I'm sorry for the delayed reaction to the trailer for this part. Instead of "frostbite on your spleen" where I live "it can get so hot you can actually feel your organs burn". Like a blizzard, there are days in my country, when it's just not safe or smart to go out. So I wasn't able to put this fanfic with the trailer on the same day. Connections here, astonishingly fry in the heart sometimes and I don't have 24 hour connection.

Still it's up now, hope you enjoy!

Happy Snoggletog!

Echoes Of The Past

(Part Three)

"Oh, no!" Hiccup spun round startled by the sound of someone's voice.

He looked behind him but could see no one.

"What is he doing here?" The nonexistent wind seemed to ask no one in particular.

Hiccup felt the shivers run down his spine and almost cried out in fear but no sound emerged.

"He seems familiar…."

The wind whispered.

"Oh, it must be from one of Alia's stories!"

Hiccup was very concerned indeed. This was like a nightmare he couldn't break from it. He didn't understand anything. Everything was strange and threatening.

"Alia!" Cried the wind.

Then it was gone.

Silence followed the eerie echoes and then there was a stunning young woman standing in front of him. She seemed just as surprised to see him, and to find herself suddenly not where she had been.

A moment passed before a big thrilled grin spread across her beautiful features.

Hiccup starred at her completely dumbfounded. What on earth – or wherever he was – could he say?

The young woman stood looking at him with a happy grin on her face.

"I've done it again haven't I!" She cried out not the least bit bothered to be seen talking to the wind. Or thin air. For she had tossed her head back and stared at the sky, the sky that wasn't a sky at all.

"Well, what do you expect of me in a land powered by longing and fears!" She cried to the wind….or to someone far away that he couldn't see.

"Whole place is devastated by war and they are antsy about summoning storybook characters and historical people. I am trying to get out of here you know!" She cried again to the wind. Before turning to face him once more. Hiccup took a step back, unnerved by her words, where he was and the captivating shine to her vibrant blue eyes. Bluer than Astrid's ever humanly could be.

The woman stood patiently waiting. For all she'd expressed about living in a world ravaged by war she didn't seem the least bit hurried.

A moment later, Hiccup shook his head, trying to clear it.

"Wait a minute. Where am I? Is Astrid alight and where are our dragons?"

Alia looked puzzled before her mind must have translated his words.

"Oh! Right, agh, Tooth-less and Stormf…ly? Dase that mean she can still fly in a storm?"

Hiccup placed a hand to his head like his father often did when exasperated. It was like talking to someone who didn't understand Norse!

Taking a deep breath like his father did with him, he tried to recall what it was like to be on the other side of this sort of conversation.

"Where am I?" He asked again. Trying to hold back his anxiety and annoyance. She didn't seem like a horrible person though her clothing where quite unusual. To our modern readers she would look like someone crossed between a biker's sexy outfit and a medieval witch. The good kind fortunately for Hiccup.

Hiccup however knew none of this.

She was simply dressed in dark reds and black leather. Laced at the front with black string at her hips hang a wisp of pale green skirts, layered with other skirts in other colours, red and white. With many ties of red and gold. Hanging comfortably at her hip was a sword strapped securely to her side.

The attire left her shoulders bare except for a small cluster of pale, muddy white straps that held her black corset top in place. In regards to her shoulders he'd seen Astrid wearing much the same sort of clothing, however, his woman was far more …revealed with her clothing and had a great deal more to display than Astrid!

Hiccup reigned in his wondering gaze and sheepishly awaited her reply.

The woman of course, ever astute as any woman is when noticed by a man, looked down at her chest where his gaze had been, looked up at him and tired not to smile.

She almost giggled. Like a delighted child, but at the clear age of twenty-seven she was quite far from innocence.

"Where you are is… complicated."

So is this conversation. Hiccup thought as she explained. Naturally explaining nothing really at all.

"The short answer is that you are in 'Hell's Haven'. A sub-sub-sub -sub-sub section, if you will, of a kingdom called 'Alexyarna'. We exist alongside your world but we have neither happened already nor have yet to happen. We are neither real nor imaginary. The cross between worlds is through dream but it's a very rocky path between the two and it's usually a deep seeded longing that generates the ability to cross. Love being the strangest. Which is, I suspect, why your friend is here. I didn't summon her. Only you. Oh! Sure not for anything romantic. No, just that I've heard stories about your adventures from your world and I just adore them. They feel so real, so wondrous. A place so natural. So different from this warped land. What is snow? Anyway?"

She finished on a deep breath, as if her excitement had bundled her words into one line.

"So I'm dead?" Hiccup asked bluntly.

The woman laughed briskly, the sound so musical in the dead of this strange land.

"Not quite. I suppose to others in your land you have gone missing. Then again you are neither here nor there and you are neither alive nor dead. See why it's complicated? In your land it's easy to be one or the other, here, "She waved a hand at the land. "…you are always neither."

Hiccup stared at her thinking it was him who had lost his mind.

"Oh! Completely forgot, you're Hiccup Haddock from the Viking era and I'm Alia, Vampire from Hell's Haven, well, originally your world, 1996, a place called California, America. You've probably heard stories f such a land, yeah well, it's real. More so than this one you're standing on, really. Anyway, I was trapped in Alexyarna before being lured into Hell's Haven. Not a place I'd like to remain in but it's a frightfully tricky place to escape, unless you somehow hold true love…see the dilemma? You can only fight evil with its ultimate counteractive component. Love. I only found false love at the time that lured me to Alexyarna, ultimately to my human doom too, became a Vampire then was naively tricked into coming here, been trying to escape ever since, but can't as false love doesn't do anything but trick people. It's rather deceptive you see."

Hiccup tired to hang onto everything she said but he felt like he was trying to keep up with someone walking fast and he didn't have his leg.

"Oh, and I probably should mention here everything operates on your fears and pain. It's why I suspect your left leg his paining you. The "master" of this place is a very very twisted man. He likes to torture people with their own fears. I'd recommend trying to control your concerns, here they resinate from you like a cloud of colour around you. Like, Auras, things like that – oh, right, you don't know anything about that, umm, here is something, Northern Lights! Or Aurvandil's Fire you have those on Berk. It's like that, reactions that normally are invisible to see but gain colour in some cases."

She held out her hand to him. "Come on we have to get going. We need to get you to Astrid."

Hiccup blinked, instantly alarmed.

"Where is she?" He asked once more.

"Nowhere, but everywh..ere, Oh my!" She gasped. "In your world that's quite impossible- unless one's chopped up into little bits-"

"WHAT?!" He exclaimed taking a step back.

"-Oh God No! She's fine!"

She amened as his shock and fear registered upon his face.

"-ish." Alia seemed to add in a whisper.

"Like a said complicated. She's just as fine as can be when in a land that is basically Hell. Hence the name. She can't survive alone, no one can, why do you think I summoned you here? Even though I did so unwittingly. After all, the main power to get me out of this place is quite impossible with you."

Despite his panic and confusion Hiccup couldn't help but ask.

"Why?"

As they headed off together, Alia lifting the hem of her skirts to keep from catching them on the many many bushes and thorns at their feet, that had mysteriously appeared.

"Because you, my young Viking Prince, have already given your heart to another, therefore you cannot love me, and thus cannot save me. See the point?"

Hiccup could neither tell if he could or couldn't.

"I don't know."

Alia stopped, like a person walking a child across a busy road that suddenly had a car drive by.

She held out an arm to stop him walking just as a raging river appeared directly in front of them, the water's violent rushing edges speeding past the tips of their feet.

"That would be the, jetlag. As it were. Oh, right you don't know what that is…um, its…like a barrel rolls on Toothle-less?"

"Toothless," Hiccup instinctively amended.

"He has retractable teeth."

Hiccup blinked.

"How can I be so sure about that but not anything else?"

Alia laughed lightly. Again the sound in contrast to the vile land around them.

"Again it's love. Love grounds you to your reality. To what is true. I love love, and thus have fought very hard to retain my soul against them." She explained enigmatically.

"Others who enter with hollow souls often loose them without knowing it. They are basically ghosts. Dead the instant they step on this land but to those around them and perhaps even to themselves, they seem as though they are not changed. It's just as dangerous to come here with someone as it is to come alone."

"Say, you are sort of a Prince, really ain't you….I suppose had you come from an era in time after the 1800s I could use the wonderful story by E.T.A Hoffmann of "The Nutcracker" that's a good way to describe this land."

She happily explained, making, of course, absolutely no sense to Hiccup.

"Of course, instead of Sugar Plum Fairy's…."

Hiccup looked again at the water and gasped.

"We get blood…" She added in a sort of mesmerized state. Staring down at their feet.

Alia, watched the water as it turned to blood and felt both sickened and hungry for the thick sustaining food.

To her, it was food, a banquet laid before her that she could not taste. She'd once thought she could and had suffered a terrible state she never wanted to experience again.

"Right where was I? Oh right, yes you will suffer from a sense of wobbly legs, fatigued, dizzy state. The only thing that will seem clear and certain is love. Friends, pets, lovers. All sorts of love. It's why I live off stories, feed off them, if you will." She added still mindlessly staring in hunger at the raging blood covered river.

"It's the blood of the love-losses. Those whom been tormented by fate, separated by death or otherwise hurt by it. It's, if you prefer, the tears of the heartbroken, that's why there is so much of it. As an added bonus to the sick bastard that controls this world it makes me feverously hunger."

Hiccup looked up at her confused. Question in his eyes.

A question Alia knew he wouldn't want the answer to. "I'm a Vampire Hiccup, I'm immortal – to a point at least – I'm no longer technically alive and I drink human blood." She explained feeling her fangs prick her bottom lip uncontrollably.

Hiccup leaped backwards, stumbling on his metal leg and landed on the ground by the river an ashen look upon his face.

"It's alright Hiccup I won't hurt you! I'm here to help you….or you're here to help me, but I've not quite worked that one out yet."

Hiccup braced himself up off the ground with his hands behind him and starred uncertainly up at this beautiful dark angel.

"Ho..how can I trust you?"

Alia laughed this time the sound sad, a deep sense of misery and loneliness coating the sound as it seemed to echo around them.

The soundless blood river continuing to flow rapidly beside them.

"I can't answer that Hiccup. Trust isn't a thing to be given, its earnt."

Alia hung her head.

"…in any land."

Hiccup didn't know what to do or say. There was something in her tone that begged him to believe her, almost against his will, but then like a siren call he felt something deeper make that illusion be exposed for what it was. An illusion.

Could he trust her or was that too just a trick?

END

Eliana Robinson

15/12/17

CREATION DATE – 31/10/17

PUBLISH DATE – 19/12/17

Echoes Of The Past Disclaimer

ECHOES OF THE PAST - is a Fanfiction of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON I do not own the characters or original plotline, with the exemption of anything in relation to new characters the kingdom of Alexyarna and Hell's Haven which are original creations of my own form my own original works. The character of Alia is of my own creation with the name being created by a contest winner VenomousFantum, as their winning prize. The character herself is of my own invention.

PLOTLINE:

Awake in the new land with Hiccup and see the difference in all ….where can this Viking chief be?

Is it heaven or hell….

…. or someplace worse than either above or below.

Enjoy the third instalment of the mysterious Special "Echoes Of The Past"

Dedicated to VenomousFantum for winning the Reader's contest 2017

Thank you for your choice in the name of this fiery heroine. I hope you enjoy this story and that it's all you hoped for, regards. Ms Robinson.

This story is NOTfor official publication or profit.

ECHOES OF THE PAST is a short tale in an unofficially link series between all my HTTYD fanfics and is purely meant as entertainment.

CREATION DATE – 31/10/17

PUBLISH DATE – 19/12/17

Part of the "Dragon Adventures" Series By Eliana Robinson

Actually a Crossover between HTYYD and my own Original novel series, "The Ring Dynasty" – a fantasy collection of novels based in the magical kingdom of Alexyarna.