Chapter Text
“GET DOWN!”
The tell-tale screech of the night fury is the only forewarning before a purple blast obliterates one of the catapults. Astrid can feel the heat on her face and stumbles back from the explosion.
He’s here.
“DRAGON MASTER!” The alert rings out over the chaos. Everyone is now on high alert.
Quickly regaining her footing, Astrid looks to the sky. She holds her breath as she watches the black beast fly over her. The dragon displays its dexterity and agilely flips upside down. The dragon is so close, the wind coming off of it almost blows her back as it flies by.
Her heart stops - she can clearly view its rider.
They wear leather armor dyed as dark as possible and a simple helmet. She can’t get more detail than that, but clearly they are human. Astrid lets out a gasp as the rider looks down at her. It feels like time has stopped, and the reigning destruction fades away as she locks eyes with the Dragon Master.
The moment is over in a flash as they look away and disappear into the night as suddenly as they appeared.
“Astrid! Astrid, get away from that thing! It’s coming down!” Snotlout’s frantic screams bring Astrid back to the destruction at hand.
Flames have completely consumed the base of the second catapult. Heeding Snotlout’s warning, Astrid sprints away from the doomed weapon. She doesn’t need to be told twice. With an echoing groan, the structure finally gives and begins to fall. Flaming wood and hot coals litter the ground on impact.
Fuck, now we are down to one.
Swallowing her agitation at their fallen defenses, Astrid realizes there’s nothing more she can do. She needs to refocus. Quickly scanning her surroundings, Astrid notes she’s not in any immediate danger.
“What’s next?” Astrid whispers to herself, scanning the sky for the flying devil.
Clanging echoes through the village, grabbing her attention. Snotlout, not far away, is engaged in a standoff with a zippleback. He is banging his hammer on his shield, drawing it away from something, but Astrid can’t see what. She doesn’t have the luxury to find out.
“Seriously, taking on a two-headed dragon by yourself? Snot, I am going to murder you if you get yourself killed tonight,” Astrid mutters under her breath before she takes off sprinting to his aid.
The two heads are focused on Snotlout, and green gas starts to drip out of one of the mouths. That is, until Astrid comes sliding in, axe already slamming on her shield with the ferocity to save her friend’s life. It’s a technique that would work well on a gronkle, but you can’t have everything.
“Snotlout, what are we doing!?”
He doesn’t spare her a glance, “Distracting it from some of the food stores.” Snotlout raises his shield over his head to look bigger, “We’re a bit light on weapons after the second catapult turned to ash!” Finally, his eyes dart to Astrid, “Thank you for helping!”
Astrid appreciates the sentiment, but they have a bigger problem on their hands, “You want the left one?”
Snotlout just smirks and nods.
The two warriors spring into action. This zippleback picked the wrong Vikings to mess with. Snotlout is the strongest man his age, and his blows come with a power that Thor would be jealous of. Astrid may not have sheer brute force like Snotlout, but she’s quick, aggressive, and smart.
Four yellow eyes switch back and forth between the two of them. The heads can’t quite decide who is the bigger threat. She almost smirks. Despite their differences over the years, Astrid and Snotlout have learned to become an unstoppable team. On the battlefield, they are a force to be reckoned with and will be this dragon’s undoing.
Given his size, the zippleback has chosen Snotlout as its main adversary. Now, a sly grin creeps across Astrid’s features. She has to move fast, zeroed in on the long, thin neck of the beast. Raising her axe, Astrid is poised to deal a killing blow to one head.
That is, until a plasma blast strikes the side of the zippleback. Once again, Astrid is knocked off her feet by the power of the explosion.
As Astrid quickly reorients herself, she watches in a daze as the zippleback shrieks and rears back. Snotlout and Astrid are completely forgotten as the dragon unfurls its wings to chase the night fury that has already disappeared into the darkness.
Astrid lies there completely stunned, mind racing. This isn’t the first time the Dragon Master has pulled this, but it’s the first time they’ve done it to her.
“FUCK!” She shrieks.
Chest heaving, she looks to Snotlout, who slowly sits up and appears, thankfully, uninjured.
A delayed sense of relief washes over her as she watches him. ‘He’s alive. We’re both alive,’ she thinks. Her eyes shift to the hall before her, the emergency food stores. ‘ The hall is safe,’ she realizes.
The relief is short-lived as Astrid once again hears the haunting whistle of the unholy offspring of lightning and death as it flies overhead.
The zippleback is safe, too.
The dragon was saved from certain death, and now she and Snotlout aren’t battling for their lives. She’s not sure which matters more to the Dragon Master, but one thing is certain: they never miss.
“Astrid, are you okay? I’ll kill that guy for doing that to you!” Snotlout yells over the cacophony of chaos. “He probably ran because he was scared of my sheer Vikingness.”
Astrid rolls her eyes, “Shut up, Snot, I’m fine.”
Her eyes catch movement of two dragons headed towards the same target on the hill. Astrid turns to face him properly, “Take that sheer Vikingness up the hill to Sven’s farm. They’re going to need your help.”
Giving her a quick nod, Snotlout runs towards the next converging attack. Hanging back, Astrid carefully watches the Dragon Master and night fury above the fray, coming in and out of sight. The two are in sync, reigning destruction and assistance. She shakes the thought and runs up the hill to help Snotlout and the rest of the warriors.
Thankfully, the raid doesn’t last long after that. The rain makes sure of it.
The drops are a reprieve and a blessing. They are like a soothing balm in contrast to the previous flames and destruction. Astrid revels in the feeling.
The drizzle turns into a steady rain, helping put out the raging fires. Unfortunately, those burned buildings are now subject to water damage.
Thorston Hall is no exception tonight. The gang just finished fighting dragons, but now they must work quickly to clear Tuffnut and Ruffnut’s belongings out of their loft.
“Hey! Be careful with that! If I lose those, Gothi is sooo going to kill me. That little woman is surprisingly strong.” Ruffnut points at Fishlegs carrying her small chest of herbs to safety.
Fishlegs starts at the insinuation that he is anything less than cautious, “Of course, I’m being careful! I probably know better than you how precious these herbs are!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re the Weed King, we get it. Now get that out of the rain so Gothi doesn’t feed me to the Dragon Master,” Ruffnut instructs.
Fishlegs huffs and continues on.
Snotlout scoffs, “Ugh, stupid Dragon Master. He’s the worst.”
“They,” Tuffnut pipes up, “we don’t know their gender. Be respectful, Snot.”
Snotlout just grumbles.
“Yeah, and they sometimes help us. Tonight could have been a lot worse,” Astrid adds.
Ruffnut sneers, “They could have saved my roof a little more.”
Tapping his chin, Tuffnut speculates, “How do we know they aren’t a spirit from Hel, sent to make us pay for our sins against them?”
Fishlegs returns to move more items, mildly concerned at Tuffnut’s suggestion. “That’s oddly specific.”
“It’s a person,” Astrid states with finality, “I saw them tonight, they looked right at me.”
“Hmmmm… It could still be a demon that looks like a person. I think my statement still stands.” Tuffnut keeps arguing.
As the group devolves into a debate about spirits sent from Hel, Astrid reminisces on how much closer they’ve all become over the past couple of years ever since… She abruptly cuts off her line of thinking. It still hurts to think about the one member who is missing.
In the small hours of the morning, despite her exhaustion, Astrid is unable to find sleep. Her mind keeps turning over the night’s events.
The gentle rhythm of rain on the roof feels deafening in the silence as her encounter with the zippleback and moment with the Dragon Master replays every time she closes her eyes.
She can’t let go of the thought gnawing at her. Ever since the Dragon Master joined the raids two years ago, casualties on both sides have gone down significantly. Astrid can’t quite figure it out. What’s their angle? What do they have to gain? Astrid isn’t sure Berk should fear the Dragon Master as they do, but the village is also at their mercy.
As horrid as it is, for the people of Berk, the war against dragons is consistent, unchanging against the sands of time. Some wonder if the Dragon Master is a god or demon sent from Hel. A supernatural specter would be easier to accept because a person riding a dragon and aiding in the raids is more than a little jarring for everyone. It spits in the face of everything Vikings have ever known, man betraying man.
Because that’s just the thing, as Astrid saw, the Dragon Master is unmistakably human. Which poses the reality that a person, just like them, was able to tame a dragon. A night fury no less.
The Dragon Master engages in the raids to protect the dragons, despite their mutually beneficial or destructive actions.
But that right there is what Astrid thinks scares the village the most: the idea that they can choose another side.