Chapter 2
"I'm noooot sure this is the best idea, Snotlout." Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, trainer of dragons and slayer of the Green Death was eying the ominous, creaking rig that was fashioned between two houses with a measure of skepticism-and even possibly fear, if he got right down to it. He was sitting atop Toothless, who was currently perched on the roof of the Bjorn the Butcher.
"What are you talking about?" said Snotlout, waving his arms exuberantly as he sat there atop his hovering Monstrous Nightmare. "Look, we're tired of the two-foot-touch rule, right?"
"I'm not tired of the two-foot-touch rule," Ruffnut insisted from the neck of the Zippleback she shared with her brother. "It works just fine."
"Yeah, it works fine until you take a look at the fact that it's practically an honor system," insisted Tuffnut. "The only way people don't cheat and actually make sure their dragon's feet touch the goal points is if we have someone watching and that means that one person has to sit out of the race."
"Yeah, but that means if everyone's racing, we get away with cheating all the time," Ruffnut pointed out.
"Exactly!" Tuffnut pointed out. "The way it is now other people can cheat, too! How is that fair?"
"Technically speaking," Hiccup pointed out with a measure of amusement in his voice, "If everyone can cheat, it means everyone has the same advantage, which makes it fair."
"It's only fair if we're the only ones that can cheat," insisted Tuffnut. "Duh."
"Well, when you put it that way..." said Hiccup, as if he'd been persuaded.
"While I agree we have to take problems of practicality into consideration in regards to the current rule system, what I think Hiccup is trying to say is that the structural integrity of this racing hoop is...questionable," Fishlegs said pointedly, gesturing at the structure Snotlout wanted to employ as a replacement for the two-foot touch system. "It also gives the less maneuverable dragons a distinct disadvantage, meaning they might crash into the hoops, and well..."
"Yeah, Snotlout, is it supposed to be a death trap on purpose?" asked Astrid teasingly. "Is that part of the game, that if we don't get through the hoops, they collapse on us and kill us instantly? I guess that's one way of losing."
"Well, what do you guys suggest then?" Snotlout pouted. "Our current system isn't exactly working, is it?"
"We could employ a new rule system where we time everyone and calculate the statistical probability of each advantage they have based on their propensity to cheat and weight the times with-" Fishlegs started.
"Or," Hiccup suggested, interrupting Fishlegs before the twins had their brains overloaded. "We can find a new place to race? Maybe head out a little farther? There's gotta be something nearby that has natural hoops and obstacles we can fly through that we haven't found yet. Only with less chance of it-"
Right then one of the ropes in Snotlout's engineering travesty snapped from the tension of holding up the barrels, which caused something of a devastating chain reaction.
"-doing that," Hiccup finished flatly.
The teens watched in horror as wood snapped and makeshift metal springs shot off in all directions. Fortunately, no one was on the street below, but that didn't make the breakdown of the racing hoop any less dangerous. Just as it was about to fall, one of the ropes whipped out and caught Hiccup by the side of the face and while the force wasn't so much that he was hurt that badly, the shock of it made him fall right of the saddle, at just the right angle for his prosthetic to unhook from its coupling. There was a rush of wind around him and he caught a glimpse of Toothless looking down, panicked, over the edge of the roof as he fell. Expecting to hit the street with probably-survivable-but-very-painful force, he closed his eyes tight, but instead of smacking onto cobblestones he landed on something much softer.
Well it was sort of softer. Marginally softer.
"Snotlout, go take the other ones apart before they kill somebody!" shouted Astrid, right in his ear, and Hiccup opened his eyes to find her face hovering next to his. That rush of air had to have been her and Stormfly launching off the roof to get under him to catch him and now they were hovering in the air and gaining some altitude again. Her arms were wrapped around him, which explained the softer-than-the-ground-but-not-quite-soft thing. Her biceps didn't exactly have the texture of fluffy little clouds.
"Right! Okay! Sorry, ma'am," squeaked the guilty Snotlout in a pitiful voice, flying off to dismantle the others.
"Are you okay?" she asked Hiccup gently, only relinquishing her grip on him enough to fuss over the welt on his cheek with her hand.
"Yeah, uuuh. It didn't hit me that hard. Just surprised me."
"Are you sure? It looks like it's swelling up..."
"I'll just put a cold fish on it and it'll be fine." Good old fashioned Viking medicine, cold fish.
"Maybe you should go to Gothi. What if it knocked your head around harder than you think and-"
"It's not that bad," he insisted and he patted his leg. "I can definitely say I've been through worse."
That was when he caught the look in her eyes and realized the being-through-worse was possibly the cause for concern. Even with all they'd gotten up to since he'd lost his leg, he hadn't really been hurt that badly again. Barring the thing with Alvin, he hadn't ever really been in that much danger with anything they'd done, or the two of them had been in said danger together. Was she afraid of it? Was the idea of him getting hurt so terrible to her that it made Astrid-tough-as-nails Astrid-actually fret? That was some visible fretting going on, he was sure of it. In fact, the way her fingers brushed against his face started to seem a bit less like she was checking for injuries and a bit more like...something else. It seemed a bit more like those feelings that had made her kiss him after he'd taken down a dragon the size of a mountain, a bit like the feelings that'd had the both of them clinging to each other in the dark and the cold of the avalanche.
It seemed a bit more like the feelings the two of them kept dancing around.
"Astrid and Hiccup! Sitting in the tree! Something, something, I can't spell~" Tuffnut started to chant from where he and Ruff where perched on their roof, and Hiccup and Astrid immediately scrambled to maintain some distance between the two of them, a difficult task when they were sitting on the same dragon.
"Uh, thanks. Fooor..."
"No problem," she said briskly. Then for good measure, she punched him in the shoulder almost hard enough to knock him off of Stormfly, but despite the slight pain, it got a smile out of him. The punches on the shoulder were quickly becoming her way of showing affection by showing the opposite of affection.
Astrid let him off on the roof and after reassuring Toothless for a moment, he climbed back onto his dragon, re-docking his foot and rubbing the dragon on the head to get him calmed down from the scare. Flying Stormfly around so that she could get a solid glare in at the twins, Astrid settled on the roof. There was a yowl of mild pain in the distance from Snotlout and the sound of something snapping, followed by, "I'm okay!"
"Hiccup!" called a voice from the ground, before they could head off to watch Snotlout dismantle his unintentional death traps. (It was bound to be entertaining and on a tiny island like Berk, you got your kicks where you could get them.)
Hiccup spotted his father and Gobber down below.
"Hey, dad. Hey, Gobber," he called out.
"Hiccup, what is this mess?" Stoick asked, looking at the mass of wood and rope wreckage on the ground.
"Snotlout is going to clean it up."
"What happened to your face?" Stoick asked with concern.
"Uh...Snotlout happened to it. Don't worry, it looks worse than it is. I'm gonna go put a cold fish on it."
"Did you get Snotlout back for it?" Stoick was of the school of thought that the teens could all handle their own interpersonal conflicts, mainly via lots of mutual hitting. He didn't care how it was settled as long as it was settled at all, without anyone else intervening.
In the distance, Snotlout could be heard yelling, "Ow! The pain!"
Hiccup nodded his head from side to side, his expression half-sympathetic, half-amused. "I think he's currently getting himself back for it, technically speaking. What'cha up to?"
"Everything," Gobber said. "We've got to get more ore smelted to use for steel for making the last of the weapons we lost when the armory went up-"
"The grain harvest has to be brought in so we can get some more ale brewed-"
"Bick and Bock are bickering again and that's got to get settled-"
"And the next fishing run needs to be organized, which means getting Gurk to make new nets, which means getting Ingrid to make more rope-" Stoick broke off into a sigh. "Sometimes it seems like there's not enough time in the day. Even with Thornado making my work easier."
"Technically speaking, there really aren't that many daylight hours because of Berk's latitude, so that's very true," Fishlegs said.
"D'you need help with anything, dad?" Hiccup asked, just a bit hopefully. In the past, his father had rarely trusted him with anything important, but now he at least trusted him with the important things that had to do with the dragons. Maybe he'd let him help with the rest of it.
"None of it has anything to do with dragons, son. You go about your day. If you can help with dinner later, I'd appreciate it, though."
Hiccup's face fell almost imperceptibly. "Sure thing, dad." Turning to the others, he went on, "I'm gonna go get a cold fish and tell Snotlout where we're meeting up. Old Eagle Rock sound good? I'll meet you guys there and then we'll start looking for more places to race."
"Heck yeah, let's go," said Tuffnut as the teens all took to the air.
"You know, Stoick," said Gobber as Hiccup flew off over the rooftops. "Maybe he could have helped with somethin'. You do have the day booked up an' there's only one you to go around."
"Who, Hiccup? Helping with my chief's duties? Are you serious?"
"Well, he's done a good job with the dragons, hasn't he? Stopped Berk from getting attacked anymore, and he's helped them get along with people, for the most part. And we all know Mildew was the one that framed them to get you to send them away so it was clever how he snooped around and figured out how he did it, even if no one can prove it. He's become a mite more responsible since he met that dragon o' his. Maybe he could help sort out the trouble with Bick and Bock or help organize the fishing run while you do everything else."
"He has gotten better, Gobber, but he's still flits around like a hummingbird sometimes. I just can't know for sure that he'll stay focused on any task I give him if it doesn't have to do with dragons or something else that naturally interests him-and that could result in utter disaster and more work for me in the long run."
"I'm just saying, he seems to have come into his own, don't you think?" Gobber said. "Maybe it's time you start trusting him with more responsibility. He's got to take your place someday and how's he to do that if he doesn't get a chance to learn the whole business of chiefing?"
Stoick sighed. "I know, Gobber, I know. He's done so much better for himself in the last few months...but I just don't think he's ready for the big stuff. Not yet. I'm still getting use to the idea of him being...you know. Not...the way he was."
"Okay, well, don't expect me to pick up the slack," Gobber said as the two walked away towards the fields. "Not with what happened the last time and not all the forgework I've got to do. Magnus' parents still haven't forgiven me..."
Where Hiccup was perched with Toothless, hidden on a nearby roof-where he'd ducked with his dragon the moment he heard the two older Vikings start to talk about him-he looked down at his dragon with a crestfallen expression on his face.
"I've done better, haven't I?" he said quietly to his dragon. "Stopped a three-hundred year war, got everyone to get along, outsmarted a crazy Viking-why doesn't he trust me more?"
Toothless let out a low, crooning noise of comfort and Hiccup patted his head again, comforted by his dragon's sympathy and the boundless faith in him he knew was there.
"I guess I should get that cold fish and then go get Snotlout, huh? I'll make sure there's some cold fish in it for you, too."
"You seem distracted."
"What? What makes you think that?"
"You just lost three races, one of them to Fishlegs, and nearly ran into the same rock formation three separate times. Toothless looks like he's ready to throw you off him just to wake you up."
"Oh," Hiccup responded, then he leaned down and rubbed his fingers against his dragon's scales. "Sorry, bud. Guess I'm just a bit lost in my own thoughts."
Astrid and him were taking a break from racing with their dragons, perched on a rocky outcropping as the others zipped in and out of the crumbling columns of the new aerial playground they'd found. They were a good way away from the island right now, in Berk territory though in seas most of their ships avoided because of the geography. The sun was bright here and the constant breeze made for rather spectacular updrafts that made flying unpredictable and thus about ten times more fun.
"What has you so distracted?" Astrid's voice was touched with the concern of earlier. "Are you sure that rope didn't knock you around too hard...?"
"No, no, Astrid, I'm fine. It's not that, it's-" What was it exactly? "It's just my dad. Things have gotten so much better between us, after I met Toothless, after I saved the tribe. He's trusted me with more and more responsibility, especially when it comes to the dragons. But he still doesn't trust me with anything else, like when it has to do with his work as chief. Most people that are the son or the daughter of their tribe's chief, by the time they're my age, they've already been taught the ropes. They've already been trusted with some heavy responsibility."
He turned to give Astrid a somewhat mournful look. "My dad still doesn't trust me with the big stuff."
"He trusts you with the dragons. That's pretty big," Astrid pointed out.
"Yeah, and it's just the dragons. Nothing else. It's like he trusts me with one of the only things I'm really, visibly good at, but he won't give me a chance to prove I can be good at the other things, too. How am I supposed to become chief someday if I don't get a chance to learn how to do everything? How am I-" He cut himself off.
"Well?" Astrid prompted.
"How am I supposed to become the next chief if the last one doesn't believe in me?" Hiccup finally said quietly.
Astrid sat there in silence for a little while, mulling it over. Finally, she said, "Maybe you're not supposed to be the next chief."
Hiccup's face fell.
"Maybe I'm supposed to become the next chief," Astrid went on.
Hiccup grinned. "You know, that probably isn't the worst idea. Maybe if the day comes that I have to take over and I don't know what I'm doing, I can give it over to you. You'd be good at it."
"And that-right there-is why I think that no matter what happens, you'll do what's best for Berk," Astrid pointed out. "Because you're serious, aren't you."
Hiccup looked at her, silent, and then nodded. "You'd be really good at it, Astrid. You understand everyone on the island, you're driven, you're brave, you're responsible-"
"Someday, Hiccup, you'll either know what to do or you won't," Astrid interrupted. "And if you don't, you'll make sure whoever leads Berk does know what they're doing and that they're the best person for the job. No matter what, you'll make sure we're taken care of and you'll do your best by the village and in the end, that's all that matters. I don't know why your dad doesn't believe in you yet, but I do, and I think the important thing is that you believe in yourself."
Hiccup couldn't stop a supremely touched expression from coming over his face. "Astrid, I-"
"Hiccup! Astrid! Come take a look at this!" shouted Snotlout from not far off.
"It's not good!" shouted Fishlegs in a panicked voice.
The two teens immediately took to the air with their dragons, their previous discussion forgotten and made their way to the others with a flurry of air. The others had landed on a small rocky outcropping, barely an island. A few scrubby trees were there but other than that, there wasn't really any life on the island...
At least, there wasn't any life other than the massive dragon that was sprawled on the rocky surface. The Monstrous Nightmare was breathing shallow breaths, obviously unwell, and the uprooted trees and bushes around it made it clear it had crashed there.
Hiccup squinted as he and Toothless went in for a landing. "Is that..."
"I think it is," said Astrid, her breath hitched.
"It's Barbtooth!" Fishlegs insisted next to the dragon. "And he's hurt real bad!"
"C'mon, Barbtooth, stay with us, buddy," Snotlout said mournfully, rubbing the dragon's nose with a gentleness he would have been ashamed to display any other time. This was a family dragon, though, the one that belonged to his father, Spitelout.
Snotlout turned to Hiccup. "Dad was a little worried this morning because he didn't come home last night, but he can be out hunting for a long time sometimes. We think he likes to go out pretty far. If we'd known he was out here, hurt and alone..."
Unhooking his prosthetic leg, Hiccup jumped off Toothless before the dragon had even properly touched down, running over to the Nightmare and looking him over.
"Axe-wound," he said, frowning as he saw a big, nasty cut on the dragon's side, caked with dirt. "He must have tried to fly home after, but he was too far out, too hurt and exhausted, so he crashed here."
Hiccup immediately started directing the others. "Snotlout, I need you to fly home and tell the village. Your dad and my dad need to know to send some dragons to pick Barbtooth up. He's too weak to fly."
"Don't worry Barbtooth, I'll go get help, okay? I'm gonna go get dad. We'll be back for you, big guy," Snotlout insisted with one last consoling pat of the dragon's snout, and then he was off, flying Hookfang back in the direction of Berk as fast as the two could fly.
"Astrid, I need you to soak the cloth you use to clean your axe in the water. He must have set himself on fire, so that helped cauterize the wound, but we have to clean it up a bit more. Ruff, Tuff, I need your water-skins; he's probably really thirsty and needs some fresh water to drink. Fishlegs, see if Meatlug can dive in and get him a fish. He has to be starving after being stuck here without having a chance to hunt this morning."
Hiccup was barely paying attention as Astrid handed him the wet cloth, his eyes locked onto the Nightmare's bright, yellow one, noting that the pupil was contracted in pain and fear.
"It's okay. I promise, big fella, it's gonna be okay. We're gonna get you home."
The dragon made a mournful, crooning noise as Fishleg approached with a fish generously caught by Meatlug and tossed it to the dragon. Though he was weak, the dragon managed to swallow it in one bite. Then he lapped up the water offered by the twins, whose faces were a mirror of concern.
"Okay, everyone, back up. This is going to hurt, so he might set himself on fire instinctually."
"Hiccup-" Astrid said, holding out her hand, about to caution him to be careful, but already he was pressing the cloth against the dragons side, trying to clear out the dirt and muck that was making it hard for the wound to close up properly and making it infected. It wasn't pleasant for Hiccup and it certainly wasn't pleasant for the dragon, who let out a pained screech and set itself on fire. Hiccup rolled away, the cloth still stuck to the dragon's side, but that turned out to be for the best, as the cloth burned away, the muck and infected fluids burned with it. After the fire died down, the wound in the dragon's side was a little cleaner than before, and it settled down, letting out little miserable noises, shooting a look Hiccup's way that was half-accusatory, half-apologetic. Even though it was cleaner now, the cut was still an angry red, and Hiccup placed his now-blistered hand gently against the dragon's side as he looked the cut over again.
"Hiccup, your hands-"
"Don't worry about it," the teen said, eyeing the dragon's wound and ignoring his own. "I'll put some cold fish on it later."
"Who could have done something like this?" said Fishlegs fretfully.
The only Viking on the island that would dare raise an axe to a dragon was maybe Mildew. Even the Vikings that had concerns about the wildness of the dragons no longer held the ill will for them that they used to.
Only Mildew would hurt the dragons and there was no way he could have gotten all the way out here.
"All I know," said Hiccup, thinking carefully "is that it wasn't someone from Berk."
"The Bog-Burglars," said Stoick, as Hiccup sat there on the steps of the Great Hall, his hands getting an herbal ointment slathered all over them by Gothi. "Their territory is in that direction. Barbtooth must have gotten too close and been attacked by them. They've gotten word of the dragon peace, but that doesn't mean they're willing to adhere to it themselves-they're a distrustful lot, even if they're close allies with us. I'd hoped if the dragons didn't fly out past Berk that it wouldn't be a problem."
"After getting attacked, he must have tried to make it home but crashed before he could get here," said Hiccup, wincing as Gothi silently wrapped his hands up in bandages.
"How's he doing?" Stoick asked. "Spitelout was nearly beside himself when Snotlout came with the message."
"Better, now that he's home," answered Hiccup. "His color's better, his scales aren't flaking as much, and his appetite's improving already. We'll have to keep an eye on him tonight, but It looks like he should heal up okay."
"You did good, son," said Stoick proudly. "If you kids hadn't acted as quickly..."
"I don't even wanna think about it," croaked Hiccup, looking down from where they were sitting. The thought of that poor dragon, dying hurt and thirsty and hungry on a rock in the middle of nowhere, far from his home and from his Viking, made Hiccup sick. Down in the village below, Hiccup could see Barbtooth's tail sticking out of the little shed that had been built months ago next to Spitelout's home, wagging weakly. Spitelout was rolling a barrel of fish in, looking concerned and Snotlout was peeking through the door behind him, making no attempts at all to hide the fear and fondness on his face. Hookfang was behind the teenage Viking, staring into the shed with an expression on his reptilian face that was somehow almost identical to Snotlout's despite the two being entirely different species.
"We have to do something about this, dad. The dragons don't know any better. What if more of them fly too close to the Bog-Burglars' island when they're looking for food? They've learned to spread out so they leave enough fish around the island for us and it could get them killed. We have no way of really teaching them that it's dangerous."
Stoick sighed and pushed his helmet back slightly with a beefy hand, scratching his head.
"We could-"
"And we can't lock them up again."
"I wasn't going to say that," Stoick insisted sharply. "What I was going to say is that we could have a convocation with the Bog-Burglars. Bertha, their chieftainess, she's...well, she's about as hard-headed as a Rockhead Whale but sometimes she can be reasoned with. I've been meaning to go out and have a proper meeting with her since you managed to bring peace between us and the dragons, but it's been one thing after another since then."
"Okay, so that works. You can go, explain the situation better, tell them the dragons won't attack them if they don't attack the dragons, problem solved."
"The only problem is there's too much to be done here. The fishing fleet, the harvest, the squabbles going on-all that has to be settled and it has to be settled soon. I just don't have the time to go meet with Bertha."
Hiccup perked up. "Hey, dad...what if I did it?"
"Took care of the harvest and all that?"
"No, meeting with Bertha! It involves the dragons, doesn't it? Who else could explain to them how to get along with them than the first person that learned to get along with them?"
"Son, diplomacy is a tricky business, even more so with the Bog-Burglars. Bertha can be...aggressive."
"Just send some other people with me. We can handle any aggression. We're Vikings, we're all fluent in aggression."
"It's not that kind of-listen, Hiccup. It's just going to have to wait until I have the time."
"More dragons could be hurt by then, dad. More could die." He stared up at his father, plaintively. "And I need to learn to do this. I need you to trust me to learn these things or I'm never going to be able to be a good chief someday. If you don't, I won't be able to do the best I can for Berk."
"What about your hands?" It sounded like Stoick was scraping the bottom of the barrel for excuses not to send him.
"It's just surface burns, right Gothi?" Hiccup said to the elder, and she nodded at Stoick in return. "I've gotten worse in the forge. Besides, we can't go by air or we'll spook them. We'll have to go by ship and have the dragons fly along. My hands'll be healed up by the time I get there, especially after Gothi works her magic."
That earned Hiccup a pat on the head from the elder.
There was a long silence as Stoick stared at his son, considering all the possible outcomes and how absolutely, abjectly awful some of them might be. Just for a moment, Gothi's eyes caught his, and the elder tilted her head in a gesture that said 'Well? What are you waiting for? Trust the boy.'
"They're allies with us, right?" Hiccup went on cajolingly. "Maybe contentious ones, but they won't hurt the son of the chief when they know that could mean all-out war, and dealing with them can't be all that different from dealing with people here. I've gotten better at that, haven't I? Especially where the dragons are concerned."
Finally, Stoick sighed, "Alright, alright, but you're not going alone. I'm sending a group along with you and Phlegma is going to be in it. If things start to take a bad turn, let her take over the negotiations. Is that understood?"
Hiccup grinned a broad grin. "I won't let you down, dad."
"Wahoo! We're going on an adventure!" Tuffnut shouted as the group got their dragons ready to head out.
Hiccup had convinced his father to send his friends along with the groups, reasoning that they were some of the best fliers on the island from having the most experience. Always good to have in a pinch. Not that he expected any pinches to occur, nope, this diplomatic mission was going to be pinch-free.
"It's not so much an adventure as us going somewhere else and me talking a whole lot and then us coming home."
"Talking? You're just going to be talking? But that's so boring," said Ruffnut with disappointment.
"Boring is what you're aiming for with diplomacy," Hiccup pointed out.
"You talk a lot at home. You talk all the time," said Tuffnut. "Why do you have to go and do it there?"
"Astrid, can you explain the finer points of diplomacy to everybody?"
"Listen up," Astrid said, "Hiccup has to talk them out of hurting our dragons if they stray close to their islands. If we try to fight them, it could lead to all-out war. So he has to talk them into it. It's not that difficult to understand."
"Thank yooou," said, Hiccup, trying to figure out how to hook his bag to Toothless' saddle when it pretty much hurt to press down his fingers on anything too hard. Astrid quickly stepped in to do it for him.
"Guys, this is important," said Snotlout, in a surprising show of support, his tone oddly sober. "Barbtooth could have died. What if one of our dragons flies out too close to the Bog-Burglars' island and they never come back?"
There was a surprisingly serious silence that passed through the group of young Vikings, during which, Fishlegs instinctively reached down and hugged Meatlug. It was broken by Tuffnut sighing and saying, "Okay, so we'll go to the boring thing so you can say boring stuff. But only 'cause they're too dumb and uncool to realize how awesome the dragons are, and somebody's got to teach them how to be cool-and who better than me?"
Ruffnut rolled her eyes at her brother, and they all took to the air to move out.
"C'mon guys, we're going to have our dragons fly alongside the ships and island-hop until we're close. Then we're going to leave our dragons on a nearby island while we go on the ship to meet up with the Bog-Burglars. I'll talk them out of killing the dragons and it'll all be fixed up." Hiccup shrugged. "Should be easy enough, right?"
"I want you to make this as difficult for them as possible." The voice was a ragged one, one that you didn't want growling at you in the dark.
"Are you sure they're coming?"
"Of course they're coming. Your man heard at the trading post that one of the dragons was taken back to Berk injured. Do you think they'll stand for that, soft-hearted, dragon-loving fools that they are?"
"But s-"
"Ma'am," the growling voice insisted.
"Ma'am, there's no guarantee that they'll send-"
"At this time of year, Berk's grain harvest is due, the ale has to be made, the fishing fleet has to be equipped, and there are a problems all over the island-happens every year like clockwork. Everyone knows that it's when Stoick can't leave the island to meet other chiefs. He won't have time to come himself, but he'll realize he won't have to, especially since the problem concerns dragons."
"Understood, ma'am. Very cunning."
"Cunning is what I do. Now, do as I told you. Make it as difficult for them as possible and make sure to split the group up as soon as you can."
"Yes, ma'am."
"They're not going to know what hit them. Not until it's far, far too late, and then?" the voice dipped down into a low rumble, "Then Stoick's son will be mine."