Prologue
There was a rider in the night. A dragon rider. They were flying low above the ocean, forced down by the storm above. The dragon was moving her wings with slow, deliberate moves to compensate for the quickly shifting air currents.
"I only wish there was a bloody gap in these clouds," the rider exclaimed, trying to sneak a peak upwards without loosing an eye to the stinging rain. "We could get above this mess then."
The dragon grunted in agreement. Her wings were itching from the constant beating of the rain. Already having forgone two meals due to lack of islands to land on, she was quite hungry, too. Thunder crackled up in the clouds. She let out a howl as an answer then looked back at her rider with blame in her eyes.
"No, I didn't misread the map. I told you we will fly all day. There is not a single rock above water in the area we passed over. We're late because of the storm, that's all. And no, there was no sign of this bastardly weather when we took of. You know that."
The dragon sighed in surrender. She tried to keep her mind off the rain. Her rider was doing a routine mid-flight check on the straps of the saddle, but the familiar movements of the leather weren't good enough a distraction.
She was twisting her neck to get the soreness out of the muscles, when she noticed lights, low and to their right. Watchfires.
"Ah, that's Berk," the rider said, after the dragon let out an excited bark, nodding towards the lights. "Oh, it's on the map, alright," she added, when her mount made an inquiring sound. "They are not particularly welcoming people. Especially not to you. Vikings. Tangled with some local nest a few centuries ago, and they seem to be unable to work it out since. It wouldn't be pretty for us to land there. Dragon paranoia, you know?"
The dragon considered that for a while. They cannot be all over the place… She made a slight wailing sound and jabbed her head to the right.
"Well, I guess we could go around and hide on the far side in the forrest then leave when the storm has passed…" She eyed the watchfires for second then twisted her left leg inwards to signal the direction change. Her dragon happily obeyed.
They didn't go straight for the fires but kept them slightly on their right. She didn't have a detailed map of the island, but the rider expected the village to be located beyond the line of lights and intended to avoid the Viking sentries by circling the settlement from the left.
She led her dragon to barely a wingspan high above the water, hoping to hide from the lookouts. They made their way to the island with doubled effort. The dragon let out a warning growl.
"Rock wall ahead, aye," she acknowledged and signaled the dragon to pull up. They began to ascend rapidly.
Only when they went over the edge of the cliff did they notice their mistake. The village was not at sea level but on the rock they just climbed. It was nearly invisible as all the lights had been put out either by the rain or their owners, so that the wind couldn't start a fire by knocking them over.
The rider cried out in surprise and twisted her legs to order a full turn and nose dive back towards the sea. That was the moment the lightning struck.
It didn't hit them directly, but they were both facing it, getting temporarily blinded. Being in mid-turn, the dragon lost her sense of direction, and her rider had no way of correcting it, not seeing at the moment. So the flying reptile took the dive — into the middle of the village.
Her vision cleared enough so that she realized what had happened, but all she could do was choosing a square, rather than a house to land upon. Braking the best she could, they crashed in front of what appeared to be the village forge.
The dragon took no injuries other than a few scratches from sliding some distance on the rough stone, but the rider was catapulted from the saddle by the impact force and flew straight into the wall of the forge.
It took a few moments for the dragon to clear her head, and when she looked around, she saw a smallish boy in a blacksmith's get-up kneeling beside her rider. She let out a shriek and launched forward but was stopped by the boy turning to her and raising his empty hands. He had no fear in his eyes.
"I'm not gonna harm either of you, but your rider is seriously hurt. She needs help," he said and gestured towards the rider. The dragon walked around him then froze from the sight before her.
The girl was mostly covered by her long riding coat, but her left leg and arm was visibly broken and she was unconscious. Probably not a bad thing, considering the pain from those wounds. Unless…
She put her head real close to her riders and waited, heart thumping. Then she heard her inhale. She was alive. The relief was undescribable. She turned to inspect the boy again, when people started appearing around them.
"Hiccup! What the hell was that noise?" a huge man asked, pushing people out of his way to the forge. He was holding a large round shield, but other than that, he didn't seem to be armed.
"Dad! Get the healers! A dragon rider was forced down by the storm. She is badly injured," the blacksmith boy answered. He was trying to pull a stretcher out from under a pile of parts and metal pieces.
"You heard him!" the man shouted to the crowd, and someone started for the upper village. He himself stepped to his son and yanked the carrying device free with a single hand. "Hiccup, what happened?"
"I don't know, I heard them crash, and…" he pointed at the dragon crouching in a protective stance next to its rider. His father set the stretcher down and observed the situation.
Stoick scratched his head in confusion. It definately was a Night Fury. No mistaking that body shape. Except it was white. And had devilish red eyes. And was visibly frightened. Then he looked at the girl's face and immediately saw the trouble to come.
He muttered one word as he was shoved aside by the arriving healers:
"Scalesmen."