Author's notes: I should be working on my Hiccstrid fic, I know, but I couldn't stop this little gem from popping into my head. Basically a what if Hiccup had run away the night before his final exam and spent over a decade on his own. Rumors reach his ears about his tribe - under the orders of his cousin Snotlout who is now chief - preparing for war on DunBroch, an old enemy. Now, having spent the last fifteen years in the wilderness and around dragons, he brings word to Queen Merida of DunBroch.

All characters are in their late twenties or early thirties.

Please enjoy :3

Whispers about him had reached her ears of course. Being Queen of the Highlands meant that she needed to know not only the history of her people, but of those who could be considered threats to her kingdom. Rumors of a dragon rider had spread far and wide across the land in the last fifteen years, starting from comments here and there before news regularly came to DunBroch, considering that he had settled his territory on a small island just off the coastline.

He was...different to what she expected him to be, as the young Lords brought him forward. He had the looks of a foreigner, something that didn't surprise her, from the braid in his hair down to the way he dressed. Her mother had told her of dragons in the Northern lands when she was younger, and - of course - of the vikings that fought them. The dragon next to him, restrained as it was but snarling viciously before a murmur to it in a strange language of growls and chirps from the man quelled him into a glaring but docile animal, was every bit the beast of her nightmares as a young girl, scaled down into something that looked no more bigger than a fully grown bear on all fours.

"My lady Queen," Young MacIntosh began, watching the prisoner out the corner of his eyes for a moment before he turned his attention towards her. "We caught this outsider and his beast on the boarders..."

"I bring news from the North."

The interruption caused everyone in the grand hall to look at the foreigner in surprise. The spoken Gaelic was strong, not the mad language of the Norse like they had been expecting or even the strange noises he had been making towards the dragon. For someone who had been living - to their knowledge - for the last fifteen years in the wild, his speech was bold and heavy, a hint of an accent riding on his vocabulary. Queen Merida, stunned to silence, held up her slender hand before the room fell silent from the whispering going between her servants, the young Lords looking at each other in astonishment as Young MacGuffin muttered under his breath in his thick brouge.

At her nod for him to continue, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third raised his head, shifting his weight in the thick chains wrapped around his wrists, green eyes holding sincerity but at the same time rough and jaded from years of thievery. He opens his mouth, the motion stretching what's clearly a slave mark on the side of his head, the blue dragon tattoo looking more serpent like, voice thick with clarity.

"The Hairy Hooligan tribe marches on DunBroch."