23 Some Dragons Really Are Monsters

23. SOME DRAGONS REALLY ARE MONSTERS If you or I had felt a claw creep around our ankles in such a situation, we would have screamed. But Hiccup had been in so many terrifying and dangerous adventures in his short life that he did not scream, for he knew he did not have time. He took a great breath of air instead, and held his nose, as the unknown creature dragged him downwards through the sand. DOWN, DOWN, DOWN! Just as Hiccup thought he was going to pass out, the creature pulling him below seemed to break through some sort of wall, and Hiccup landed with a bone-crunching jolt on something hard and his hand flew off his nose and he took a great involuntary breath… …not of sand, but of air– rancid, stuffy dank air that caught in the throat like slug breath. And he coughed and gasped, sand pouring out of his ears and from his hair. As he tried to open his eyes, gritty with grains of sand, he could see blurrily through streaming tears, sand still pouring down from a hole.

But the Monster with the eye-claws was shooting flames upward in continuous bursts of hot, then freezing, flame. This turned the sand pouring through into something that looked like glass, sealing the hole. They seemed to be in some sort of cavern, and the Monster moved its head this way and that, reinforcing the glass walls of the tunnel. The flames stopped. Hiccup could hear the Wodensfang's little quavery voice in his head, 'Now, now, Hiccup, dragons are not Monsters you know…' But the thing is, just as some humans can be evil, some dragons really are Monsters. You should never judge a book by its cover, but on this occasion, Hiccup felt he was on fairly safe ground. This Monster's primitive and ghastly appearance told him there would be no point reasoning with it (however optimistic the Wodensfang might be about the possibility of dragons evolving consciences and complicated things like that). This Monster couldn't evolve a conscience in the next thirty seconds, and it was unlikely to be a sympathetic audience. There is such a huge variety of dragon species, you see.

Some dragons, Sea Dragons like the Wodensfang, have copied humans to such a large extent that they can use language fluently. They are able to reason, to think. Others that Hiccup had come across like Darkbreathers, and Monstrous Strangulators, are not capable of complicated thinking processes. These are dragons that have spent most of their lives underground or in the depths of the ocean. All that time alone in the dark does not help the development of an appreciation for the finer things in life. Six months of living on his wits had sharpened Hiccup's ability to weigh up deadly situations like this in an instant. He couldn't reason with this dragon. So he would have to fight it. He thought fast– very fast– as he scanned his enemy. Fifteen feet of well-armed muscled dragon.

Ten eyes. Huge claws. An interesting snakey aspect that suggested it might be related to a Slitherfang, which also lived under the sand. Quickly glancing the other way, he assessed his chances of escape. The cavern was bare with only one immediate escape route. And judging from the bulging leg muscles, the Monster would reach it first. This was a tricky situation. His only chance was to hope that this creature really was a primitive relation of a Slitherfang, and to use his knowledge of Slitherfangs to fight it. Racking his brain, Hiccup tried to remember everything he could about Slitherfangs. What did he know?

What had he written about them in his notebooks? The Monster had a small weak spot right in the middle of its forehead. There was only one way he could reach that small vulnerable spot, given that the Monster was so heavily armed with talons and teeth. If he could get the creature to believe that he was dead, it would want to swallow him immediately. He would then have to allow the creature to swallow him whole and look for the opportunity to attack the creature's only vulnerable spot. He'd have to be patient. He'd have to let the Monster swallow him at least up to the knees, so that it would be harder for it to react when Hiccup reached down and plunged his sword into the weak spot. Thank Thor he had a sword on him, or rather, thank Camicazi. If she hadn't stowed away in his sand- yacht and given him her spare sword, he wouldn't even be able to carry out this totally desperate and ridiculous plan. The success of Hiccup's plan depended on one crucial point. The creature would have to swallow him from the right end, that is, starting with his feet. There wasn't a lot he could do if it started swallowing his head.

This was a fifty-fifty chance, which isn't normally a good proposition when your life depends on it, but sometimes you just have to give yourself up to the fickle hand of Fate, the toss of a coin. It wasn't very hard for Hiccup to pretend to be dead, frankly, for he very nearly WAS dead. He made himself go limp, even though every nerve in his body was screaming at him to run away. He forced his body to go limper and limper, and his head to loll backwards. He kept his eyes open, just the tiniest, smidgiest of cracks so that he could see what was going on. He forced himself to lie still as he felt something yucky slide up over his body. It took all of his powers of concentration to stop himself from moving, from jumping up, from shaking off the sand that was gritting all over his body and that disgusting dragon hand that he could see through the cracks of his eyelids. He had to stop himself from crying out in horror at the sight of the two monstrous claws– five fingers, each with an evil dragon eye perched on the end just above the talons. The dragon's face was blind, with two ghostly hollows where its eyes should have been. But the ten dragon eyes were blinking down at him from the end of the creature's claws.