Through A Dragon's Eye (A Httyd Fanfiction)

Chapter Forty-one: Dragon Eye

I wake up as an explosion shakes the boat. I try to steady myself, blinking off haziness. Another explosion hits the prow. The boat leans, and I slide into the sidewall. What the Thor?! I search futilely for the source of the explosions as I race to the ballista. Loading it and swivelling it around, I search for the thing shooting me. No boats are on the ocean, which surprises me, and the explosions seem to have stopped.

I wait in silence, searching for the thing that could be hitting the boat. It is eerily quiet, almost as if whatever had attacked me had disappeared into the great beyond.

Then, I hear a slow, steady hissing noise. My face pales as I inhale slowly, not wanting what I thought the sound to be to be true. A horrid, rotten egg smell hits my nostrils in waves, and I gag, my face paling further. Coughing, I leap away from the ballista and scramble for higher ground, away from the green gass filling the boat.

Then, I hear the spark. Gasping in fright, I leap up the last couple of steps just as an explosion erupts behind me. The explosion is so big that it pushes me even farther through the air, and I land on my healing foot, twisting it from under me. Yelping in pain, I fall onto the hard deck. I decide to resort to crawling around the wall, so I could lean on it and be out of sight of the Hideous Zippleback on deck.

I listen in closely as I hear a whistling sound and wing beats before a new dragon lands on deck. "Tuffnut! Ruffnut! I told you two not to fly away before we were all ready to go!" Hiccup? And was it Ruff and Tuff that were trying to explode the ship?

"But Draira is in danger!" exclaims Tuffnut.

"And it's not like we were in danger," huffs Ruffnut. "The ship is empty anyway."

"We just needed some good old explosions to cheer us up," adds Tuffnut. "Plus, it was Blitzfire's idea." A new dragon lands on deck.

He started it. I can hear her spark.

"See? She agrees."

Stupid humans. My leg decides for me that I can't go out to meet them. It is now in so much pain that even moving it a slight bit would agitate it.

"We should get going," says Hiccup. "The almost Riders are almost ready and then we can find Draira." Wing beats sound as the Riders begin to lift off the deck.

I call out, "Wait!" But my croaking voice is lost in the sound of their takeoff. In desperation, I look around me for something to signal them. My gaze goes to the Dragon Eye which is glowing faintly from the explosion earlier. I whip it out of my sheath and point the light at the Riders, hoping it would reach far enough to get their attention. "WAIT!" I call out again, my voice stronger.

Blitzfire, noticing me first, sparks in joy and dives down back towards the deck to meet me. She snuggles up against me even as her great wings make a cocoon around my tired form. I thought I'd lost you. she chastises. I was so worried...

"I'm okay now," I reassure her, my heart breaking at the haunted look in her eyes.

I can hear Hiccup and the twins land outside my cocoon. "Blitzfire? What is it?" She snuggles tighter around me, and I wince as her wing pressed up against my leg. She immediately notices and quickly pulls away.

You're hurt! she exclaims.

"It's just sprained," my croaked voice reasons, hoping what I say is true.

"Is someone in there Blitzfire?" asks Hiccup's muffled voice.

I nudge Blitzfire. "Come on, you know they won't hurt me." She hesitates for a moment longer before slowly unwrapping her wings to reveal the Riders outside.

"Draira?" questions Tuffnut. "You.. you're okay!"

"Ha, and you thought we should've flown back to Berk for support. The only support we'll be needing is for her leg!" declares Ruffnut triumphantly at Hiccup.

"H-how did you escape?" Hiccup stammers, clearly confused.

"Well," I croak. "It turns out that my pal.."

"Pal? What is that supposed to mean? Pal like best friend pal? Or is that sarcasm I sense?" Tuffnut sighs. "Oh, I wish Chicken was here.. she'd know."

I blink slowly, trying to process all that he had just said. "Um.. more like frenemy." I could've sworn Tuffnut's shoulders drop an inch. "Anyway, It turns out this pal of mine convinced Tolrock, who was the one who wanted to capture me, to have Viggo and Traitor Johann..."

"Wait.. Johann?!" asks Hiccup.

"Duh," says Ruffnut.

"Did you not see the traitorous look in his eyes?" asks Tuffnut, demonstrating by pulling his eyes wide open with his fingers.

Hiccup looks unnerved. "Was I supposed to?"

I laugh at his expression. "Don't worry, I was surprised too." I pause and then continue. "Tolrock had Viggo and Johann bring me to my frienemy's island. He told me that Tolrock was going to give Viggo and Johann a fake Dragon Eye...."

"Ha! Now we know this is a tale of fiction," declares Ruffnut. "The Dragon Eye was destroyed!"

I nod my head. "It was. But the Hunters have been making a new one ever since Viggo survived his fall into the volcano. They thought at first it was a storage for knowledge, but it turns out it's an output for knowledge in the dragon's flames."

Hiccup nods thoughtfully. "That makes sense."

"So, my friend created a diversion, I escaped, my friend revealed himself as a traitor to save me..." I stop a moment, remembering that moment. I just hope he's escaped. I shake my head to clear away the horrible thoughts. "So, I escaped, grabbed my daggers, and I also grabbed..." I hold up a finger for them to wait as I pull the Dragon Eye out from around my back. "This."

A/N
Last chapter of the weekend! If my estimate is correct, there's about five chapters till the climax and around five chapters after that till the end of the book. Then, the next book, As the Roots Grow Deeper, will be posted the weekend after the last chapter of this book is finished.
-TheDragonGirl