Howdy, first timer here, trying out my hand at this whole creative writing thing. I don't own "How to Train your Dragon" or any of its characters, read and review, yadda yadda yadda. I hope you enjoy the story.
Astrid grimaced in frustration, she had lost sight of Hiccup again. It had happened in the same place as last time, at the boulder. Just like last time, he had stepped behind the large stone and seemed to vanish. The first time it happened Astrid had simply given up following him. Sure she had wondered why he was out in the woods, especially with that strange package slung under his arm, but at the time she had just thought his recent successes in the ring had been dumb luck. She thought she had no real need to follow him other than to vent her frustration.
Now she knew differently. Hiccup had clearly discovered something about dragon fighting that she wasn't being taught. There was no way that little fishbone had beaten her fairly in the arena. She was Astrid for Thor's sake. The best Viking in her generation. Not only did she have the most talent but she had also put in the thousands of hours of work necessary to forge that raw talent into well-honed skill.
Hiccup for all his good intent wasn't a dragon slayer. He just didn't have it in him. He belonged in his forge, fixing things, making things better. That's where his talents lay. Anybody with half a brain could see that.
But instead, he had chosen to be a constant thorn in not only the village's side, but more recently in Astrid's own as well. Not only did he have the gall to trip Astrid up in the Killing Ring. He then showed the outright audacity to turn his initially bumbling showing around and outdid her.
The boy hadn't ever put even an hours training into wielding an axe over the course of his entire life. Ohhh no, with that big head of his 'the great' Hiccup the Horrendous Haddock the Third had long ago decided that such things were beneath him. Instead he was always trying to find a workaround.
Well, apparently he had found one, because he was getting results. Results that clearly weren't coming from a mastery of the weapons he left scattered about his feet every time he brought down a dragon. It was like he was intentionally throwing them away. A madman's proposition at best.
Astrid was intent on finding out his secret. Who had taught him these mysterious techniques, or how he had discovered them on his own. Once she had done that she could reveal to the entire village that Hiccup had been cheating, that he had been pulling the wool over everybody's eyes. He wasn't better at fighting dragons than the rest of them were, he just had an unfair advantage. Once the village knew that they would demand that the obviously more talented and hardworking Astrid be given the chance to prove her metal in the ring fighting the ultimate prize.
Astrid smiled in triumph. This time she would catch Hiccup for sure. The large pack he had carried out of his house that afternoon must have weighed the slim boy down quite a bit because he was leaving footprints in the forest floor. Footprints Astrid could follow. Tracking, another essential dragon slaying skill that Astrid had trained for years to master that Hiccup didn't even know the basics of.
There was an almost invisible little crevasse, tucked away behind bushes. Hiccups footprints lead Astrid straight to it. She hurried her pace. She had lost valuable ground in her hunt for the boy, she threw some amount of her caution to the wind and rushed along the trail he had inadvertently left for her. There was no way she was letting him get away from her this time.
Astrid burst out of the brush onto a small trail that wove down a short slope between towering boulders. Just as she started worrying that Hiccup had somehow tricked her down a dead end she saw light at the end of the ravine. She burst out from between the last two stones and had to quickly fall into a slide in order to check her momentum. A cloud of dust and debris, kicked up by her last minute slide, flew over the ledge of the cliff she had almost run straight off of. Stupid Hiccup, almost getting her killed.
She had rushed out into a little cove. An empty little cove.
"No, you aren't getting away from me this time." Astrid muttered under her breath. Hiccup had earned himself a good thumping when she found him for making her chase him like this. She slid down the least steep side of the cliff, feet touching down on the soft dirt at the bottom of the cove. And froze.
Leaning against a rock was the remains of the large basket which Hiccup had been hauling through the forest. Astrid's heart pounded with fear as she approached and her legs gave out when she got close enough to confirm her suddenly growing fears. The basket had been torn apart by dragon claws. Growing up on Berk, Astrid knew exactly what the damage from dragon claws looked like. And this was certainly it. She stood up in a daze, how could this have happened? How could a dragon have taken Hiccup?
"I wasn't that far behind you, was I?" Astrid couldn't bring her voice above a whisper. Now that she was close she could see a few small circular black scales on the ground around the Basket. She didn't recognize them from any dragon she had ever seen, but they were too big to be anything else. "No, No, No. I would have heard the fighting."
Astrid's foot splashed into the water that had been behind her. The biting cold shocked her out of her trance. Astrid glanced down briefly, surprised by the water. Her eyes caught a slight glint. Sunlight off metal. Astrid's heart sank into the pit of her stomach as she bent over to retrieve the ultimate proof of what happened here. Hiccups dagger lay in the water, clearly lost in what must have been an all too brief struggle.
Oh gods, she had to get back to the village. She had to tell Stoick what happened.
"Bud I wish you had been a little bit more careful with your breakfast." The response to Hiccups chiding was a grumble from the nightfury that now cut their path through the stunning orange of the early evening sky. "You tore up a perfectly serviceable basket you know. I had been intending to keep any food we found in there. Now all we have are the saddle bags I stitched together."
Toothless didn't even respond to the further nagging. Hiccup gave a long drawn out sigh and rested back in his saddle. "I don't even know why I bother. All I've done is trade a father who won't listen to me with a dragon who won't listen." Hiccup shifted his weight left just a moment before he adjusted the pedal that controlled Toothless's tailfin. Hiccup had quickly learned to give hints at his intentions before changing the tail's position. Communication was key when it came to staying aloft and dragons understood motion and weight far better than they understood panicked shouts of: Left! I said LEFT!
Hiccup had guided the duo's path in a wide ring around the Island, he didn't want to be spotted from the shore. He wanted to be as far away as he could get before anybody found out he had left. But, there was still one more thing he had to do on the island. He knew it was crazy, but he couldn't leave the nightmare to die, or the others for that matter. The training dragons never lasted long once food started going short in the winter.
So now he was circling his home on the back of Toothless planning a raid of his own. The thought amused him slightly. It also made him a little sick. Hiccup knew why his people did what they did. The dragons attacked them often, the people of Berk needed training in order to fight back. By destroying the Killing Ring he would be hurting his entire village. Still, Hiccup couldn't leave the dragons. "Maybe I really am a traitor bud."
Toothless's warble of response brought a slight smile to Hiccup's face. He patted his worried friend on the back of the head. "Don't worry too much about me bud. I'm alright, just have to keep my mind off of things till it gets dark enough to break the other dragons out." Hiccup set about doing just that. During the earlier stretch of their flight Hiccup had focused on thinking up a way to feed him and his traveling companion. Those musings had quickly evolved into a rough design for a fishing net attachment for his saddle. Sadly Hiccup had reached the point in the design where he would have to actually start sketching out his ideas and doing equations in order to get any farther.
Instead he focused on the way the orange hews of twilight set the rocks of his Island home ablaze. All sorts of feelings welled up in his heart. Hiccup really did love his home. The forests he explored and played in when he was a child. The great hall where he was always warm and safe and full of good food. The smiles on the faces of people as he excitedly chattered about his latest imagined adventures. Of course in recent years many of those smiles had turned into grimaces. Hiccup knew nobody really hated him. Still it was hard being a constant disappointment to the people around you. Never being strong enough or big enough to carry the weight of their expectations.
Hiccup rolled his eyes in disgust at himself. What sort of self-respecting Viking moped for Valhalla's sake? And it wasn't like the village was wrong either. Here Hiccup was riding on the back of Berks ancestral enemy, clearly the greatest disappointment of all. And he loved it. Up here Hiccup was free, he was strong, and he was brave. Up in the sky, he felt like a Viking.
Hiccup shivered a bit, the cold pulling him out of his musings. The sun had finally set and he had been too deep in thought to notice. It was dark enough, now was the time to strike. Hiccup and toothless dove downwards, pulling back into straight flight mere feet above the ocean's swells. Hiccup knew that Vikings didn't look to the water when the sky grew dark, they looked to the sky. Dragons, masters of the sky and creatures of habit, always attacked from above. Giving Hiccup and Toothless the perfect opportunity to sneak in from below.
Hiccup leaned back in his saddle and Toothless soared up the cliff to the Killing Ring. As Hiccup crested the lip of the ledge he breathed out a sigh of relief. Generally nobody guarded the Killing Ring. Hiccup was glad to see that that held true today. Hiccup spared a glance over to the village. He could see a lot of people moving about the village in the light of the torches. Far more than usual. Most of these people were moving towards the great hall. Hiccup's heart skipped a beat. "We have to move fast bud, something has happened and the villagers are out in force. It won't take them long to get here once we start our breakout." Hiccup couldn't understand it, there was no way the villagers would be missing him already.
Toothless's ear flipped up and smacked Hiccup across the jaw. The smack snapped Hiccup out of his thoughts. "Sorry bud, let's get the job done." Toothless leapt up to the top of the cage. This was the first time Hiccup had really felt Toothless build up a shot. Before, when Toothless would fire his blasts they would be short and unexpected. Now Toothless let the shot build in his chest before he let it loose. For Hiccup the buildup felt like it lasted forever. A low whine accompanied by a rumble that shook Hiccup in his saddle. The blast that followed boomed off the cliffs around the killing ring that matched Thor's mightiest thunder.
Hiccup fought the urge to wince and watch the village for signs that they had been noticed. There was no chance they weren't. Getting caught up in nerves wouldn't do him any good. There was a hole in the top of the Killing Ring large enough for any dragon. He and Toothless needed to work fast and get the other dragons out of here before they were seen. Five quick burst of Toothless's dense fire and the doors to the Dragon arena were so much kindling. The dragons exploded out of their cells, expecting battle no doubt. The nightmare had immediately light itself and cast a bright orange light. "Oh come on! What did I ever do to you?" Hiccup tossed this comment upwards towards the heavens. The gods really did have it out for him. Hiccup urged Toothless to take off into the air. Hiccup had to get out of the light before somebody saw his silhouette. People riding dragons would cause an all-out panic on Berk.
"Come on guys, take off. We really have to leave now, or do you want to get captured again?" Hiccup waved his hands as he spoke. Trying to urge the other dragons out of the ring. The dragons looked confused up at him. Hiccup guessed that the dragons were no more comfortable with a dragon riding Viking then the Vikings would be if they saw them.
Then Toothless let out a deafening roar. This seemed to draw the creatures out of their confusion. They sprang one by one out of their prison and took to the air around Hiccup and Toothless. Hiccup barely waited for the Zippleback to get out of the ring before he and Toothless were off, leading the dragons away from Berk as straight and fast as they could go. He spared one last look over his shoulders. The Vikings were only just now getting to the bridge that lead to the Killing Ring. With any luck they hadn't seen Hiccup outlined in the nightmare's flames.