After watching episode 11(Heather Report Part 2), I managed to figure out when Heather will appear in my story. She was initially going to appear in this chapter, but since I was worried that Heather wasn't going to stay on Berk at the end of the two part episode, I had to wait for the episode until I could write.
I call this chapter one of my "boring, filled with story detail" chapters. Not really any action just going on. Kind of like a calm before the storm kind of thing. From here on out, things might get a little hectic!
Chapter Seven: The Start of a New Journey
Bertha and Mogadon weren't exactly pleased with their child's resolves, but it seems that all viking heirs shared a stubbornness trait. Stoick was a little concerned about why Camicazi and Thuggory was going to be hanging around his son, though when he questioned the teens, they all simply replied that it was to form bonds that will help even more when they become chiefs of the allied tribes. Of course, the true reason behind that was so that Stoick wouldn't stop Hiccup from going on that quest.
On the way back to Berk, Gobber and the other visitors boarded the ship and sailed back while the teens and Stoick rode back home on the dragons. For Toothless, carrying both Hiccup and Thuggory wasn't all that bad, especially when he had to carry his rider and Stoick around the whole island for a whole day. Stormfly didn't mind much with Camicazi riding with Astrid. But the thing about Camicazi, is that she talked. A lot. So it was very chatty on the way back. Hiccup and Thuggory lost count on how many times they thought their ears were going to fall off. Thuggory also lost count of how many times he nearly knocked the roman shield Hiccup attached to Toothless' side off the dragon. It was getting in the way of a more comfortable ride.
Hrani and Runa promised them that they would keep quiet about the whole thing about the King of the Wilderwest until the time was right. The other teens have tried to made it seem as normal as possible. It wasn't until Stoick was at least a good hundred meters ahead of them before Thuggory even dared to try to talk about the topic with Hiccup.
"So tell me, why are we heading back to Berk again?" he whispered against the howling wind.
"Well I left three of the King's Lost Things back at the house," Hiccup answered. "There has to be a reason I have them. No use going on that quest if I have to come back to Berk every now and then to pick things up."
"Are you sure your father's going to be okay about this?" Astrid yelled from Stormfly who she brought closer to Toothless. The Nadder squawked in response. Hiccup steadied Toothless' altitude.
"I know he won't," Hiccup told her. "Why do you think I have to keep the quest a secret from him? I mean, he barely gave me permission to go fetch dragons when Alvin showed up on our island. You think he's going to let me go on some quest we found in a sword compartment? I don't think so."
"I can't wait," Camicazi squealed. "This is so exciting! Who knows what we're going to encounter on this adventure. There could be snakes, and monsters and dragons and mazes and fireworms-"
"I've seen enough fireworms," Hiccup quickly added, accounting what happened on his previous quests.
When the sun was halfway down the horizon, Stoick and company reached Berk's harbors. Camicazi and Thuggory hopped off the dragons excitedly. "So this is Berk," Thuggory breathed while taking in the scenery in front of him. "I always thought it would be more...flat."
"Yeah, but the mountains are fun," said Astrid. "You can use your dragons like sled. We also sometimes go bobsledding but Bob's kind of busy lately so we don't really do that anymore."
"Literal, I see," Thuggory grumbled. "Where's your house, Hiccup?"
"It's on the hill in the village," the boy answered as he raced up the ramps of the docks. As he ran up into the village, Stoick stayed behind to talk with some of the villagers that clamored around him. The viking teens followed Hiccup, Thuggory and Camicazi staying close since they were scared that they were going to get lost. On the way up, Hiccup suddenly bumped into a large viking boy. "Fishlegs!" he exclaimed.
"Oh hey, Hiccup," Fishlegs replied casually. "You're back from the meeting already? How did it go?" It was then that Fishlegs noticed that Hiccup was covered in wounds. "What happened?" he immediately shrieked.
"We kind of got involved in a fight with the Romans," Hiccup muttered sheepishly, scratching the back of his head. Astrid, Thuggory and Camicazi ran up to him and Fishlegs.
Thuggory, Camicazi and Fishlegs looked at each other. "Who's that?" they all asked in unison.
"Oh right," said Hiccup. "Fishlegs, this is Camicazi, heir to the Bog Burglars and Thuggory, heir to the Meatheads."
Fishlegs gasped excitedly. "The son of Mogadon and the daughter of Bertha is actually here on Berk!" He shifted his helmet. "Allow me to show you around the island."
"We don't exactly have time for that right now Fishlegs," Hiccup told him. "We're only stopping by."
"Stopping by what?" asked a voice. Hiccup and the others turned around to see Snotlout running up to them with Ruffnut and Tuffnut trailing behind him. Snotlout's gaze immediately went to Camicazi. "Hey there," he said, receiving a blow in the stomach from Camicazi's elbow.
"Um...that was one of my friends," Hiccup murmured.
"Whoops," Camicazi added, trying to sound innocent. "Sorry."
"No problem," Snotlout choked out while clutching his stomach. "Astrid does it all the time."
Hiccup sighed. "Thuggory, Camicazi, meet Snotlout, Ruffnut and Tuffnut." The vikings briefly greeted each other. Hiccup found himself becoming impatient and started walking down the plaza and up the hill to his house. The other teen vikings followed him.
By the time Hiccup reached the door, he felt his friends' presence behind him along with Toothless. Hiccup looked at them curiously. "What?"
"You really want to leave right away?" Astrid asked him. "It wouldn't hurt to get some rest, you know."
"Wait, leaving?" Tuffnut repeated. "Where are you going?"
"On a quest!" Camicazi piped excitedly.
"A quest? Awesome!" Snotlout shouted. "I want to come too!"
Exhaling loudly, Hiccup caught the attention of all his friends. Thuggory and Astrid looked at him suspiciously. Hiccup took a deep breath in. "Snotlout," he began. "You can't come on the quest with us."
"And why is that?" Snotlout jeered in reply.
"You, Fishlegs, Ruff and Tuff and my dad are the only ones on the island who uses dragons in combat. I need you to stay and protect the island while we're gone."
"Protect the island?" Fishlegs questioned. "From what?"
"Why don't we go inside," Camicazi suggested, breaking the tension. "We'll explain then."
Hiccup opened the door and the viking teens stepped in. Thuggory and Camicazi looked around Hiccup's house. As soon as Toothless walked in through the door, Hiccup closed it. "Alright guys, long story short," he began before explaining briefly about the secret history, the battle with the romans, the conversation he heard and the prophecy they discovered. "And there you have it," he concluded.
"Well that secret history doesn't sound so secret anymore," said Tuffnut.
"This is serious!" Fishlegs breathed. "Hiccup, you're destined to be this King that rules over all the islands. And to do that, you're going on this quest that who knows how dangerous it is. Don't go."
"I have to!" Hiccup answered sternly. "If I don't, you guys could be living under the rule of Alvin!" Fishlegs immediately quieted. Living under an Outcasts' power? It would be living in hell. Torture, pain, maybe even enslavement and abuse. Who knows what lies ahead if Alvin becomes the King of the Wilderwest.
Silence filled the Haddock household for the following couple of seconds as the fire flickered. "So you want us to protect the island from Alvin if he tries anything?" Snotlout asked. Hiccup nodded. Snotlout stood proudly. "The don't worry. Hookfang and I are going to sink any Outcast ship that comes near the island!"
"Thanks guys," said Hiccup. "I'm really thankful for all of you. You guys know that you don't have to do this, right?"
"You're not changing our minds now, Hiccup," Thuggory told him. "We're already in way over our heads to turn back."
"Now the question is," said Astrid, speaking up for the first time during the conversation since Camicazi did most of the explaining. "Where do we start?" Hiccup walked up the stairs into his room. Sitting on his desk was still Grimbeard's memoirs. He dismissed the old book and shifted through some of the other pieces of papers o his desk.
"Drawings, drawings, drawings, sketches," he mumbled before stopping at an old portrait of a man with his hand on the shoulder of a much smaller boy. "Bingo," said Hiccup before rolling up the portrait in his hands and tied it with a piece of string. He walked up to the table beside his bed. Sitting on it is a weird circular item with arrows sticking out of it, emanating a soft ticking noise. Beside it in a small knife, on it's wooden hilt, an image of an amulet was carved. Picking both of the items up, Hiccup raced back downstairs where his friends were waiting.
All eyes were on Hiccup and the items he held. Hiccup took a deep breath in. "The rarest of dragons," he whispered before gesturing his head to Toothless. "Grimbeard's second best sword." Hiccup's gaze averted to his scabbard. "A roman shield." Everyone turned to look on the wooden shield that was attached to Toothless. "The painting." Hiccup placed the portrait of Hamish the First and his son into his waistcoat pocket. "The ticking thing, the knife." The two items followed the portrait.
"Only three left," said Camicazi in a surprisingly quiet voice. "Three more items until you becoming the King, Hiccup."
"And it all has to be done in ten days," he reminded her before chuckling inwardly. "This is going to take more effort than I thought."
"But none of these items tell us where to start," said Astrid, slightly annoyed and disappointed. Hiccup brought out the ticking thing. "Well for starters, I figured this thing's a compass. But it has five arrows. I don't know where the last one leads to." Hiccup looked down at the weird contraption, seeing one arrow point at around 75 degrees. "And the closest thing to a map is the portrait." Hiccup placed the ticking thing back in his pocket before unrolling up the painting of the Hamishes.
"We've all seen that portrait," Snotlout scoffed. "It's anything but treasure, let alone a map!" He walked over and tried to snatch the portrait from Hiccup to take another look at it. However, he pushed Hiccup who tripped from the uneven floor behind him. Taking the portrait with him, Hiccup crashed onto the floor, knocking over a container of squid ink that fell onto the portrait.
"The painting!" Fishlegs gasped.
"Hiccup!" yelled everyone else.
As the ink smeared all over his hand and the portrait, Hiccup got up with Snotlout helping. "Sorry about that," Snotlout muttered. "You're okay, right?"
"Yeah," Hiccup responded, wiping the ink of his hand with his green tunic. "I wouldn't say the same thing for the painting, though."
"Wait," breathed Ruffnut. "Look!" She pointed to the portrait. Hiccup followed her gaze and noticed that at the back of the portrait, the paper absorbed the ink. Slowly, lines began to appear. They were faint at first but they soon became much more visible. A dotted line, starting at an image that looked a lot like Berk. Following the line with his eyes, Hiccup noticed that it went through three more islands. "This is..." he whispered but his voice trailed off.
"A map to the remaining King's Lost Things!" Astrid cried in astonishment. "But why would Hamish the Second have a map that leads to the King's Lost Things when he was born after Grimbeard the Ghastly?"
"The only explanation I can come up with was that Hamish Two stumbled on the prophecy too and went looking for the King's Lost Things. He probably found them but decided it was best to keep it secret. At least, in his time," Hiccup answered. Settling the map on the table in the room to dry, the viking teens clamored over the table. They all examined the locations on the map. "Anyone have an idea where this thing actually goes?" Tuffnut asked.
Behind them, Hiccup already had his nose in one of the chests sitting nearby. He brought up and dusty map and placed it on the table next to the portrait, careful not to get the ink on this map. "This is a map of the Barbaric Archipelago," said Hiccup as he unrolled it.
On the map were hundreds of islands, some bigger than others. Right in the middle of the map was an island labeled "Berk". Near it were others such as Outcast Island, Bog Burglar Islands, Meathead Island, Hysteria. Hiccup shivered slightly just by reading it's name.
Looking back from one map to the other, Hiccup looked at the images on Grimbeard's map and compared them to the map of the archipelago. Fishlegs stood next to him and was doing the same thing.
"Well it looks like that the first island you guys will be going to," Fishlegs began as he pointed to an island with a large mountain sticking out that sits in the south-west position from Berk, "is Dragon Island!" Fishlegs swallowed a lump in his throat. "Makes sense since Hiccup was the one who blew up the Red Death. I've heard legends of a giant dragon that guards a treasure in that volcano."
"Or one of the King's Lost Things," said Thuggory. "That's island one, what's island two?"
"Looks like it's..." Hiccup ran his fingers through the map before stopping at a regular looking island a good way east from Berk. "...The Isle of Quiet Life," he finished. "That's weird. The Isle of Quiet Life is uninhabited. Why would Grimbeard hide one of the King's Lost Things there?"
"Uh duh, to keep people from finding it," Tuffnut answered.
"That's obvious," Hiccup grumbled. "But what I mean is that the island is filled with hot springs and geysers that make civilization impossible. How did he even hide an item there is a good question."
"We'll figure it out when we get there," Astrid told him hastily. "And our final destination is?"
"Grimbeard's Despair," Fishlegs answered, pointing to a small island northeast from Berk. Hiccup blinked a few times. "Well that's a fitting place to keep that last of the King's Lost Things." He rolled up both maps up before putting them into his waistcoat pocket. He was surprised that they actually fit.
Slowly, Hiccup walked over the door, opened it and stepped out. He looked at the sky that was turning into night. To his left, he saw that the Great Hall was lit up. It was probably another large dinner. Hiccup smiled inwardly before turning back to his friends. "This is it guys," he said, feeling a surge of excitement within him. "We leave at dawn."
Current Date: February 19th
––––––––––––––––––
Well I definitely found that a little boring to write. The next chapter should be more fun.
