In the early hours of the morning, the unholy offspring of Lightning and Death itself raised his head to the sky and uttered a long, drawn out keen. Nothing had stirred in the silent, mist-bound night and no sound had come from the house that he sat guard upon. However, the dragon that they called Toothless simply knew that his friend and rider had passed into the void.

Around him, the dragons of Berk picked up their Alpha's cry of grief, echoing it outwards to the seas and mountains. In the distance, he spotted five fast-flying Nadders take to the air. They circled for a minute, adding their own voices to the song of mourning that rang through the night, then split up, each dragon flying in a separate direction. One was bound for Helheim's Gate, and another for Niflheim's Spire - which had once been home to the great Bewilderbeast. The five dragons would carry news of Hiccup's passing to every dragon nest the Berkians knew of.

From those nests, more dragons would fly onwards. Like the tale of Hiccup and the Red Death had spread from nest to nest, a new message would be carried wherever dragons flew: lament, for a great champion of dragonkind has fallen.

Toothless looked down at the roof beneath his paws. Hiccup had never understood why the dragons of foreign nests were always so pleased to see them; he'd assumed it was because they'd never seen a Night Fury before. In reality his kind wasn't as rare as the humans thought - just incredibly secretive. In fact it was him they were happy to see. Their defeat of the Queen had become a legend among the dragons, and had inspired several nests to lead their own uprisings against tyrannical rulers. Hiccup would always talk about how he was 'changing the world, one Viking at a time'; what he didn't know was he was also changing the dragon world.

On the rooftops of Berk, the dragons continued their lamentations. One by one, irate Vikings would emerge from their homes, and quiet mid-sentence, their faces changing from anger, to shock and then sadness as they realised the cause of the dragon's cries.

A silent ring of people began to form around the chief's house, in the flickering torchlight, Toothless could make out tears shining on many of their faces. When it seemed that the whole population of the village had gathered in vigil, two figures emerged from the house: An elderly white-haired woman, who valiantly held back tears despite shimmering eyes, and a quietly sobbing young man.

"T-The Ch-Chief is dead," Astrid announced in a hoarse whisper. She turned and went down on one knee before her son, "Long live the chief."

"Long live the chief," the villagers repeated. "Long live the chief!"

The young man's green eyes flashed as he looked up to the rooftop. Toothless met his gaze for a heartbeat, then raised his head, closed his eyes and howled his grief to the northen stars.

They buried Hiccup in the evening.

As the last rays of day struck the sea to golden fire, the Vikings and dragons of Berk gathered on the docks. They were joined by the heads of every dragon academy in the archipelago and the chiefs of nearly every island that had befriended dragons - all of which had made the long dragonback journey to Berk as soon as they heard the news.

A lone ship sat on the longest pier. The vessel was an ornately decorated longship, packed with straw and soaked in flammable oils. Hiccup lay upon his pyre on the deck of the ship, he was dressed in finery and bedecked with glittering grave goods. Beneath his helmet, his face was set in peaceful repose, and his hands were clasped over his chest, resting on the hilt of Eldur.

Toothless watched in sombre silence from the cliffs as each one of the gathered dignitaries stepped forwards and spoke in halting terms of the great man his rider had become, and the feats he had accomplished. The Night Fury swung his tail around before his face and fanned his tail fin, watching as the blackened dragonhide prosthetic - built with materials donated by the offspring of deceased dragons - opened in its mirror image. Everything you - we - accomplished, it will never live up to this.

Realising his own mortality, Hiccup had spent every spare moment of his later years tweaking and perfecting the automatic fin, to the point where Toothless could almost forget he'd ever been injured. Even in his last days, as his body finally succumbed to the rigours of time, Hiccup had been sketching designs for improvements in one of his omnipresent notebooks.

Eventually the long line of obituaries ended in a tearful speech from Hiccup's son. At a nod from the young chief, a group of somber Vikings stepped forwards and unfurled the longship's sails, then cut the lines tethering it to the pier. With a combined push, they sent their chief away on the greatest journey of all.

Not a single Viking moved as the ship drifted towards the sunset.

"It's time," Stormfly whispered beside him.

None of the mourners on the docks carried a bow; mere flaming arrows wouldn't do for the first Dragon Master of the Archipelago.

Toothless stepped up to the edge of the cliff, and leaned forwards, allowing his weight to carry him forwards over the precipice. He closed his eyes and allowed the fall to consume him. For a moment his entire being was the cocktail of terror and elation that came with freefall.

Then his eyes snapped open, and his wings followed an instant later, chest muscles burning as they took the full weight of the air. Then, he turned his head skyward and strove for altitude, beating his wings in time with his heartbeat.

Quickly, Toothless rose above the clouds, then above the highest mountains, and still he climbed. Not until the blue above him had faded to black, and he could see the curvature of the earth beneath him, and his lungs burned in the thin air, did his wings finally stop. He hung in the stillness of the upper atmosphere for moment. Then he turned his gaze downwards, fixating on the small, brown speck impossibly far below him.

He dove.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III's death song consisted of a single note: a rising whistle that began as a whisper, barely audible above the wind moving across the docks. It was joined by the anticipatory mutterings of the gathered mourners as they watched the black speck fall from the heavens. The note roze into a deafening crescendo, that rang in the ears of everyone present, then ended in a flash of light and stroke of almighty percussion, like Mjölnir itself had struck the sea.

The Vikings stared in awed silence at the cloud of steam on the horizon where their chief's ship had been a moment before. Nobody knew quite how to process the what they'd just witnessed. Then, from somewhere within the crowd a hoarse cheer rang out. It spread from person to person like wildfire, and within a heartbeat, every one of the usually restrained Vikings was letting out a great, wordless roar of emotion, that rose up to Valhalla where their former chief undoubtedly rested.

In the midsts of this outpouring, few noticed an exhausted Night Fury glide back to the cliffs of Berk and land heavily amongst the dragons there.

Toothless looked up at the darkening sky, where the first stars were beginning to emerge - and dared to imagine another one was shining among them tonight.

May your memory shine bright as your funeral pyre, my brother.

"All these memories I will treasure in my heart
Words are so vain
A bond beyond quintessence

For a thousand lifetimes
I will wait to feel
A passing moment of bliss
To be embraced by silence"

-'Celestial Bond' by Ensiferum

Eldur - Icelandic for 'Fire' - I wanted a more Norse-sounding name for Hiccup's sword from HTTYD2, which the wiki tells me is named 'Inferno'

Author's Notes:

Okay, this was a random drabble that I started writing months ago, and had no intention of ever finishing, then I suddenly got hit with inspiration to finish this, and here you go... So uhh, enjoy, I guess?

'Shadow of the Night' will be back soon, I promise!

~Superbun

Cover image is 'Funeral' by FrancescaBaerald