The Great Beyond

Chapter 50: Blindsided (Reign)

              My heart furiously pumped blood through my entire body, causing my head and fingertips to pulsate. I gripped Shriek's saddle tightly, the smooth leather of the saddle causing slight indents to form in my knuckles. Hiccup stood before the two of us, the Dragon Blade extended out for both the purposes of protection and training.

"Look out!" I cried, pointing ahead of us.

The dreaded Triple Stryke, dubbed Sleuther by Tuffnut, rolled through the air and crashed down in front of Hiccup, roaring and snapping its claws. Caught off-guard, Hiccup stumbled backwards, hitting against Shriek as he attempted to regain his balance. To buy him some extra time, Toothless jumped out in front of his rider, threatening to fire off a plasma blast.

"Toothless, no!" Hiccup scolded. "We're trying to train it."

"How are we supposed to train it if we can't get close to it?" I grunted, not even trying to push down my frustration.

"I guess you can't blame it." Hiccup bent his knees, ready to jump out of the way as the Triple Stryke pointed its tail toward us. "The last humans it dealt with forced it to fight other dragons to the death." Still, I worried about Hiccup's safety in particular.

"Hiccup, maybe we should make room for the possibility that the Triple Stryke is just untrainable." I wanted to try and get him to back down now, before he got hurt by that dragon. It wasn't predatory by nature, but seeing people definitely provoked it.

"We're making progress," he lied. "If we could just find a way to get this guy on board, have him fighting with us instead of against us."

The Triple Stryke roared again and started to creep closer to us, crossing a boundary that put us in a danger zone.

"Shriek, quiet scream." My dragon let out the softest roar she could. It was just enough to startle the Triple Stryke and make it back up without hurting the dragon.

"Look, we've dealt with way worse." I smirked as a shot I just couldn't resist taking came to mind.

"Snotlout doesn't count." Hiccup rolled his eyes at me, but I watched the smile creep onto his face, unable to resist laughing at the joke.

"Good one, Reign." I looked up to see Fishlegs descending toward us on Meatlug. "I'll have to remember that."

"Fishlegs!" I smiled, leaning my cheek against my hand. "What brings you to the Valley of Pain?" I felt Hiccup lightly smack my arm. He was acting oddly playful right now.

"Snotlout and the twins just got back from patrol, and there are multiple storm fronts heading right for us." Fishlegs gestured back to show off the black clouds moving closer to us. "We need to lock down the Edge before they start to hit."

"Okay," Hiccup sighed, reluctant. "We're not done here."

"We are for now," I snapped. I wasn't about to let him get hurt over this. "I'll go make sure everyone does their tasks; you go take care of yours."

I was about to take off on Shriek, when I felt a hand wrap around my arm and pull me down a bit. Hiccup kissed me quickly, but quite passionately, leaving me shaking my head and chuckling to myself as Hiccup and Toothless took off. Something had been different about the way he was acting lately. He was always affectionate, but it had been much more frequent lately.

There wasn't time to dwell on that. It was probably just because our four-year anniversary was tomorrow.

Shriek and I took off back toward the huts, keeping an eye on everything that was going on. Hiccup and Toothless were securing the Clubhouse and preparing it for people to hole up in there, just like I'd assigned to him. Astrid was starting to collect buckets of water for the dragons to take into the stables. That was going smoothly, at least. Snotlout was supposed to be taking care of the dome, but instead, he was standing on Hookfang's head, trying to drape a cloth over something.