From now on, I'll answer questions I see in the reviews that I think are important (and won't spoil anything or be addressed in coming chapters) in the beginning of each chapter: Hiccup is 12 in the flashbacks as opposed to 16 in the regular story (the regular story takes place at the time of the first movie). Not exactly an Evil Hiccup story, but he's warped and certainly not a good guy, so you take your own interpretation.


Chapter 3: A Well-Earned Rest

Hiccup, breathing heavily, paused before the door to his own house. Staring reluctantly at the light filtering out from under the door, Hiccup went through his list of options for the fifth time. Firstly, he could try and sneak in without alerting his father, but this was unlikely to work, due to his father's tendency to stay awake until the late hours, stoking the fire. Hiccup shook his head at the thought―he was in no hurry to fall under his father's watchful eye.

Secondly, he could try his luck finding a spare bed in another house. There were few vikings his age, and an even smaller number who he would consider friends―but no doubt that feeling was one-sided. However, the few that he had known to be more tolerant of his status of "useless" would surely not be given permission to let him in. Both himself and his peers were verging on the age of adulthood, but none had begun living on their own as of yet. Hiccup passed on this idea as well.

Thirdly, he could spend the night curled up in a shed, or find a comfortable spot outside to sleep. But the night on Berk always brought a chill with it, and this night was no exception. Hiccup looked around, his eyes falling upon a patch of grass that he had often slept on, when he had been rejected from every other house. It was never unusual for a house to be under repair after a dragon raid, thus it was never unusual for a viking to sleep outside, or at a comrade's house, or even in the Great Hall. Hiccup, unfortunately, had had this phenomenon occur often. Either to avoid his father's rage, or because no family would hold him overnight while his home was under repair, he had become accustomed to the frigid nights.

Hiccup scratched the back of his head―as he did so, he realized how stiff he was. After a long day of smithing with gobber, then nearly two miles of a mountainous path to the cove, he was exhausted. But he pushed himself every day to work more―invent more―create more. Afterwards, he had to return the two-mile trek home. Even the most stout viking would be well-deserving of a hearty supper and a warm bed.

Hiccup grimaced. He knew which option he would have to choose, but he still delayed―racking his mind for a fourth option, an option he had missed, a chance that a different choice still remained.

He knew he was prolonging the inevitable. He walked through the doorway.

The warmth of the hearthfire in the center of the room filled the room―almost masking the unwelcoming chill Hiccup felt as he looked upon his father's broad shoulders and bowed back. His father gave no indication that he had heard Hiccup enter, and poked at the coals at the base of the fire. Hanging in front of Stoick, there was a near-empty pot of stew over the fire. One wooden bowl lay on the table, with the bare remains of a lonely meal recently eaten. Next to it, to Hiccup's surprise, was an empty bowl. Hiccup paused, and wondered if it was meant for him; he considered retreating to his room, but an uncomfortable emptiness gnawed at his stomach.

After a few more seconds of hesitation, Hiccup moved. With a quick stride, he walked into his father's line of vision and picked up the bowl. Hiccup paused, then moved to collect the stew remaining over the fire. As he did so, he heard a breathy sigh, barely audible over the snapping and crackling of the fire.

"Where were you today?"

Hiccup heard, but couldn't process the words. He raised his head, meeting his father's deep emerald eyes. They were wise and expectant, waiting for his answer.

"Wh-What?"

"I know you heard me, boy. Where were you, getting home so late?" Stoick grumbled at his child, his patience visibly waning.

"I-I was...smithing with Gobber." Hiccup hated himself for the stutter, and the weak answer. He found himself with a dry mouth, as he always seemed to have while speaking to his father. It tasted bitter and disgusting.

"Really." Stoick pierced through him with what seemed like an all-knowing voice. "I find that unlikely, since I was just in a strategy meeting with him, and the rest of the family leaders...for two years. Stoick's eyes drilled into Hiccup like needles.

"I...Well, I was just sharpening...some of the weapons…" Hiccup's heart fell at the obviousness of the lie, but Stoick seemed to have lost interest in the conversation, his heart elsewhere. At least he hadn't begun a one sided shouting rant...at least, not yet. Hiccup hoped to keep it that way.

"I received some news some news from trader Johann today, it seems that my brother was killed in a dragon raid." Hiccup's ears perked up at the notion that the trader had stopped by at their island, but kept his eyes on his supper as Stoick kept speaking. "It has come to my attention that you, Hiccup, will―in time―be the one to receive the duties of chief, as it had my father, and his father before him. You are my only heir, and you must be prepared to carry, and one day pass the title of chief."

Hiccup swallowed, carefully thinking his words over before he let them leave his mouth. "Why are you telling me this now, Dad? Can't someone else take the role? The Jorgensons―"

"Where is your pride?" bellowed Stoick, like a rolling thunder. "They may share some blood with us, but we are the ones with the status of chief. Our family line has stayed strong, just as our viking blood keeps us here." His voice was steadily rising. "You will learn to fight dragons and forget your insubordinate thoughts. Do not think that your sneakery has gone unnoticed." Hiccup's heart dropped, and his blood ran cold as the seawater surrounding Berk. "Gobber has told me how you watch his smithing, how you still sketch blasphemous ideas of your own. I gave you an apprenticeship in hope that you would learn discipline and the viking way. You may not be the foolish son I once had, but you certainly have not changed into a viking. You will begin dragon training along with the others, but do not even begin to hope that this conversation is over! Your reluctance disappoints me, son."

Stoick stood, no longer looking towards Hiccup. He began to walk to his room, mumbling quietly to himself "It seems I have no choice but to discuss moving things along with them…" Hiccup had no inkling of what his father could be referencing. As the bedroom door slammed shut, Hiccup felt his entire body relax, like a muscle being stretched.

There are two kinds of anger. The first, most common, is red―it burns like a fire and drives rash children to violence, or ignorant laymen to a grudge. This anger begins in the stomach, sparking and burning outwards, using and consuming its wielder. The second, less common anger is an icy white. It is a cold, cruel anger that submerges its victims and brings them to do truly terrible things. While the first anger begins in the stomach, this second kind begins in the brain, and cascades downward like a waterfall until the person is full of this cold cruelty. This anger never leaves, only subsides and flows differently until someday, it crystalizes like ice―and shatters like glass. This anger filled Hiccup as his body relaxed, filling him to the brim and making him feel empty.

Hiccup looked down at his supper, no longer hungry. He tried to take another bite, to at least fill his empty stomach, but his tongue could taste nothing. He stood and walked to the stairs to his room, then walked up them quietly, hoping his father was already asleep. Hiccup felt a daze of grey color passing around him, and a wave of exhaustion hit him like a punch. He found himself on his bed, barely conscious as the physical and emotional stress came crashing down on him all at once. Crawling underneath his blanket, he passed out nearly instantly. As he fell into a deep sleep, his body finally relaxed―he finally escaped the terrors of the world. He slept deeply, dreaming of his past in a well-earned rest.

….….…

Hiccup caught himself, turning his collapse into a strange-looking trip. Feeling fuzzy-headed, he looked down and realized the severity of his wounds. His heart beating at a fast pace, he muddled through his near-drugged state and attempted to find a solution to his plight.

To give perspective on the child's appearance, only this can be said. He was wretched. Many vikings had taken near-fatal wounds that had been less grievous than the injuries that young Hiccup was currently wearing. His left arm was bleeding from a gash left by the Shadow's first attack, his right arm was bruising from the grip of the Shadow's teeth, as well as blisters running up his arm like snakes. Moving downwards, his right leg was slit along the side, and it bled in a worrisome way. The still-glowing knife on the ground just feet from his blistered feet; his shoes had been torn during the fight.

He began to panic. He had seen the kinds of scars that the viking families prided themselves for receiving, but he wanted no part in that kind of discussion. As Hiccup's adrenaline rush faded, his stress and pain replaced it. He rushed to where he had left his torn blanket, and began to attempt to tie it over one of the cuts. He had barely placed the blanket over the wound, however, before it was soaked in the bloody waterfall.

Hiccup's breathing was becoming shallow, and he began to sway on his feet. Stumbling slightly, he walked slowly to his victim's corpse. He stood, staring at the motionless body with nothing but air and a glowing knife between them, as he frantically whispered to himself.

"What can I do? I-I don't want to die! I'm soaked with blood though…" He looked down at himself, and a small, rational corner of his mind took control of his body. Hiccup was nearly unconscious, nearly dead, and barely able to move or think rationally, but his mind moved past it all. As if controlled by a puppeteer, he moved.

Mechanically, Hiccup reached for his searing-hot knife. His hand flinched backwards at the heat―the handle's leather covering could not shut out all of the heat coursing through the metal. Regardless, his mind pushed. His hand moved. A vague tickle in Hiccup's mind alerted him to the pain running into his hand. His mind ignored it.

Lifting the knife up, Hiccup heard Gobber's voice in his head from a memory many years ago. "We don't have a choice. He might bleed out by the time we get him to Gothi―lay him here." Hiccup watched the image play out inside his head, as he had watched it, years ago. "The metal's hot enough. Get something in his mouth, or he'll be screaming bloody murder." Gobber approached the injured viking with a red-hot strip of metal. He lifted it, then placed it near the man's injury. "Ready? Grit yer teeth, son." Gobber pressed the metal to the man's wound. There was steam, a smell, and a scream muffled by teeth and a dirty shirt, but after Gobber backed away, the man was no longer bleeding.

Hiccup's quickly fading consciousness watched as he moved the knife to his left forearm. He held himself fast, but he had begun to shiver in the Berk air―not to mention the loss of blood. His mind took control. Gritting his teeth, he pressed the hot metal to his arm.

In his dazed state, the pain took longer to register, but when it did―and it undoubtedly did―it felt like hell to the boy. His arm was wracked with a burning, painful feeling. The pain was so great that with a flush of adrenaline, Hiccup woke from his half-conscious state. Looking at his arm and seeing the blistered skin, he nearly fainted away. He realized, however, that he had emergency-treated the wound. No matter how much it hurt, it was no longer bleeding.

Hiccup looked downwards, towards his gashed leg, and grimaced, bringing the knife down, close to the wound. Nearly an inch away, and he already felt the heat radiating off of the blade.

"How on earth did I get myself to put this on my arm? This is going to hurt!" Hiccup said out loud―not to anyone in particular, just to reassure himself, to hear a voice. Unfortunately, the strange, daze-like sensation he had been feeling until seconds ago seemed to have retreated to the dark recesses of his mind. He gritted his teeth, and braced himself.

Pressing the superheated knife to his leg, Hiccup swore like a drunken sailor and a hardened viking rolled into one. Gnashing his teeth, he nearly bit off his tongue, and tasted the blood well up. After what he deemed an appropriate amount of time, Hiccup ripped the knife from his leg and flung it into the pond nearby. It hit the surface with an angry hiss, then sunk into the shallow edge of the water.

Breathing heavily, Hiccup sat down. Trembling, he laid down to rest. The fatigue of the past hour had accumulated, and all at once it hit him, like a charging dragon. He felt pain beyond anything he had ever gone through and exhaustion rivaling many days worth of fatigue.

He suddenly jerked himself off the ground. He had to get home. His father would likely have finished helping with initial repairs by now, but would he notice Hiccup's absence from their house? Even if he didn't notice now, if his son was found missing overnight, what would he think? What could Hiccup say in defence?

Fighting through the pain Hiccup stood―weakly―and attempted to look over the walls for handholds, or anything that he could use to escape this nature-made trap. Inspecting the walls, he observed a weak, easily broken type of rock interspersed between layers of rough, unbreakable rock. An hour later, with no other leads on escape, Hiccup began attempting to claw handholds into these weak layers.

Quickly, Hiccup found how inconvenient and painful doing so would be. Even though he had found a convenient boulder jutting out to climb on, and what seemed to be a crevice opening to the surface, the space between them was still much too far. Scraping at the walls of his prison did nothing but bloody his fingertips and tire him even more. He left the wall for a short amount of time to try and retrieve his knife, but when he found it, it had warped and bent in the cold water. After scraping out a barely usable foothold with the knife, it snapped with a sharp ringing noise.

Barely awake, barely conscious, and fading more every second, Hiccup was at his wit's end. A cold wind blew through him, ruffling the grass and forcing ripples across the water's glassy surface. The chill that ran through him seemed to spark a feeling of deja vu―a similarly hopeless, exhausted state he had been in. His mind ran backwards, attempting to figure out how he had slipped into the trance-like state earlier.

He shivered in the cold light of the moon, and delved deeper into his mind―trying to find the vague feeling of freezing warmth, the cold unknowingness, trying to find the entrance.

In what seemed to be a perfect coincidence, three occurrences showed themselves like rare beasts from a cave. Firstly, Hiccup was weak―and while seeing this would be no surprise to an outsider, it was imperative. Secondly, on this cloudless night, the moon failed to shine down upon Berk. Few vikings ever noticed this―even Hiccup was unaware―but for a short while, the moon's icy glare did not grace Berk's shore. Lastly, and most unexpectedly, a breath of warm air blew across the mountain. Hiccup felt this, and with a slight smile, he let his consciousness float away.

Hiccup's body existed without gravity, falling for simply a moment, then his mind took over. A shady, secret corner of his mind. A place that somehow invaded, controlled, and helped him survive. He moved.

He moved in an inhuman way, like a lizard or a bug. Gripping tiny rocks jutting out of the wall in ways that tore at his fingertips, or crawling along the wall as if he was drawn to it, he reached the crevice that he had seen at the top of the wall. The crevice reached halfway down the cliffside, but reaching it was still a nearly inhuman feat of strength and dexterity.

Reaching the top, Hiccup's mind acknowledged the pain running through his hands but refused to look at the damage that had been done. Seeing that the strenuous trek up the cliffside had been resolved, Hiccup took back control of his body.

Except that he couldn't.

Hiccup felt a whisper, heard a shadow, and watched his body move against his will. Watching powerlessly, his body moved to the mind's wishes. It lifted his hands, then looked down at his body. Hiccup felt himself chuckle a sick, disgusting chuckle that he never would have let loose his lips. Hiccup watched as his body tested its limits―stretching and flexing his scrawny, injured body. He turned to a nearby tree―thicker than a viking's waist, and undoubtedly more solid. His body wound up, then stepped forwards in a strange pose and threw three swift punches in quick succession. Left on the tree were three marks―if you could call small craters 'marks'.

The mind, seemingly forgetting about Hiccup's presence in his own head, began to relay tomes of knowledge pertaining to many things. Medicine, astrology, body training, strange contraptions and animals and ways to fight all flowed through his mind―with Hiccup unable to react, simply watching. His body shook like a twig, then erupted with laughter. He opened his mouth and spouted gibberish like a madman. His eyes reflected the darkness in the moonless night sky―they appeared as black rubies, glittering with darkness.

He calmed himself, and turned to gaze over the cove one last time. As he did so, his eyes caught sight of something that brought Hiccup to fight back―The Shadow.

Had he killed it simply to be taken control of by a coward in the shadows? Was his vow to respect its death so flimsy? Hiccup's suppressed consciousness broke free of its chains. With a burst of strength like thor himself, Hiccup grappled with his own mind. His body flailed, Hiccup and the presence both controlling different parts, and neither working with the other. He fell to the ground, pressing both hands to his head, as―suddenly, the controller's presence vanished. Hiccup stood, and probed his mind for a sign of it.

A shadow remained at the edges of his consciousness, and he felt it, like a shadowy cloak. He could feel the way to immerse himself now, but breathing heavily, he quietly told himself that he would never again do so.

The fear of powerlessness remained, but the greatest gift, however, was the gift of knowledge. At eleven, Hiccup may have been brilliant, but he was also just a child. However, after this frightful affair, he still was able to recall the majority of the knowledge that the controller had paraded in front of his eyes. The result of this was Hiccup's quick maturity, and his intelligence increasing as well.

Finally in control of his own skin, Hiccup walked home. He had no idea how long it took him to return, it could've been ten minutes, it could've been an hour. Regardless, when he arrived, the vikings were dead to the world, sleeping soundly after successfully defended dragon raid. Hiccup crept into his own house, and moved lightly as a moth into his room.

He noted to himself to go back the next few days, so he could collect The Shadow's scales, teeth, and other spoils of victory. He looked himself over―he was ripped, battered, bloody and bruised. He knew he would have to find an excuse for his injuries, and would have to live with the disapproval of his father unless he showed the dragon's corpse…

"But…" Hiccup mumbled to himself, "what if the so-called 'useless' ideas...resulted in my rise to the top of the island? Just how foolish would my father look then?" Hiccup's dark smile radiated a frightening aura. Barely three hours ago he was killing a dragon to receive his father's approval, but now he had turned that idea on its head. Hiccup's genius intellect was already working at full capacity, putting the puzzle of his plan together.

As he laid himself down, uncomfortable and blanketless, his eyes slid closed and his body relaxed as it never had before. After the unexpected events of the night, his body and mind needed rest. He drifted away almost immediately, but stayed tethered just long enough to hear an ominous whispering from the back of his mind. He shut it out, and began to ponder the possibilities of how to escape from his own mind's darkness. Quickly, he fell into a deep sleep―a well-earned rest.