Knight's Honor

Imminent Return

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The following morning Astrid woke up and was told that The Black Knight was unexpectedly called away for about a day or two.

On the first day of his absence she mostly kept to her room, she didn't feel comfortable around the dragons without The Black Knight or any of the other Knights and she still had more thinking to do. It wasn't long before she got bored and tired of thinking, so she spent time wandering the tunnels. At one point she found a large set of wooden doors. She wondered if it led to The Black Knight's room, and felt the impulse to go down and open it, but to her disappointment, she found that the doors were locked and she couldn't find a way to open it.

After breakfast on the second day of his absence, she decided to go into The Nest and exercise. She left her room and made her way into The Nest, hoping to find a place away from the dragons, but as soon as she began doing stretches dragons came over and watched her.

"What are you guys looking at?" She asked sharply. But they just stared curiously at her. She tried to ignore their looks and kept at it, but when she started to do push-ups a Timberjack began to imitate her! When she did crunches, some Gronkles tried to do the same thing, but due to their thick bodies they couldn't curl up very easily and ended up rolling down the hillside like giant boulders! And when Astrid started jogging a pack of Speed Stingers decided to run after her, and when they realized they could run faster than her they began to show off, either by running ahead and waiting for the slowpoke human to catch up or running in circles around her with smug expressions on their faces.

At first, Astrid was surprised by their behavior, then amused, but then one of them began doing some kind of taunting dance as it ran away from her backward. At this point, Astrid's competitive instincts kicked in.

"Alright, you asked for it!" Astrid shouted and took off as fast as she could. The Stingers were surprised when she caught up with them but they started to run faster too, which prompted Astrid to push herself even harder. Down the path, they ran in her mind she was determined to win. Unfortunately, any hope for that ended when the leading Speed Stinger suddenly slipped and fell, and everyone behind it ran right into it. Astrid lept over the first Stinger, only to land on another one and stumble. Before she knew it, nearly a dozen Stingers had piled on top of her.

"Now this is something you'd never see on Berk. Astrid Hofferson stuck on a pile of Speed Stingers." She thought as she began taking deep breaths. She felt no reason to disentangle herself at the moment. The reaction of her workout suddenly struck and she felt too worn out to move. The Stingers seemed to be the same way, for they were only panting and making groaning sounds.

"So is anybody going to move first or should I?" Astrid finally asked when her heart wasn't pounding twice its normal speed.

"I'd say you should." She looked up and saw The Black Knight walking in front of her. "Having fun?"

"Tell these things to get off of me!"

"Why? I'm rather enjoying this," The Black Knight laughed, "Alright guys, let her go." Very slowly the Speed Stingers flopped off from the pile and Astrid was able to stand up.

"So," she said when she reached The Black Knight, reminding herself not to act strangely, "where have you been?"

"Monitoring my most dangerous adversary." At the mentioned the Speed Stingers jumped to their feet shrieking and ran away.

"A lot of dragons do that whenever he is mentioned."

"Who exactly is he?" Astrid questioned.