There isn't really a moment where she suddenly notices him. He'd been in the peripheral of her social life for longer than she could recall, but there'd been little concern to be had over him. He was Stoic's son, a fact that gathered him the only awareness she had of him. Stoic the Vast's child, an utter failure. He couldn't lift an axe to save his life, and soon enough it would come to that. A Viking didn't live so long without grit.
Really though, she cared very little about their Chief's awkward kid. She had her own business to attend to after all. While the four other heirs to the great families went off to drink or cause mischief, Astrid trained for stamina and strength. While the common children learned their own trade, had crushes, played and misbehaved, Astrid practiced her aim with knives and a light weight axe. She had no time to bully some scrawny boy; if she did a good enough job at defending the village, weaklings like him wouldn't have to fight. Astrid had always possessed a good head for numbers; it was common sense that their village needed more workers and fewer fighters in order to sustain its bartering system. But with dragon raids frequently disrupting the flow of things, children were being trained younger and younger. Those who washed out were worthy of some contempt, but she'd prefer to live in a berk that could have a boy like hiccup living semi-comfortably, writing down history and training the children in edible plants.
When he's killed, it's as if something constant has been taken away from her. Hiccup had been the butt of jokes, but he had been young and inoffensive. The village watches Stoic collapse under the weight of a thousand unsaid words, watches as he realizes nothing had been worth it, that he was alone. Stoic the vast kneels at his son's grave, and Astrid can't help but feel a pain in her chest when she sees how little the lump of dirt is beneath their chiefs shadow. He hadn't been anything, and now he never would be.
It's not the first death she's been around. She's even lost siblings, mostly to sickness, but often to dragons. But there is something very ominous about this one, and the way they said Hiccup went into the forest alive and was found dead with very few marks. It almost appeared as if he had fallen and bumped his head on a rock. Astrid doubts even a screw-up like Hiccup had such poor reflexes. Her father gruffly shakes his head at the dinner table. Viking's die in stupid ways all the time. specially weak one's. It's why the Hofferson's don't produce failures. Which she can't argue with, even as the insinuation places a cold rock between the underside of her skin and her spine.
Still. There's something wrong with it. She remembers him shooting some sort of contraption in the sky vaguely on the day of the last raid, but that's it. She stands at the edge of the woods, and watches the way the shadows twist in the light and branches.
She wanders in without any clear goal, except for pointless questions. The why's and how's of things don't matter, though sometimes she feels the urge to ask them anyway. A life of a Viking is simple, or so she is told, and a Viking listens to their betters when they tell them fact.
She wonders if Hiccup asked the wrong Why's.
She's a ways into the forest and with no more idea of what she expected to find when she started before she hears an odd slithering noise. She immediately thinks dragon and crouches low to the ground, moving forward on careful feat. She's almost completely silent, and completely on guard. Something about all of this has been wrong from the beginning, and she doesn't even know why she thinks that.
In front of her, low in the valley beneath her spot, is a Nightfury. It's so dark, she feels as if the world was pinched between two corners and cut into a dragon shape. It's an almost believable illusion, until its eyes open. Like two twin stars in the sky, they flicker as if lit by fire, and stamp their impression into her soul. For a moment, she cannot breath, she cannot move. Death personified is here, and she has searched for it like a Viking searches for it with their last breath.
Then she is moving, flinging her battle axe into its shape. She creature screams, shifting out of the way for a moment before righting itself, unharmed. She curses, figuring it will fly away, or perhaps fly to her and eat her-but. But it does nothing.
It hisses and fires hot purple fire near her, but it does not charge. There is something so odd to this behaviour, which she risks sticking her head out from behind the rock she's hidden in.
It's tail.
It's the arrow machine Hiccup made-tucked away-
The barrel-
That night, the direction-
"Okay, but I hit a Nightfury"
Oh. How ironic, that no one had believed him the one time he had succeeded in all his life. He must have gone after it, gotten himself killed in the skirmish. She narrows her eyes at the demon and promises to survive. She knows this news will not heal her broken chief, but it will give Hiccup's spirit some peace, to know that his last deed was recognized.
A flightless dragon is a dead dragon. She slides out her dagger, the broader one made from Gronkle tooth. She will kill this beast, this creature who has plagued their village since before she was born.
She slides down the incline, running at the creature with a shriek. Dragons generally do not love loud noises made so close to them; the Nightfury rises on its front legs, making that long keening noise in its throat that means it's preparing to fire at her. She viciously flings her dagger into its exposed stomach, relishing its pained cry before rolling in a tight ball toward it. The heat of its fire is felt despite her dodge, and she slips her finger into her knife belt before she's even done rising from her roll. She has to kill this thing, the quicker, the better.
She's about to stab it in the heart when another shriek calls behind her, and she's blown off her feet by a new enemy.
Her body hits the dirt with a hard thud, the impact jostling her knife from her hand. She rises as quickly as possible, head spinning from the blunt force of her landing, and she faces her newer adversary with dread. Another Nightfury, except this one is pale like the moon, with blue eyes that shine with anger. It jumps onto her before she has time to recover, claws slicing her legs open. She cries out in pain, jamming her fingers into its eyes. It bellows and staggers its head away from her trapped form, and she manages to wiggle her way from beneath it, crawling to a tangle of rocks nearby. She crams herself into the smallest crevice possible, and almost falls flat on her face with surprise when the little hole she's in extends deeper than she expects. Clearly she's hiding out in an old animal den, and she would take more time to marvel at her luck if there weren't bloodthirsty demons screaming and spitting at her from behind the large rocks she's trapped herself in. The Lightfury (She's giving it a name) especially seems fired up, spewing purple shots at the boulders that keep them from each other. She can hear the Nightfury whimper in pain, probably from its most recent wound and feels a little thrill at that.
The thrill lasts for a very short amount of time when her passion and fear drain away and she remembers that her legs are shredded, bleeding and unable to take her away from this fun little situation she's trapped herself in.
"Great." She mumbles to herself, not wanting to gain the attention of her foes. She gathers up as much moss as she can with her limited mobility and presses them against her wounds. She grits her teeth in agony as the rough texture of the plants scratches against her flesh, but only presses down harder. She'd rather deal with this hurt than die of blood loss.
As the afternoon drags its way into dusk, she considers the merits of letting herself die. It's not a Viking's way to give up, nor is it hers personally, but the situation is looking a bit dire. She's been critically wounded, she's surrounded by two of the most dangerous dragons in existence, who she's seriously pissed off, and she's trapped herself and has only one exit-to the jaws of her enemies.
She lays her head down against the stone and curses herself for being such a try hard. Why couldn't she let the chief's sons death go as some expected tragedy?