All right, I suppose there are a couple things we need to address before I get started.

1) False Advertising. I know I talked about this story as a sequel to 'Heart of Fire and Ice'. Well, then a couple things came to my attention. The first is that while Heart of Fire and Ice was essentially Valka's back story, it was mostly drabbles and one-shots in a sort of chronological-ish order, and so it can't really have a direct sequel. Also, it would be impossible (or quite nearly so) to wrap up the Nightwalker plotline with what information we have about HTTYD2. I mean I knew that from the start, but here's the thing: There are too many holes and loose ends in the plotline where Valka was raised by dragons for me to use that in this story.

Now I know I'm changing Valka's back story. But what I've really wanted to do before the movie came out was to experiment. I want to delve into the possibilities of what happened to her instead of making a direct statement like 'this is what happened.' I want to explore all the plot threads I can before the film comes out.

So my apologies to anyone who was expecting a direct sequel. I did change Valka's back story, but I hope you guys just like Heart of Fire and Ice for the entity it is and take a look at the other idea I've come up with here. Because there will definitely be similar elements, like Valka and thunderstorm metaphors, but there will also be different elements, because I really enjoy exploring all the possibilities as to Valka's past. And this one is an interesting idea I came up with that I wanted to put down on the page.

2) What is this story then? Well it's my take on how HTTYD2 might go down. I wanted to write one of these before the film came out and they all became AU. And so I did. And I was going to directly connect it to Heart of Fire and Ice with the Nightwalker and all that, but then I decided I wanted to do something new and use a new idea I had. There will still be similar legends and nicknames and epic-lone-warrior-Valka who has indeed become sort of a myth, but there will be new stuff too. I just got an idea and wanted to run with it.

3) The Disclaimer: Yeah, this is one of those things I have to throw onto every chapter. I don't own HTTYD, I wish I did, yadda yadda yadda.

4) Gollum. Yeah, he'll be there in my a/n's just as sarcastic and weird as ever. I like him too much to get rid of him :)

A worry had been growing within Stoick's heart as he searched the forest for his son. Hiccup had disappeared quite early that morning, walking off into the woods, and hadn't yet come back to the village. He supposed he was overreacting, as Gobber had bluntly informed him; after all, Hiccup was nearly thirteen years old, but his own anxiety overruled logical comforts.

"Hiccup!" he called between the trees. "Where are you?" He knew this forest perhaps better than anyone in Berk, as many years ago, his wife had spent hours upon hours dragging him between the trees and forging paths through the summer foliage. They were young in those days. They had not seen great battle, nor borne the weight of comrades' death.

"Hiccup!" Stoick shouted again, but there was no response. His eyes scanned the forest, searching for any sign of his son. Then, between the trees, he spotted the mop of copper hair that he knew and loved, clinging to an angular face that appeared even more scrawny in the pouring rain.

The boy was perched atop a boulder, his hand covering the leather bound cover of his sketchbook. "Go away," he said, his lower lip thrust forward in a childish pout.

"Hiccup." Stoick lowered his voice, his anxiety dying down into worry. "Why are you out here? This weather is terrible!"

Hiccup raised his eyebrows skeptically. "When is it not?" he muttered, his eyes still focused on the rock beneath him.

Stoick sighed. "You have your mother's wit," he said softly, as if that would diffuse the tension. "She always said things like that."

"I asked them about her," said Hiccup, his voice cracking. "I asked them today. And no one would tell me." He lifted his head, if only to appear more dejected than before. "Why won't they tell me about her, Dad? It's as if they don't even know her name, much less what she was like, or how she died. They won't say." He was crying, but he was happy his Dad couldn't tell in such heavy rain.

"Come home." Stoick laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Warm yourself up."

Hiccup scrunched his eyebrows together. "No. Not until you tell me about my mother." He adjusted himself on the rock and glared at his father. "You know, not even the elder would tell me. She said that my mother was brave. That's all she said. Brave. Can they tell me nothing else?"

Stoick breathed out a heavy sigh. He had known this day would come. "They don't really know," he whispered, leaning his back against the rock and looking up into his son's face. "She was… well, she was a lot like you. She studied everything, constantly analyzing the world around her, except she always acted on whims. You wonder, Hiccup, why I don't let you come outside when the dragons attack, or why I don't let you go near the training ring. I don't want you to die like your mother."

"Who was she?" Hiccup demanded. "Tell me who she was. Tell me how she died."

Stoick did not want to tell such a tale. It gave nothing but grief. Yet he felt that his son, of all people, deserved to know the story.

"They say she was mad, to tell you the truth," said Stoick, as if that was a decent place to start. "Personally, I think she was always about three quarters mad, but that was something we used to joke about. It was something I loved about her.

"We were in the training academy together," he began, his voice a bit less gruff than usual, though still bearing the hardness of a man who led his village through years of joy and despair - seen countless births and equally many deaths. Who had felt the heat of dragon fire and hot steel under his nose. This was the man Hiccup called his father, though the sense of grief was growing heavier on Stoick's shoulders.

"She was odd, to say the least. But she made it through dragon training quite successfully for someone of her size. People learned the hard way that she was stronger than she looked. She saw everything as a tool, when most of us saw weapons. I remember they day we faced our first Monstrous Nightmare, and she drove two daggers into the door of its enclosure. She stood on them and waved her arms until the beast came after her. She was just high enough off the ground to jump over it when it snapped at her. It drove the doors open, and she closed them behind it."

He chuckled at the memory. It was one of the better memories he had of her. "She was, indeed, brave," he told Hiccup to calm the lad's fears. "She was the best of us at man-to-man combat, even if she never killed a dragon. She had a remarkable mind, and a remarkable wit. And she was always somewhere else. Even as I spoke to her, her eyes were far away, climbing mountains and soaring with the seabirds. She used to sit at the trainees' table at night and tell stories, sort of like Gobber still does. But she would tell legends and fairy tales and sometimes even songs. " His voice grew somewhat wistful.

"The adults always sent us out on scouting expeditions together. I suppose they thought that I would counter her abhorrence of tradition. But I got to know her better, and even as my friends disliked her, I came to see the methods to her madness. The elders always said she would irritate them to death, with constant questioning of 'why' and 'how' but I loved her way of thinking. Of course, it was what got her killed in the end, but at the time I did love it.

"My father was not happy when we married. But there was nothing he could do. I had fallen in love with the village outcast. The one who didn't fit in and didn't care to try. Who was as tough and stubborn as a Viking but held her own principles. She was like a storm waiting to break.

"Did you know, Hiccup, that you were born on a barren mountainside, in the greatest thunderhead I have seen in my lifetime?" Stoick chuckled. "You mother, she insisted on leaving the village. She wanted me to see the setting sun break through the clouds and the first stars come out. We knew it would probably rain a bit, but we did not expect such a storm. She lay on that mountainside cursing the gods and the storm and me especially. You should have seen people's faces when we came back from that expedition, and I was carrying you in my arms. They just looked between us with expressions of pure shock on their faces. They tried to carry your mom off to the healer's home, but she would have none of it. She said she was going to sleep and no one was going to stop her. She even pulled out a dagger to ward them off, but no one really blamed her, seeing what she had been through that day."

Hiccup cocked his head to one side. He had been listening avidly to the story; after all, it was the only story he had ever heard about his mother. "But how did she die?" he interrupted. "And why won't anyone talk about her?"

Stoick laid a hand on his forehead, tension radiating from him. "A few months after you were born, she started to vanish more often than usual. She always loved the mountains, and I assumed she simply wanted to escape the stress of being the chief's wife, especially with how much she disliked some of the mandatory traditions.

"There was a dragon raid one night," he whispered. "You were only a year old or so, too young to remember. It was one of the worst we've had, and we needed all the hands we could get. Your mother was out that day, and we had no time to find her. We just assumed she would return and ready for battle.

"A monstrous nightmare came at me. I was atop the watchtower, with only my sword. It stretched out its neck and took a snap at me, and I swiped at it to make the kill. Something stopped me. Another sword sparked against my own" His voice shook as he spoke, and he leaned his arm against the rock for support.

"Someone dropped from the sky," he told Hiccup. It was the first time he had recalled this story in many years. "From where, I do not know. The figure was hooded in black, so a shadow cast over its face. It stood in front of the dragon, its arms spread to shield the beast. We fought atop the watchtower, far above the rock strewn shorelines that border endless ocean. I thought I was fighting some demon or rogue. Some monstrous guardian of the dragons.

"The platform started to wobble, and the dragon rushed forward. The figure stood between me and the great beast, and I between dragon fire and the frozen sea. I cast back my opponent's hood to see the enemy I was going to kill. And it… it…" His voice trembled in a way that Hiccup had never heard before.

Stoick took in a mighty breath and looked into his son's eyes. "It was your mother."

He ducked his head. "I will never forget the look in her eyes. She was pained to fight me, but she would not let me kill the dragon. It was her curiosity that got the best of her. She came to love the creatures that wanted us dead. Her sword was drawn on me, and she stood between the hunter and his prey. I do not know which was the hunter and which the prey. Then the platform started to give out. I reached for her, but her eyes were wild. She would not let me touch her hand. The boards gave away, and she fell. I nearly caught her, but it was too late."

Hiccup was breathing hard. Each word that fell from his father's lips was so hard to process. His own mother had betrayed the Vikings? Had fought her husband atop the watchtower and fallen into the sea?

"I searched for her among the wreckage, hoping that what fought me was only a demon with her face, or that perhaps my imagination got the best of me. But alas, we never found her. No one knows what happened, because I told no one. They shall see her as a martyr who died with courage. Only Gobber knows the truth."

"So that's why they won't tell me?" asked Hiccup, his eyes pained at the story of his mother's betrayal. "Because they don't know? Not even the elder knows?"

Stoick nodded. "To them, she vanished the day she went out. They say she was eaten by a dragon, and no one wants to contradict the theory. They tell you she was brave, because they don't know what else to say. She was not like them. Not like us. She was too curious about simple matters. And in the end, that proved to be her fatal flaw."

"Did you," Hiccup gulped, "create a grave for her, or anything?"

"I did. Someday I'll take you there, lad, when you're a bit older. It is down by the sea, and the path is hard to get to. You need to grow a bit more. Then I will take you to see her grave."

At least it's closure, thought Hiccup. Something to ease his mind. But if anything, more questions had come. Is that my fatal flaw too? Being too different? Too curious? Perhaps it was. But perhaps, one day, he would use that flaw to do something great for the Vikings, that would make him more a hero than a martyr.

I like reviews. Smeagol likes them too. They're like virtual potato chips. You try to get a bigger bag of them, but then you find out it's mostly air anyway and there aren't as many chips as you thought. So, help me protest against bags-of-air in the Lays industry by reviewing :)

Smeagol: We can't believe you changed the storyses precious! Why?

Me: Read the a/n above.

Galadriel: I can't wait until I go back to The Hobbit and fight at Dol Guldur. This is hardly a useful pastime.

Smeagol: You ruins it!

Me: Just shut up already. Here, have a fish.

Galadriel: How vulgar.

Me: No comment.