let out a terrified roar as he fell back towards the earth. He landed on the ground with a painful "BOOM" and looked up to see the Vikings swarming around him again. Only now they seemed to be laughing manically at the dragon's helplessness.

"NO!" the Night Fury shouted out of desperation. "STAY AWAY FROM ME!"

The Vikings ignored his plea.

One Viking, the largest of the group, stepped forward and drew a long, shiny object that was sharpened to a deadly perfection. An eerie light on the object glisten across Thorer's eyes as the man got closer and closer, reminding the bound dragon that his fate depended entirely on the point of that weapon.

The Night Fury squirmed with all the strength he had to try and get free. A voice his head kept screaming at him to get free, or else these creatures would kill him.

But the entanglement was too strong.

He was trapped.

Thorer looked up with horror as the burly Viking stopped just a few inches away from him.

"I'm going to kill you, Night Fury," the voice of the Viking sound like it was dead. "Then I'm going to cut out your heart and take it back to the village."

At that statement, Thorer's blood ran icy cold. His heart…cut out? That was the worse threat had ever heard in his life. The Night Fury became so frightened he even couldn't let out a single whimper.

He didn't want to die like that, but right now his fate rested entirely at the tip of that polished rock.

As the large Viking raise his weapon, and poised it to strike Thorer's rapidly beating heart, a small voice that sounded like it belonged to a young male shouted above the jeering crowd of Vikings.

"STOP! LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

At the sound of that voice, all the Vikings and Thorer looked over in the direction it came from. To the Night Fury's surprise, it came from another Viking. However, unlike the Vikings surrounding him, he wasn't just a dark shape like a phantom, he looked very much real. He also was very small compared to the others.

Thorer's eyes widened in shock and his pupils turned to slits when he recognized this Viking. It the boy from the Viking village he had been raiding for two years, the one that all the dragons of the nest had been trying to eliminate.

The young boy was running up through the crowd, pushing and shoving as hard as he could to get through. Despite his size, he was making good progress on getting through the crowd quickly.

His forest green eyes were locked right onto Thorer's with a look of desperation. When he had reached the center of the circle, he reached out his hand toward Thorer, looking as if he wanted to reach him. However, before he made contact with the dragon, the boy was yanked away by one two large Vikings.

"NO!" the boy pleaded, his eyes wide with terror. "PLEASE! DON'T HURT HIM!"

The others paid no heed to the boy.

Out of the corner of his eye, Thorer saw something flash. He turned his head just in time to see the shiny weapon with the deadly point plunge straight into his chest. He let out a horrified and painful howl as the cold polished rock pierced right through his heart.

"NOOOOO!" the boy cried.

Thorer snapped his eyes opened and jolted up from his place. He panted heavily and his whole body shivered uncontrollably. He looked sharply around to see where he was. To his semi-relief, he found that he was back in his cave in the dragon nest.

He then immediately began to look over himself. There was no sign of anything entangling him. He then looked down at his chest, half-expecting to see a horrible gash in it from where the Viking's weapon had stabbed him. There was nothing there, not even a little scar.

Thorer then raised his left paw to this chest. He let out a deeply relieved sigh when he felt his precious heart beating inside it, although it was beating rather very fast out of near-traumatic fear.

"It was just a nightmare," the Night Fury told himself. "Get a grip, Thorer. It was just a nightmare."

Still, as much as he tried to calm himself down, Thorer couldn't shake the horrible feeling the dream left him with. Everything about it felt so real. The terror, the pain, and atmosphere of it all felt like it was all really happening.

"Although I should be used to it by now," he thought to himself.

Ever since the night of first raid, Thorer had been getting the worst nightmares imaginable. Well, maybe not every night. There were some nights when he would have no dreams at all.

But he couldn't recall a single good dream ever since his first raid.

They were all nightmares that were so terrifying that even a fearless Night Fury would wake up with icy cold blood running through his veins. And even if he couldn't remember the dream when he woke up, he knew that it was a nightmare because of the way he felt the moment he opened his eyes and the vision faded away. He would wake up feeling shaken and numb, like all his organs had turned into ice inside of him.

However, this nightmare was different from the rest. While the others felt like vague dreams that would eventually fade away, this one didn't do the same thing. It was more like a fevered dream that refused to go away.

And the part that was the most vivid still was the part about the boy.

That little boy from the village known as Berk; he somehow always managed to worm his way into Thorer's dreams.

Thorer had seen that scrawny human more than once when he was out on the raids. He always seemed to show up whenever Thorer flew over the island. But because he was so small, Thorer wouldn't even see him unless he was looking for him. The poor human was always being chased by the dragons of the nest whenever he stepped out into the open and got spotted by them.

For reasons that Thorer couldn't understand, he felt sorry for the little Viking whenever he saw him in danger, which puzzled him greatly.

Normally, Thorer wouldn't take any notice of a creature that would be considered to be weak. But for some weird reason that he couldn't understand, he couldn't get this boy out of his head. The little Viking would always show up in the dragon's nightmares, and he would always speak out in Thorer's defense.

But why? Why did this boy always appear in his dreams? And why did he always come to defend the dragon? He was a Viking. He and Thorer were sworn enemies. Originally, Thorer would just pass this off as his dreams playing tricks on him, but with this happening so constantly, he was starting to change his mind about what he was seeing.

Thorer had heard that some dragons could get visions of what was to come. Was it possible that he was one of those dragons who could get visions?

And if that was true, was he seeing…his own death? And was that boy going to have something to do with it?

Thorer yawned with exhaustion as he flew around Berk, being sure to keep himself out of the fire light of the village to avoid being seen. Despite feeling tired from his lack of sleep after that haunting nightmare, he was still forced to join the other dragons on the night raid.

Just like all the times before, Thorer was in charge of blowing up the outer defenses. Over two years, he developed a technique that worked to perfection every time. He would wait on the outskirts of the village for a while, then swoop in and shoot down the towers before disappearing into the darkness of the night sky again. He would then wait again before launching another surprise attack.

While he could conceal his identity from the Vikings, he couldn't conceal the sound he made when he flew in at great speed. By now, all of the Vikings were aware that the regiment of dragons now had Night Fury among them. Whenever they heard that screeching sound, someone would shout,

"NIGHT FURY!"

And all the Vikings would immediately take cover.

Over the years, Thorer had begun to pick up on the odd language that the Vikings were speaking. It was certainly different from the way that dragons spoke, but it was language all the same. Which Thorer found weird at first, considering that Vikings were suppose to mindless killing creatures.

However, the more Thorer thought about this, the more he realized since they had a language, they were even more deadly than he had previously though. That meant they weren't mindless killers; they were cunning killers.

This gave Thorer another reason to keep his distance from them.

As the raid continued, Thorer swooped down and blasted another tower to bits. He was about to turn around and fly back into the shadows when he heard the sound of Kari screaming in terror.

The Night Fury whipped his head around and was horrified to see that a large net had trapped Kari along with other Deadly Nadders. The young female Nadder was struggling to get herself free, spewing out magnesium hot fire from her mouth in the process. The largest Viking, the one that humans in Berk followed as their leader, leapt up onto Kari's head and forced her to the ground.

"NO!" Thorer shouted so loudly that it echoed through the sky.

The Night Fury then turned himself around and headed back toward the village, preparing to take out another outside tower. Since he only had a small amount of time to act, he came up with an impromptu plan that bordered on stupidity.

His plan was to cause a distraction so he could quickly swoop in and at least get that net off of Kari and the other Nadders. He knew perfectly well that he was taking an enormous risk of being seen, but he couldn't bear to let his only friend die at the hands of these merciless creatures. She was more important to him than keeping his identity a secret.

He let Gerda down two years; he wasn't going to let Kari down as well.

Finally settling on this dangerous plan, Thorer swooped around and blasted another tower, making it catch fire and topple to the ground. He was about to turn around and head straight toward the captive Nadders, when he heard a sharp "POW" coming from a cliff that stretched over the sea. It was immediately followed by a swirling, clinking sound, and it was getting closer to the Night Fury by the second.

But before Thorer could even guess what it was…

WHAP!

Thorer let out terrified roar as one of those ropes with stones flew out of the darkness and entangled him in its netting. His whole world instantly became a large blur as he spiraled out of the sky and down toward the forest on the other side of the island. For the next few moments, he didn't know what was going on.

His massive body hit a pine tree with so much force that it split in two. At the same time, he felt a horrible pain in his tail, like some part of it had been torn off. He then slammed into the ground and slid for a few feet in the dirt before sailing down a small slope. As he fell toward the ground, he smacked his head hard on a large boulder before tumbling over onto his side, and stopping in the middle of a clearing.

The impact of his head hitting the boulder was so hard, that it knocked Thorer out instantly.

His whole world went dark and still.

Meanwhile, after a narrow escape, Fray led the rest of the dragons back to the dragon nest. His snout still ached from the kicks and punches he had gotten from the leader of the Vikings.

The Nightmare had seen the scrawny boy shoot Thorer down and immediately advanced on him, cursing the boy for taking down the Night Fury. However, just as he had gotten the Viking boy cornered, and was about to kill him, the strong Viking leader came out of nowhere and knocked him away.

After he had run out of fire to attack with, Fray decided to cut his losses and fled, but not before the brawny Viking landed some hard blows on his nose.

By some miracle, Kari and the two other Nadders managed to escape the net when the top of a large torch rolled down the hill and landed right in the center of the net, the fire causing the ropes to split.

The moment she was free, Kari and her fellow Nadders immediately lifted off the ground. They flew up to rejoin the rest of the dragons as they all flew away from Berk with the sun beginning to rise in the east.

Kari looked around at all of the surviving dragons, hoping to see Thorer among them. However, to her shock and despair, she didn't see him. Because of his black scales, he would easily stand out in the crowd, especially in the daylight. But he was nowhere among them.

Worried, Kari flew up to Fray, who had a deeply grim expression on his face.

"Fray!" Kari panted. "Where's Thorer?!"

"He's gone." Fray answered in a low voice.

"Wh…What do you mean gone?!" Kari gasped in horror.

"That little runt shot him down with a net and stones," the Nightmare dragon explained through gritted teeth. "He's gone. And if he's not dead now, he will be when those Vikings find him."

"Fray, we can't just leave him!" Kari protested. "We have to go back and look for him!"

"We can't, Kari!" Fray snapped. "You know Einmyria wouldn't allow it!"

"But the prophecy…" Kari's voice sounded weak.

"The prophecy is dead, Kari!" the Nightmare dragon bellowed angrily. "Face it, we're trapped and not even Thorer can save us now! He's as good as dead anyway! Now leave it alone!"

Whatever Kari was going to say next immediately died in her mouth. She sorrowfully looked back at the island vanishing in the distance and felt her heart wrench. She didn't want to leave Thorer back there, but she had no choice. She knew the motto of the nest: any dragon that falls behind is left behind. And if she disobeyed that order, there would no doubt be severe consequences.

All she could do now was hope that Thorer would somehow get out of there alive.

"Please, Thorer," she thought to herself. "Please stay alive."