A/N Hi again! Thank you for all the support! (cough from one of you cough)
Chapter two, Part one
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the First died, as all do, and both dragons and humans mourned his passing.
They gave him a magnificent funeral, and his arrows were shot by the strongest, the greatest, the Dragon Markers.
Odinsfang settled to become counselor to the the kings after Hiccup, for hundreds of years he watched, for Sea-dragon's lifetimes are much longer than any other species.
He was glad too see that the first few were keeping Hiccup's promise to him, which had been that dragons and humans would be equal, that there would be peace, that there would be no need for war.
But then the kings down Hiccup's bloodline began to use the dragons, to break Hiccup's promise.
It got so bad that the remaining Dragon Markers, who were old and very old, were laughed at and spit at and shamed for actually bonding with dragons.
Finally, the dragons were nothing but slaves.
The king at that time was young, and his name was Speedfast.
One night, Odinsfang had gone to give Speedfast a talking-to, a good lecture about how he was treating the dragons.
Speedfast had yelled at Odinsfang in dragonese for ten minutes straight before finally saying, "I banish you from the Wilderwest, Odinsfang. I shall do what I like. I am outlawing your horrible snaky language so that I or my descendants will never have to hear useless lectures."
And he also turned the Dragon Mark that Dragon Markers wore on their foreheads into the SlaveMark. Any human wearing it would be a slave, forever. It could not come off.
And so it was that a mark of glory and honor became a mark of shame.
Speedfast changed his name when he grew up, to Grimbeard. Grimbeard the Gastly.
He was a wonderful Viking, if not a wonderful person.
He was the best burglar, swordsman, chess player, and eater around.
He had a wife, Chinhilda, and soon he had a son, Thugheart, who was the spitting image of Grimbeard himself.
Then he had another son, Chucklehead, who was the spitting image of Thugheart.
And then...his wife bore a third son.
They took him to the Naming Dame, and she pronounced him a runt.
All runts, according to Viking law, are to be either set out to sea on a little basket or left on a mountainside for wild dragons' supper.
And all runts in the Hooligan tribe are to be named Hiccup.
Chinhilda begged him not to kill the baby, and Grimbeard did not want a public scene.
So they had an elaborate and very public naming ceremony, and named the child Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Second.
But that night, Grimbeard took his son from his wife's arms, and loading him up in a basket took him to a mountain on an island far away.
And left him.
Without a second glance.
Without a second thought.
What he was thinking about was breakfast.
When Chinhilda woke, she screamed when she realized what her husband had done, and snatched her axe from the wall and gave a very good try at beheading him.
He was too lazy to hold her off for long, though, and called his men to take her away.
As she was dragged, screaming and sobbing, from his presence, she called down a curse on him.
Then she went and took her boat and began searching. She died of a broken heart on a beach, still calling for her son. "Hiccup! Where are you?"
Since that day, the beach in question has been called The Beach of the Broken Heart, and some say her ghost is still there, calling for her lost child.
Grimbeard couldn't care less. But he did find that all the things he had loved most and was best at no longer gave him the same feeling of satisfaction.
He flogged his cooks and ordered new ones, he fought some more and stole some more, he played a game of chess daily.
But nothing was the same since his wife had cursed him.
And his son was dead anyways.
Right?