How To Train Your Dragon- From One World To Another

Disclaimer:

The Film 'How To Train Your Dragon', is Copyrighted by DreamWorks Animation and Distributed by Paramount Pictures. Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois and released on March 26, 2010

The DreamWorks 'Dragons' were directed by Dean Deblois and Chris Sanders and released in 2013- 2018. I only claim Copyright to my characters and some of the elements of the story that are of my own creation.

The Seconds from Disaster is a US/UK-produced documentary television programme, owned and produced by the National Geographic Society and Darlow Smithson Productions

Chapter Soundtrack(s):

Seconds From Disaster (extended)

Author Warning, Notes:

This symbol (*) means that there's something written about this particular paragraph in the Ending Author's Notes.

Viewpoint Signs:

***MS*** (movie scene)

***EMS*** (end of movie scene)

***WPov.*** (watcher's point of view)

...

Chapter 16 Seconds From Disaster II

At 9:05 am, as the Funicular train passed the 600-meter mark in its voyage in the tunnel, it suddenly screeched to an abrupt halt.

The attendants in the control room contacted the driver of the car to find out the reason for it suddenly grinding to a halt. But the driver couldn't explain what had caused the machine to suddenly come to a total stop.

He hadn't been the one to put on the brakes.

30 seconds later, after the funicular had ground to a halt, the rear coach of the train started filling with toxic smoke.

People were trying to get out of the train but there was no emergency door release.

Therefore all the people that had filed into the train for a ride to the slopes were now locked inside a death- trap.

***WPov.***

'' A DEATH-TRAP, FOR SURE! What in the name of Odin were those people, who invented that thing, thinking? It's worse than any of Hiccup's inventions!'' Spitelout exclaimed loudly.

Hiccup and I shared a rather horrified glance, both from the image planted into our minds as well as Spitelout's exclamation.

As crude as our 'uncle's' comment had been, it was true.

While Hiccups inventions had needed tweaking, some 20th-century inventions had the danger of going disastrously wrong if not all planned out; even if the invention was of the latest of technology.

And this was proof as to how things could go terribly wrong in seconds.

I turned back to the screen, eyes filling with tears.

***MS***

At 9:06 am, the blaze in the rear cabin of the train had worsened.

Toxic smoke was filtered into the other passenger cabins.

One young man tried to pry open the doors of the coach by gripping the rubber seal around the door. But no matter how forcefully he tried to pull, the doors refused to budge.

The people inside were beginning to well and truly panic over their situation.

Another male passenger grabbed a ski-pole and attempted to smash his way through the window. A second man promptly joined him, and they used combined force on the pole...

But it turned out they had to smash their way through material that was made of shockproof plexiglass!

Even with the combined strength, the two men had to use extreme force in their blows.

***WPov.***

'' PUT SOME MUSCLE TO IT, BOYS!!'' Spitelout boomed from his seat.

'' YEAH, PUT SOME MUSCLE TO THOSE BLOWS!'' several other male Vikings echoed his shouts.

'' Not like they can hear you, and besides this scene has already happened long ago,'' I thought morbidly as I heard the pounding of fists on the armrests somewhere behind me.

I kept my eyes to the screen, unable to look away.

***MS***

As seconds ticked by, the two men managed to finally force their way through the window.

But their triumph was short-lived when it turned out there was another plexiglass window behind the first one.

And then the perilous situation became even more so as flames began to seep from the empty attendant's cab to the passengers' department.

The terrified passengers found that there was nowhere for them to escape as they scrambled as far away from the approaching flames as remotely possible.

At 9:08 am, the attendant in the front of the train, who hadn't seen the fire blazing at the rear of the funicular until now, finally did notice the desperate situation occurring at the rear end of the train.

He proceeded to call the control room, and the people in the control room promptly advised him to open the doors and let the people out...

But at that exact moment the intercom dies out and all contact with the burning train was lost.

***WPov.***

'' To think, there are machines used to actually communicate with others so far away and yet for all that capability to communicate from place to place, those people were still unable to prevent that disaster from happening?!'' Astrid exclaimed in a shocked tone.

Her words were echoed by affirmative reactions from Fishlegs, Snotlout and the Twins.

'' It's the 2000th century, and the technology has become much more advanced than your lives on Berk. Unfortunately, not all of the advanced technology is entirely safe,'' Klaus added with a very tensed expression. His blue eyes were fixed to the screen.

'' Oh Thor, I couldn't agree more! Spitelout is right in this, that thing is a death-trap!'' Hiccup added, wringing the ends of his sleeves.

***MS***

The operators of the control room have no idea what was happening deep within the mountain tunnel, but inside the tunnel, the flames were bursting out from inside into the passenger area and licking the sides of the train as it slithered out from under the flooring.

Meanwhile, the men's efforts to smash the window in paid off and the person, and the others in the same compartment began rescuing themselves by clambering out of the window of the train.

But in other compartments, passengers were still trapped.

***WPov.***

There was horror- filled exclamations from the Villagers of Berk as the people filing out of said compartment were shown in more detail.

All the skiers looked frightened as they paused, looking confused over which way to hurry to safety; some were shoving others lightly, and some were in hurried discussions with the people who had escaped with them.

But as expected, the Chief's sister and niece weren't among these people, as they hadn't been in that last compartment.

They were in a compartment at the very front of the Funicular!

***MS***

At 9:11 am, the operators at the ski- lift station called for the emergency services.

But meanwhile, for those few people who had been able to escape through the smashed window, the nightmare continued.

They were now facing a life-or-death decision as they tried to find a way out in the smoke-filled darkness!

Which way were they to go? Up, away from the fire, or back down past the fire?

A volunteer firefighter from the last train compartment used his instincts (honed from twenty-five years of service) to advise others to head downwards over the emergency staircase that ran the entire length of the mountain tunnel.

But these emergency stairs were very narrow and steep, and the escaping people were all slowed down by their cumbersome, heavy ski-boots that made the trek down agonisingly slow.

The desperate group tried to stay together even as they tried to make the climb as fast and safe as possible, without stumbling and falling down the steep emergency stairs.

And above them loomed another danger! The smoking train wreckage that added to their desperate situation.

The cables holding it up could have snapped at any given moment, which would have sent the forty ton wreckage hurdling downwards towards the escaping people.

But at last, twelve skiers had emerged from the mouth of the tunnel into daylight, exhausted, coughing for breath and terrified over the ordeal they had been put through.

But all of them were alive and breathing!

...

'' O-only twelve people escaped that train? Only TWELVE out of more than a hundred who had gotten on that thing?! And there weren't ANY other survivors that made it out after they escaped?!' Astrid practically shrieked, cupping her chin just under her lower lip.

She looked noticeably shocked and horrified.

'' And aunt Sigrun and cousin Sonja WEREN'T among the survivors!'' Snotlout added, just as loudly.

There had been an audible shake to his voice as he had spoken.

***MS***

At 9:23 am, one- hundred and forty- nine passengers and the train attendant had still been stranded inside the blazing tunnel as rescue workers poured into the valley below.

Fire-fighters, helicopters and rescue vehicles had rushed to the scene but the tunnel had been too far up the mountain for them to have easy access. The only way for the rescue workers to get to the scene was to climb up on foot using the railway.

But the moment they had reached the mouth of the tunnel, they were met with the terrifying scene of train entirely ablaze from one end to another.

It had been quickly realized that all rescuers had all been in danger if the cables holding the train in place were to snap at any given moment in such extreme heat.

Said train would have been sent hurtling down the track towards the station below and bulldozing everything in its path.

By 9:35 am, thirty minutes after the fire had begun, the firemen had been forced to abandon the rescue mission.

***WPov.***

'' No, no, no,'' Hiccup murmured, shaking his head in sorrow.

''Oh Hiccup, we both know that Sigrun and Sonja were lost that day. There's nothing those rescuers could have done to assist the people up there in the tunnels without giving away their own lives,'' Stoick said with a sigh; he was trying to give some comfort to his son at this moment though he, too, secretly wanted to just jump through the screen to help those people still inside the tunnel.

'' Why didn't the others survive? Why couldn't they get out?'' Hiccup exclaimed through clenched teeth.

'' It was the smoke, Hiccup. The smoke wasn't rising like it normally would have,'' Klaus answered sorrowfully speaking to all teens that sat watching what would unfold next.

'' And so few people made the decision to go down towards the fire and away from the path of the rising smoke,'' I added softly, but audibly for everyone to hear.

'' The toxic smoke, of course,'' Fishlegs gulped.

'' S-so basically the people who died had their lungs flooded with smoke that had toxic substances,'' Tuffnut rambled out, which had all of us staring at him in surprise.

'' What?''

'' Just didn't expect you to answer that way, I guess,'' I answered with a slight laugh that held no rancour. But my laugh was quickly silenced by the screen coming back to life.

***MS***

There had been an absolute electrical failure and the power supply had gone out all over the mountain.

Staff had been fighting to restore the electricity up on top the mountain, but the station had been quickly filling with thick toxic smoke and they had been forced to escape through emergency doors.

But without electrical power, the doors had jammed open and the fumes from the fire had escaped into the summit- station shopping mall that had been full of people. The station and shopping mall employees had quickly evacuated the area and dozens of people had escaped from the building, but there had still been four more individuals trapped inside halls of the smoking shopping-mall.

Following the evacuation of the mall, the rescuers had entered from the right-hand side of the building and had found one, barely breathing man unconscious just on the other side of the main entrance.

The rescuers had rushed him outside just in time to receive medical attention before plunging back into the smoke-filled building where they had found the three still missing people despite zero visibility. But tragically, those three people had already died in the smoke cloud, and the thickness of it coupled with the extreme heat had made it too dangerous for the firefighters to continue into the station and tunnel.

The search for the missing one hundred and forty-nine passengers had been suspended!

It was an agonising dilemma for the fire- chief in charge at the scene.

Like the rest of the nearly five hundred men and nearly sixty fire-engines, he had been forced into a situation where their hands had been tied.

...

Three terribly long, agonising hours later from the moment the fiery inferno had been lit, two small teams of specially equipped rescuers had finally been sent into the still dangerous train-tunnel in search for survivors.

But the team- members had no idea what they would expect further in the smoke-filled darkness.

One team had eventually reached the 'sister train' that had been heading down the valley at the time of the tragic blaze. Inside they had found the bodies of the attendant and his only passenger.

And upon going further down the tunnel, they had finally found the burnt and still profusely smoking train with the track-rails around it twisted and completely destroyed.

As well as discovering a probably already guessed outcome, but none the less horrifying truth that out of the one hundred and forty-nine people that had been trapped in the blazing train, none had survived.

***WPov.***

'' None had survived. They went out there, only to discover all those bodies collapsed on the stairs in the tunnel. And my mother and little sister were among those dead,'' I thought, tears forming at the corners of my eyes as I stared at the image of the burnt down train.

I swallowed hard as the narrator proceeded to say...

***MS***

What was to have been a promising day of fun skiing out on the slopes of Kaprun, had turned into a day of unimaginable tragedy.

To those who had been there to uncover the bodies of those that had been lost, the worst part had been to tell the people waiting for news about their families that there were no more survivors.

Only twelve of the passengers had been incredibly lucky in their efforts to escape the burning train-car and walk their way to the end of the tunnel. They had become the survivors of what was the worst peacetime tragedy that Austria has ever suffered.

A total of one hundred and fifty-five unfortunates had lost their lives.

And to the dozens of bereaved families from around the world, the loss of their loved ones had been devastating news.

***WPov.**

'' But what caused the fire in that stupid contraption in the first place? '' Ruffnut voiced out. Her voice sounded choked up.

'' I'm sure it will be shown, Ruffnut. Just listen,'' my father answered her solemnly.

I bit my lip at my father's words; I knew the final conclusion to the investigation had ended after I'd been taken to another world, so what would be explained (and shown) next would be news to me, as well.

I gripped my father's hand tightly in mine, and he squeezed back tightly and leaned his chin gently on top of my head.

End of Chapter 16 Seconds From Disaster II

...

Author Notes:

The accident in Kaprun happened on November 11th, but I wanted to change the dates a little so that they would coexist with the setup of my characters ski-holiday.

Constructive criticism is always welcomed by me, the Author :)