Fate of the Dragons

by ReclusiveShadows

With Hiccup's role of 'Chief' on the horizon and a new tension between Berk and several nearby tribes stuck in their old ways, Hiccup, Toothless, and Astrid already have enough problems on their hands. But when a spy from an enemy island 'accidentally' turns Astrid into a Night Fury, things are bound to get a lot more interesting!

11. The Return

Hey, everyone…

Yes, this is really, really late. Almost, what, five weeks? Wow. Probably the latest chapter I've uploaded so far. In terms of writing this story, I've been slacking off quite a bit lately, as well, and for that, my fine readers, have my most sincere of apologies. There's no excuse for that, aside from the fact that I'm slowly trying to transition into a new writing process that involves me doing a more thorough dissection, analysis and review of these chapters before uploading. I've been somewhat disappointed in my lack of doing so in the past few, as I've really just been putting them out as fast as I can, which is still, in most cases, behind schedule. Regardless of whether I deem them 'tolerable' or not when I upload them, it's still unprofessional of me, and a bad reflection of my time management skills.

It turns out that summer is probably an even worse time for me to work on this, as well, since I can't keep a solid schedule that involves me writing every night, or even every few days. Terrible, I know. But I'm selfish, and I don't want to put out these chapters until I'm satisfied with them (to an extent) which means that they will take slightly longer to write, unfortunately. Hopefully I'll be a lot more organized someday, as well as capable of updating this story more often. Overall, I just procrastinate a lot. But to make up for it, I've written the longest chapter in this story so far, tallying in at about twenty-thousand words. This means that we're also about to breach the hundred-thousand word mark, too. Woohoo!

Finally, I hope you all enjoy and be sure to leave a comment and follow for updates. (And to those of you who have: thank you so much. You're the reason I'm writing this!)

I don't own How to Train Your Dragon.

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Astrid was the first one up.

She had always been, at least in her family. Of course, most Vikings in Berk had grown used to waking up before dawn by a young age, mainly due to the dragon attacks that almost always struck in the middle of the night, randomly and without warning. Fishlegs had once claimed he'd found a pattern the dragons seemed to be following with the raids and had foolishly agreed to a bet proposing that he stand outside in the village square on one of the nights he had predicted would go without an attack. It showed promise at first - Vikings watched hopefully out of the cracks between their doors and windows, and even the Chief took a night off of his normal duties to observe, and for a moment, it seemed like he was right, and that they had finally found a method to the dragons' chaotic madness… Until a Monstrous Nightmare suddenly swooped down out of the sky, set fire to a shed, and nearly bit the boy's head off. The morale of Berk dropped low once again, the raids continued as spontaneously as they had always been, and three months of Fishlegs's research were for naught. Though perhaps he had been right - maybe that night had just been a fluke. Then again, even he gave up on that research after that day. She would have to ask Toothless if he knew anything about it that day.

That day.

That day would be the day that her life would change forever. She would no longer be, 'Astrid, the missing warrior-girl in the woods, second in dragon training and rider of Stormfly' after that day. No, instead, she would only be, 'Astrid, the dragon-girl in the ravine whose only hope was a boy who can't lift a plank and the girl who got them into this whole mess'. She wouldn't be anybody, really. In fact, she would cease to exist from that day forward, assuming Hiccup's plan went absolutely perfectly, which was seeming less and less likely with every word that left Syl's mouth. Still, the thought was hard to imagine. Not only were there just two people that knew she existed, but only one that even cared about what happened to her! On top of that, Syl would be living her life! Wearing her clothes, eating her food, talking to her friends, riding her dragon! It was completely insane! And for a moment, she felt a strange surge of resentment towards Heather rise up in her throat again, and she had to restrain herself from growling. At least Heather hadn't known what was happening. She had been locked up in her cell, completely ignorant to the complex scheme Astrid and Hiccup were hatching outside. How would she have felt if she had known what they were doing? The same as Astrid felt, stuck in that tiny, stupid ravine like a caged animal?

And suddenly, sitting there in the cool, blissfully quiet clearing as the only one awake, Astrid had that feeling again. That rotten, guttural feeling that rose up in her throat like bile after a particularly rocky Dragonflight. A feeling that she had become all too well acquainted with in the past few days.

Fear.

Fear that Hiccup would never find a way to cure her. Fear that Syl would try to kill him while she was stuck in that terrible ravine, or worse. Fear that she would miss out on her life, or turn full-dragon. But most of all, fear of the unknown.

Toothless might have been right about his opinion of his rider and the Queen, but his time in the ravine had been entirely different. Of course, he would want to stay! Hiccup brought him plenty of fish, and fixed his tail, and he could live in the at least moderately comfortable knowledge that he was stuck down there. There was nothing he could possibly do to get out, so why even try?

But she had a choice. She could get out if she wanted to, even if it involved a bit of flying and gliding, as well as some climbing, something she dreaded to even consider. On top of that, she never had to go down there in the first place - she could've run back to the village, dragon or not, and begged them to accept her once again. Perhaps it would have worked. Perhaps Stoick knew some small, little-known fact about magic - for she was sure it was magic - that Gothi didn't, as strange as the notion was.

In fact, she could probably climb out right then, if she wanted to. She could find a way up in the landslide that had apparently collapsed a part of the cliff before. She was much larger than she was before, and she knew that she could jump and leap much higher and farther than she ever could have, as well. She had claws, too - at their full extent, they were practically knives, capable of slicing through and locking into dirt and stone like the roots of a thousand-year-old tree dug deep into the soil. And if worst came to worst… She could fly out. The thought sent shivers down her scaly spine, and so she dismissed it almost immediately. But if it meant a way back to her life…

If I want to…

Slowly, she got up, and glanced around at the others sleeping in the clearing, trying to assess whether any were nearly awake. Syl had claimed to be a light sleeper, but as she had suspected, it had been little more than an idle threat, as she appeared to be snoring at a level comparable to Gobber after a night of one too many drinks and a dozen too many chicken wings. Stormfly was still curled up next to the lake, almost as deep in sleep as her new but temporary rider. She had never been an early bird, either, and Astrid often had to drag her out of the pen next to their house even if there was an emergency, never mind if she felt like going out flying early in the morning. Toothless, she knew, was often the first one up in Stoick's household, as he loved to go out flying with Hiccup, given that he was limited to the ground without him. But even the offspring of lightning and death itself wasn't up that early, likely having grown at least somewhat lazy since the raids ended, and they no longer needed to bring food back to their 'Queen', as Toothless called it. Still, she couldn't help but note how tense his body was, powerful lungs visibly raising and lowering as air entered and left his nose. She had that same power as well now, she knew.

Hiccup had eventually crawled out of the small nook behind Astrid's front leg, curling up in a ball next to the burnt-out fire. He had grown up in Berk and had obviously gotten quite used to waking up in the middle of the night to sharpen and fix weapons for a sudden and unprecedented raid on the village. He didn't brag about it - everybody knew that from an early age he had wanted to be with the firefighters, like Astrid and the rest of the kids he was by then already starting to be outcast by. Truthfully, she had been surprised he hadn't beefed up any during his time with Gobber - the swords and axes might not have been that heavy, but still, it was almost incredible that he hadn't grown any muscle at all, with the exercise he had to do. In a way, his job was one of the hardest in the village, though of course, nobody ever told him that. He'd simply had a knack for it since birth, drawing up some designs that impressed even Gobber by the time he was eight, not that anyone besides him ever considered building them.

Nonetheless, it confirmed her suspicions - deep sleep or not, nobody else was awake, which meant that no one would see her if she ran away, nor realize it until much later. At least, not if she did it very, very quietly.

Syl was right about one thing - stealth wasn't something Astrid practiced often… But that didn't mean she wasn't good at it. A true warrior had to be proficient in every category of combat, she knew. That included sneaking around, among other things, cowardly as it may have been. Syl had obviously committed much more of her life to learning how to travel unseen, and was much better at it, loathe as Astrid was to admit it.

Still, despite weighing over a thousand pounds, Night Furies were infamous for their ability to blend in with shadows and the night sky, not to mention their deadly silence in battle. So she could be just as silent or invisible as Toothless… Right?

Slowly, she stood up on all fours, and tentatively put a foot towards the ravine wall closest to her. Her eyes quickly darted around to the others, terrified that one of them had stirred. But no one appeared to have moved, or shown any sign of hearing her at all. Exhaling slowly first, she put another foot forward, then another, then another, devoting all of her energy towards not falling over, or stepping anywhere she might regret. She slowly moved past Hiccup, then Syl, trying to keep as far away from them as physically possible. When she was sure that she was far away enough from the group, she exhaled once again and relaxed her muscles ever so slightly.

Suddenly, she felt something rub up against something else, and she froze, terrified that somebody had grabbed her, or even that she had brushed a shrub she hadn't seen by accident. She heard Hiccup groan behind her, and something told her that she had forgotten about something very, very important. Holding her breath, she slowly turned her head to look, before whipping it back a moment later, feeling her muscles tighten up even more as she quickly realized what had happened.

The tail. Her tail.

She had forgotten about her tail!

Her right tailfin had brushed along Hiccup's left side and was partially laying between his chest and right hand. Whilst he hadn't seemed to have woken up yet, he had shifted slightly when he felt it, quite nearly pinching the fin between his arm and chest. It wasn't touching his skin anywhere, and wasn't weighing on him heavily enough to be noticeable, she knew, but if she kept moving forward, the fin would continue to slide up into the crook of his arm, and eventually up to his shoulder.

She could just keep walking forward, and hope that the fin would just travel out above his arm and fall back to the ground, though it was a risk she didn't really want to take, given that it was much more likely to brush against his face and wake him up, or become even more trapped under his arm. She could also try backing up, though considering that she could barely even stand just two days before, and still had to focus hard in order to manage to then, it wasn't really a route she wanted to try, either.

Why do you even care? A small voice inside of her suddenly spoke up. It's Hiccup. If you wake him up, he'll probably let you go, anyway. He's not really the kind to argue, and if he DOES try to stop you… Well, what is he going to do? He's not even in the position to stop you as a human, never mind a dragon.

Well, she thought, arguing with the voice, and starting to wonder if she WAS going crazy, I'll feel terrible if I have to tell him I want to just abandon all of this, and him. Besides, I'm not REALLY running away. At least, not yet. This is just a… Training exercise. The more she thought about it, the truer the lie seemed. Even if she was rather well hidden within the gorge, it would be good for her to learn to move around quietly, especially given the fact that she would probably be down there for a few days, if not more, while Hiccup found the cure. She had no idea who might be out searching for food or just out for a hunt during the next few days or weeks, never mind those she knew must have been searching for her the past few days. Of course, navigating around a few sleeping Vikings wasn't exactly the same as evading a search party whilst trapped in a tiny, open ravine...

Run back to the Village or not, neither choice fixed her predicament. Though she hated the idea, she knew there was only one other way to get out of it - she would have to move the tail of her own accord.

First, she tried to relax her muscles - whilst the adrenaline wasn't fully pumping through her veins yet, she was still much more rigid than she would have preferred, and a single flinch could set the whole thing awry. Next, she checked around one last time to ensure that nobody had woken up since she had last looked back. It was always good to look twice, something she had learned the hard way.

She stared back at the tail - her tail - and screamed a little on the inside. How?! How was she supposed to do this without Toothless-

No, she told herself, No, Toothless isn't going to be here. It'll just be me in a few hours. I've always done things on my own, and now isn't a time to start leaning on others for help. I can do this!

Building up a bit of confidence, she sucked in as loud a breath as she dared, and released it, focusing on her tail throughout. She tried to remember what Toothless had told her - it was just another limb, right? Like a hand, or a leg. She had already gotten used to her claws and oddly-shaped feet. This was just another one, but… Longer. How hard could it be?

Slowly, she tried to relax her mind and accept the tail as a part of her body, as much as the voice inside her head screamed at her not to. It wasn't so much finally feeling it, as it was no longer ignoring it, as she felt the muscles in the extension begin to flex and contract under the sudden release. At that moment, she realized just how powerful the limb was - as strong as her legs or neck, if not more so. Until then, she had done her best to ignore the thing, or block out its feeling, letting it just drag on the ground behind her, and leave a thin trail wherever she went. But now, she could finally appreciate the sheer force she could put into it, and she suddenly remembered all of the times Toothless had successfully disarmed or even knocked an enemy Viking off of their feet with a smooth, graceful flick from behind him. With one graceful swish, he could completely immobilize an enemy, and now, so could she.

Cautiously, she tried to move a small section of the tail up in the center and quickly sucked in her breath as she watched it respond to her command. Above everything else, it was the fact of how instantaneous it was that amazed her. But why wouldn't it be? It was just like another arm, as Toothless had said, except longer, and more… Flexible.

Once she had gotten over the strange excitement of watching it move, and practiced with that small section enough so that she believed that she could move on to the whole thing, she took another deep breath, and let it out through her nostrils, trying to focus. Once again, she gazed on in amazement as the tail slowly moved upwards above Hiccup, until the tailfin lodged between Hiccup's arm and chest was fully uncovered and raised up above him. With a little bit of effort, she could tell that she could even flex the tailfins, as well, in the same way that one might open and close their fist, but she wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

Still focusing on Hiccup the entire time, she slowly moved forward once again, making sure to keep her tail well elevated above Hiccup as she did. When she was sure she was well past Hiccup, she relaxed all of the muscles in the tail and watched it fall onto the soft dirt with a dull THUD. She was already much more used to it than she wanted to admit.

She experimented with the tail for a few more minutes, swishing it back and forth slowly across the ground like a snake trying to swim upstream. While she didn't plan on acknowledging it to the extent that she just had for the rest of the time she was there, it certainly wouldn't hurt to at least know how to adjust it, strangely normal as the feeling may have been.

That was when she realized; she was out.

She quickly glanced around the ravine. It only took her a second for her to find a few spots newly revealed by the recent landslide that might have been enough for her to climb out with… But there was only one way to find out.

This was it, she knew. If she climbed out then, she could really get out this time. She could run back to the Village, and plead for them to keep her there. It would be her last chance to do so, she knew. And otherwise… She could always just run away. There would be nobody there to stop her this time, nobody to run ahead and convince or force her to come back. Nobody else would realize she had left, at least not for a few hours. And even if they did… Maybe Hiccup would understand, and Stormfly, too. Maybe he could convince Syl to really take over her life, as horrible as the suggestion was. Astrid could run away, and just become another dragon in the woods, like all of the others on Berk… She could do it… He wouldn't have to worry about curing her anymore, wouldn't have the problem she had become on his mind. For that's all she was - a problem.

She could do it… She could run away, and never look back...

Frowning, she turned her back to the wall. She could, but she wouldn't. She did trust Hiccup - he could find her a cure, and he would find her a cure. Their plan would work, crazy as it may have been. And on top of that, there was something else inside of her, something she felt for him that she just couldn't explain. But she had always gone with her gut instinct, and this time, it told her to trust Hiccup, which, insane as the prospect was, she had to do. For him.

She padded back over to Hiccup, and nudged him lightly with her snout. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with his eyes still closed, he reached his arm up and felt her snout, then her ears, then her widely stretched mouth, and even pushed up one of her lips to feel her teeth, before letting his arm fall back to his side, curling up slightly and shivering under his fur vest.

"Not now, bud," he moaned sleepily, "I told you I can't go flying this early. It hurts my legs, and it's too dark."

So, he thought she was his pet dragon. Wonderful.

She nudged him again, a little bit harder.

He groaned. "Bud, the sun's not even up yet," he sat up to his knees and rubbed his eyelids. "I don't know why you're so anxious. You're not usually up this-"

He blinked. "Uh, Toothless? You're looking a little… Pale…"

His eyes widened. "To- I mean, Astrid! S-Sorry about, um… I didn't know you were..." He jumped up to his feet, his weariness suddenly gone. Then, he rushed over to Toothless - the real Toothless - and roughly shook him awake, obviously trying to get out of the situation as quickly as possible.

"Hey, bud, wake up! We gotta get going!" Slowly, Toothless opened his eyes, and grumbled, obviously unused to being woken up by someone else. It must've been odd for him, she realized - he was usually up long before Hiccup, and yet here he was being shaken awake by his rider in the middle of the night.

He purred softly, and stood up on all fours, taking note of his surroundings, and grunted.

After sending the best angry glare she could muster towards Hiccup, Astrid walked over to Stormfly, and nudged her wing, deciding she'd rather wake her up herself, given everything else she hadn't been able to do lately. The Nadder garbled at her, and rocked side to side for a moment, adjusting her position, before falling silent again. Astrid groaned - even as a dragon, she obviously still wouldn't have the easiest time waking the Nadder up - they were notoriously late sleepers, after all.

Abandoning the quest for the moment, Astrid walked back over to Hiccup and Toothless, who were apparently having a problem of their own.

"Should we, uh…" Hiccup asked nobody in particular, staring down at the still very much asleep Syl. Sighing, Astrid marched up to the girl - Hiccup had never been good with these things, anyway - and nudged her slightly, as she had with him. Syl didn't move and continued snoring. Frowning, Astrid nudged her again, but still got no response. She looked back up at Hiccup, who only shrugged.

"Well, I don't know! She needs to get up, though. I'm just not sure how-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Toothless nudged in between the two of them, bent his head down over Syl, and, in one slurp, covered her entire face in warm dragon saliva.

Syl jumped up, and took a huge breath, as though coming up for air after a long time underwater. Her eyes widened as she brought her hand up to touch her face, feeling the damp stickiness all over her skin.

"Please don't tell me this is what I think it is, or I swear to the Gods…"

She glanced up at Toothless, who pulled his tongue back into his mouth just a second too late.

Upon seeing this, Syl delicately took a slow, smooth breath, calmly wiped her brow, and closed her eyes. Then, she snapped them back open, shot up, screeched at the top of her lungs, ran to the lake, and jumped in headfirst.

Toothless turned to Astrid, his eyes widened innocently. "Did I do something wrong?" He asked.

She smirked back at him. "No, not at all."

It took several minutes of convincing and then almost half an hour of frantic squealing to get Syl out of the lake. Even then, she didn't dare stand within twenty feet of Toothless, under the accusation that he had "cursed" her with his "evil, disgusting and humiliating dragon-spit". Whilst this only seemed to further prove Astrid's hypothesis that this girl had been raised on a feather bed her entire life, she couldn't really blame her - she had been "cleaned" by Stormfly enough times, and couldn't deny that it wasn't the most pleasurable experience. Of course, it took hours of scrubbing in the washbin just to clean it all out, and the smell always lingered for days, anyway.

"Well," Hiccup pronounced as Syl leaned up against a rock, soaking and shivering in the frigid early morning air. "It's probably a good thing that you had a bit of a bath before we start… I guess. But you'll still have to look pretty beat up before we leave in a few hours."

"St-Start?" Syl stuttered through chattering teeth, looking up at him weakly. Her hair was pasted down to her forehead, and stuck to her neck and shoulders like thin strips of cloth - the braid she had meticulously crafted a few days before had completely fallen apart the moment she jumped into the water. She was leaning against one of the rocks near the lake, shivering under one of Hiccup's old spare fur vests that he had offered her, much to Astrid's ire. The satisfaction of seeing Syl so miserable was barely enough to sate her anger towards her, and she reminded herself to thank Toothless later on for causing all of it.

Hiccup nodded and smiled slyly. "Well, yeah, though I guess 'start' wouldn't be the best way to put it, given that you're already wearing your, er, Astrid's clothes." She growled menacingly from behind him, and he quickly spun around and mouthed the word "sorry" before turning back to Syl.

"But don't worry. Since we've gone over most of Astrid's life, we can move onto the, um, physical transformation…" He glanced back at Astrid again and frowned, and she heard him mutter something along the lines of, "... Bad choice of words," before spinning back around to Syl again.

"But the point is, you won't have to do much for this part. I've got all of the stuff we need right here," he patted the bag slung over his shoulder, and grinned at her.

Syl stared up at him and shook slightly again, before asking, "Ph- Physical tr- transformation? Wha… What does that mean?"

"Well, you saw how Astrid looked, right? Before she… Changed, that is." Syl frowned but nodded.

"I- I wasn't able to see very well, but… I think I remember."

Hiccup shook his head. "Well, you might have her clothes, but you still don't look much like her. Your face is similar enough, I think. With a bit powder and dye, we can probably make you look bruised up enough so that people won't notice the differences."

Or we could just beat the snot out of her until even WE don't recognize her perfect face anymore, Astrid fantasized, grinning at the thought of finally getting some proper revenge.

Syl frowned back at him and shivered, pulling on the vest. "But… Bruises heal. If I do this for more than one day - which is not what I'm saying - but if I do… How will you explain that? Just say I have some sort of 'magical' bumps and bruises that never go away? And how would I get them, anyway? You haven't told me any of your plans yet, which, given the position I'm about to go into here, seems kind of important, don't you think?"

He sat down, and laid his back against Toothless, looking Syl right in the eyes. "I promise, we will tell you the plan… Eventually. And there are no more tricks either, okay? Nothing to surprise you with, here. I think we can both agree that we're done with lies. They won't get us anywhere. As to the bruises… Well, I'll think of something when the time comes. Until then… This'll have to do. And don't worry, either - you won't look like a complete wreck."

Syl looked down at herself for a moment, considering what he had said. "Alright, then… What about the rest of this… Physical transformation? Tell me what that involves, at least."

Hiccup shrugged, and pulled a small jar of yellow powder, a flask, and the mysterious vial of the liquid from the day before out, and set them all out on the ground in front of them.

Syl nodded her head towards the vial. "What's that? Some kind of potion?"

He frowned, following her gaze. "No… Yes… I don't know, really. Gothi gave it to me, and she told me to… Well, I'll tell you later. It's the, erm, final step."

Syl rolled her eyes, obviously unimpressed. Hiccup picked up the flask. "Anyway, about the disguise: this is for your hair. You mix the powder with the water in the flask, run it over your head, and BOOM! Blonde hair, just like Astrid's. It's probably a good thing your hair's already wet, but... I guess I'm not sure. I don't really do this stuff very often."

"I sure hope not…" Syl muttered, taking the flask from his hand and reaching for the powder.

She poured the entire jar into the flask immediately, covered the top with her hand, then shook it. Hiccup looked around awkwardly for a moment in silence, before adding, "Oh, and, uh… She usually wears a braid like yours, too, but without parting her hair off. Just behind her back."

Syl reached up to touch her forehead, and her eyes widened, as she suddenly started grasping around her head frantically. "Oh, Gods! My - I mean, your headband! It must've fallen off when I jumped in the lake!"

Astrid growled at the girl - she had disappointed her far too many times already, and this was the last straw. She was losing her things?! Next thing she knew, her axe would be gone, then some of her clothes, then her friends- but before she could make a move, she heard what sounded like a loud pounding from behind her, which was followed by a loud splash, and she turned around just in time to see Toothless's red tailfin disappear into the lake. Glancing at each other first, Hiccup and Astrid ran up to the edge to look, but he had completely disappeared under the water, with only a few bubbles of air coming up every few seconds.

Then, after a moment of intense silence, he resurfaced triumphantly, with something small and leather-bound hanging out of his mouth. Delicately, he walked over to Syl, dripping wet and fanning his wings out in an attempt to dry them off, bent his head down in front of her, and let Astrid's headband slide off of his tongue and onto the ground in front of the girl. She seemed horrified at first, but after a moment, tentatively picked up the gooey leather between her index finger and thumb, trying to touch as little of the leather as she could whilst still holding it. She looked up at the dragon, bewildered and raised an eyebrow. "Gee… Thanks…"

He stared back at her for a moment, in that intense, creepy-close way he did that made you feel… Vulnerable. When he received no other response from her, he nodded, turned around, and walked back towards the forest. Once he reached a spot he had obviously deemed suitable, he fanned his wings again, shook his body to dry himself off as much as he could, purred softly, and sat down, leaving the rest of the group in a stunned silence.

Astrid was eventually the first one to speak up, though nobody else realized it. "Toothless… How… What did you…?"

He opened an eyelid lazily. "I followed your scent. A bit harder to find underwater, but…" He shrugged, and closed it again.

"My…" She blinked. "I have a SCENT?! On my CLOTHES? Is… Is that on everything I own?!"

He purred softly. "Probably. Though I haven't checked. Hiccup certainly has one, though I've gotten so used to it that it's become kind of difficult to find. Anyway, tell her it's my way of apologizing for waking her up earlier though I'm still not sure why she's so mad."

She stood there for a moment, just pondering the idea. It was possible he had mentioned something about her scent before, though she just hadn't been listening. She knew Hiccup would want her to be writing notes down right then if she told him about it, if not doing so himself, and so she decided to just mention it to him later on. It wasn't that big of a surprise, anyway - it was a known fact that many animals used scent to find and track prey and kin, and dragons were animals, too. They were just… Smarter. Humans had 'scents' for each other as well, she knew. Snotlout tended to smell of far too much sweat, though she was often told that she did, too, but with less added musk. Hiccup tended to hold the scent of hardened iron and copper, if not burnt leather and stale fish from his many hours spent flying with Toothless. Fishlegs always seemed to carry the musty odor of old parchment and mothballs, and the twins… Well, their smells tended to rotate every few hours.

Once, she remembered, they had even had a competition to see who could get the worst smell by the end of the day, with the winner getting to knock the other in the head with a frying pan until they passed out. Needless to say, Stoick and the rest of the Village were none too pleased with the outcome, as they somehow managed to both get themselves in Gothi's care after repeatedly smashing each other over the head with various kitchen tools, and carried around a horrible scent that nobody knew the source of for the next two weeks. Still, it went down as one of their most famous escapades, and Gobber even suggested it be written down in 'Legends of Berk: Volume Eleven', though Stoick eventually convinced him otherwise.

So perhaps the fact that she had a distinctive scent wasn't what had amazed her. But the possibility that he could still recognize it and find it underwater... It was crazy. Of course, if that was the case…

"So… Do I still have the same… Scent, as a dragon?"

He opened both eyes for a moment, and sniffed the air, before laying his head back down and closing them. "Yes… And no. You smell the same, but there's something new, something added, no doubt because of your recent… Changes. Still, you smell like you, and I doubt that'll change unless you start spending a lot more time around a lot more dragons."

He snorted. "It's odd, really. My kin are saying that Hiccup is starting to smell a lot like me, and I a lot like him. Never really thought I'd end up smelling like a human, especially not under the Queen's service, but…" He opened his eyes once more and glanced over at Hiccup. "I don't regret it one bit."

---

A few minutes later and Syl had dyed her hair over the lake, letting the excess mixture drip into the pure water, and creating a small pool of floating yellow-gray dye in the water like mildew in a swamp. She had insisted that none of them watch her, for whatever reason, including the dragons, and even then didn't seem convinced that Stormfly was actually asleep without a deal of reassurance from Hiccup.

Though Hiccup claimed it would look even better settled in and dried, the dye already appeared to be working its magic, as Syl's hair was almost completely blonde, with only a few streaks of yellow water running off of her to ruin the effect. Still, while she was nowhere near a perfect copy, Astrid could start to see it coming together, and could almost believe that Hiccup's crazy plan might actually work. Almost. At least she looked more like a knockoff of Astrid than a crazy girl wearing her clothes, even if that's all she really was.

Syl admired her new hair for a moment in the lake, before throwing it over her shoulder extravagantly. "I always wondered what I would look like as a blonde. Do I look any dumber? Lower on the ol' food chain?"

Astrid bared her teeth at her and tried to growl as deeply as she possibly could. It seemed to have the chosen effect, as Syl quite nearly bit her tongue trying to keep quiet afterward.

When I get out of this, I'm not just going to kill this girl, Astrid thought menacingly, I'm going to make her SUFFER first.

"So, uh…" Syl eventually risked a sentence a few minutes later. "What else is there? I have the clothes, and now the hair… You said something about scars? Bruises?"

Hiccup frowned. "Yeah… But we'll need to do those last, just to make sure they don't smudge. I have a bandage, too, which should help cover up a lot of your face, though it might smudge the bruises. Until then… Well, I guess there's not too much else we can do, at least not physically, unless you have some way of fitting a decade of combat training into the next few hours."

"Fine. If you say so, partner. Though..." Syl glanced at her reflection in the lake and smirked. "I just don't see it, I suppose. Not yet. I guess I just don't… Feel like your girlfriend. There's no romance between us. Maybe if you and I kiss-"

Astrid was on top of her before she got the chance to finish.

"Alright, Missy," She projected to Toothless without realizing it, snarling down at the girl the whole time. "You are officially WAY out of line. You can't fight, you can't work, you don't want to fly, you CANNOT talk to ME or Hiccup that way, and I swear to the Gods if you do again, I will rip your head right off of your shoulders! You are NOT taking over my life like this, and you are NOT going to replace me, and above all else, you cannot. Even. Be. ME!"

While she knew the girl couldn't hear her, it was still satisfying to see her wince and beg for mercy as Astrid's talons started to move closer in on her neck, until the girl's skin was nearly pinched between her razor-sharp claws.

"Astrid…"

"Shut it!" She whipped her head towards Toothless for half a second, before snapping it back to Hiccup, shooting him a look that said, If you even THINK of trying to interfere again, I will stuff you down your own dragon's throat head-first faster than you can say 'Bud'. While she still hadn't mastered her newfound expressions quite yet, the message seemed to be clear enough, as he clenched his fists and bit down on his lip, holding himself back for his own good, and eventually just walking over to Toothless to watch the scene unfold beside him.

Seeing that her only hope had just abandoned her, Syl's pleas suddenly became less sarcastic and more genuinely frantic. "I… Astrid! I… I swear to the Gods I'll never say anything about you and your boyfriend - I mean, uh, Hiccup - ever again! I swear! J-Just let me go!"

Astrid narrowed her eyes and continued to stare at her for a moment, not making a sound. Syl laughed nervously. "You… You wouldn't kill me, right? You… You need me. You need me to be you for this whole plan to work. Y-You need someone to… To… To cover for you…"

Astrid snorted as harshly as she could, and wrote out next to Syl's face,

NEED YOU?

YOU THINK WE NEED YOU?

I HAVE OTHER PLANS, TOO.

OTHER WAYS OUT OF THIS THAT DON'T REQUIRE YOU.

YOU THINK YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO'S SPENT TIME

WEIGHING HER OPTIONS?

Syl's eyes widened as she absorbed what she said. Astrid noticed a large lump travel down the girl's throat as she swallowed, and her breathing started to increase in pace. She smirked.

YOU SEEM UNCOMFORTABLE.

TELL ME

DO YOU NOT ENJOY THIS LITTLE CONVERSATION

WE'RE HAVING?

YOU DON'T ENJOY BEING TRAPPED

UNDER THE CLAWS AND MAW

OF THE VERY OFFSPRING OF LIGHTNING AND DEATH ITSELF?

HOW MANY LEGENDS HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT NIGHT FURIES?

HOW THEY SUCK THE SOULS OUT OF THEIR VICTIMS,

LIVE OFF THE LIGHT OF THE MOON

AND HOW THEY SUCK BLOOD OUT OF THE LITTLE VIKINGS

THEY STEAL AWAY AT NIGHT?

HAVE YOU HEARD THE STORIES?

"I-I…" Syl stuttered, drawing in a shaky breath.

Astrid closed her eyelids to near slits, and grinned, trying to create the most viciously evil and monstrous face she could imagine.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO FIND OUT

HOW MANY OF THEM WERE TRUE?

I'M CERTAINLY CURIOUS.

She had to admit - it seemed rather impressive that the girl hadn't fainted yet. Hiccup certainly would have by then.

"N-No… You wouldn't… You aren't...:" She stuttered once again, trying to find the right words before her eyes widened, and she gained enough confidence to point her finger at her. "Y-you aren't yourself, Astrid! I didn't know you before you turned, but… I know this isn't you! It's obvious you hate being a dragon, but you're… Going feral, like… like him!" She gestured towards Toothless with the same hand. "You're losing yourself… Letting the dragon part of your brain take over! And if you let me go, you'll be fighting it off, and winning! A-and, we can get to your village soon, and he can find a cure for you, and bring you back, and we can all go home like none of this ever happened! Just… Let me go!" She winced, trying to force out the next line as sincerely as she could. "... Please, Astrid! Please, just let me go!"

Suddenly, she had a moment of doubt. Maybe Syl was right - maybe she was crossing a line. It had certainly felt weird writing those insults out, given that it was almost exactly what she didn't want to do…

No, she thought after a moment's thought. No. I'm not crossing a line, here, and I'm not going full-dragon. I don't make idle threats as a human, either. She might look scared, but I can see how the doubt in her eyes. She thinks I don't live up to my word? She is D-E-A-D wrong, and she needs to understand that. And I'd say it's time for her first lesson. Or perhaps her final exam. I guess it depends on who's teaching. And, of course, the results...

FIGHT ME.

Syl read the message once, blinked, and then read it again. Hiccup rushed over to read it, as well, and for a moment, looked like he wanted to say something, before backing up to Toothless again, thinking better of it. She realized it must've been strange for him and Toothless, watching Syl cry for help, then Astrid write something in the dirt, then the girl become even more terrified. The power of words, she thought to herself with a chuckle. Damnit. Never thought Fishlegs would be right about that. Guess I owe him one.

"Fight… W-What?" Syl asked weakly.

YOU HEARD ME.

I WANT YOU TO FIGHT ME.

She backed off of the girl, allowing her to crawl out fully from under her, and face her on at least somewhat equal terms. Still, Syl didn't dare stand up, obviously quite terrified Astrid would pull something else. And she should be, she thought with a smirk.

"F-fight you?! But… You're a dragon! How am I supposed to…" her voice faded off in sheer disbelief.

YOU CAN HAVE MY AXE.

"Your… What?"

MY AXE

IT'S A GOOD WEAPON

THAT YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO USE ANYWAY

IT'S SHARP

STURDY

CALL IT PRACTICE

YOU'LL HAVE MY ARMOR, AS WELL.

She took a deep breath, and glanced over at the sharply honed weapon, likely evaluating its usefulness to her. "So… A fight. Like… To the death?"

Astrid shook her head.

IF I CAN GET YOU LOCKED DOWN

LIKE I DID A MOMENT AGO,

I WIN.

IF YOU MANAGE TO GET A SINGLE BLUNT HIT ON ME,

YOU WIN.

Syl raised an eyebrow, making Astrid sigh.

YOU WIN,

AND I'LL NEVER TACKLE YOU

OR TRY TO KILL YOU AGAIN.

ASSUMING YOU DON'T TRY TO KILL ME, THAT IS.

"And… If you win?" She asked hesitantly.

Astrid only grinned back as viciously as she could. Syl shivered but nodded in agreement.

She turned to the boys.

Hiccup's jaw dropped, as did Toothless's. "Astrid, please… Not now. Not with her. Not right before…" He shook his head. "You… You can't be serious…"

There was a moment of silence, then she nodded slowly. He laughed nervously in response, and brought his hand up to his forehead, pushing his hair back. "You… Are fighting Astrid… With an ax… Just a few hours before we leave… Amazing. I guess I should have seen this coming." With that, he sat down on the ground and buried his face in his hands. Three days of his desperate attempts at getting them to bond, and it ended with a brutal fight just a few hours before they launched his elaborate plan.

Toothless walked over to her a moment later.

The black dragon stared at her with concerned, mint-green eyes. "Astrid," he warned her, "Don't do this. Please."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't worry. I won't hurt her… Much. Besides, Hiccup said he needed realistic wounds, right?"

Toothless shook his head. "It's not her I'm worried about; It's YOU," Astrid reared back, offended, and Toothless narrowed his eyes.

"You barely know how to move, Astrid! And ground combat is something that's way ahead of where you are now. We're built to fight from the sky, hidden from our enemies, not out in the open, or on the ground. And, ah, we may have thick hides, but," -he held up his cloth tailfin demonstratively- "We're not quite as protected as you might think. And we don't really grow back limbs, either, as I'm sure you've noticed. I've heard your old saying, and it's true - a downed dragon is a dead dragon. I've rarely heard of a grounded one of the blood that has came back to our nest alive. In fact… I believe I was the first, and that's only because Hiccup CHOSE not to kill me! That should show you how bad this is, Astrid! We're dragons! We're made rain fire down from the sky, not fight with claws strapped to wood in our hands! You're not ready for this, I'm telling you!"

She narrowed her eyes at the dragon. "Don't you DARE include me in your little dragon group! And I know what I'm doing, Toothless. I've been fighting people AND dragons my entire life! Just look at her; she can barely lift an axe. She's worse than your own rider, for the Gods' sakes, and he can't go ANYWHERE without you being there to protect him! And at least he knows the difference from a dual-hilt longsword and a wooden club! I already have more control over that ax than she does, and I'm not even holding it. You're right about one thing, though - I'm a dragon, now! If I were a human I might, MIGHT give her a chance, but as a Night Fury? I mean, come on, even I'll admit that this is unfair, and I HATE being like this. It took almost ten well-trained and fully grown Vikings to keep you constrained when you saved Hiccup in the Kill Ring, remember?"

He winced, obviously not all too fond of the memory. "The Kill Ring… So that's what you call it…" He shook his head and snorted angrily. "I still don't think you should do this. You're ten times bigger than you were before. You can't just rely on dodging or running like you did before. You can be hit from almost any angle, now! It'll be much easier for her to hit you, and with that ax, after all of those hours you've spent honing in the woods... Well, it probably won't end up being a small bruise."

Astrid raised her head up. "Then I'll just have to hit her, first. Toothless, I NEED to do this, alright? I'll never be able to live with myself knowing that I never fought her, and it might finally take this girl down a notch, alright? She's supposed to be just like me a few HOURS from now! A good brawl is one of the best lessons I can give her before she has to go. It'll be a quick fight, too, one way or another. Besides, it might teach her a thing or two about fighting that I wasn't able to cover yesterday. A Gobber-style lesson, you might call it."

Toothless sighed, and laid his head back to the ground, admitting defeat. "One last thing," he told her as she turned back around. "You do seem confident in your abilities, inexperienced as you may be. If you do SOMEHOW manage to win… Don't hurt her too bad, okay? I care about her as little as you do, but we need her."

She smirked, and turned to face Syl.

Whilst Syl seemed to have built up some confidence, she could still see a hint of fear in the girl's eyes, and rightly so. Even Astrid would be a bit nervous if she had to face a two-thousand-pound rare dragon with an armored hide and claws that could cut through your neck like warm butter. She noticed that she had remembered the position to hold the ax that they had gone over the day before, but her stance was all wrong; her feet were too close together, meaning that she would have a difficult time putting power into her first swing, and couldn't move around easily. Nonetheless, a small part of her was glad that the girl had at least retained something from their short training session, if relatively unimportant.

Hiccup seemed to be doing the same with Syl, warning her that Astrid was an experienced fighter and even more dangerous as a dragon. She couldn't help but grin at hearing him say it. But in the end, Syl still shook her head, telling him that it was something she had to do, and couldn't back down from. I couldn't agree more, Astrid thought to herself.

Hiccup eventually stepped back next to Toothless, giving him a short, concerned glance, which was matched by the dragon's own. Sometimes, it was just plain creepy how they acted around each other. She could talk to him, for the gods' sakes, and he still managed to convey his thoughts to Hiccup better than her.

She glanced at Stormfly one last time. It was probably for the better that she was still asleep; she would never have let her do this otherwise, dragon or not. Still, Astrid had come to rely on Stormfly more than almost anyone else as a partner. To think that she wouldn't even be awake during the ordeal… It was unnerving, at best.

"I still really don't think you two should do this…" Hiccup said, making one last attempt at settling the hostility. But it was no use. The two were already set in their decision, and there was no going back. They each shook their heads.

He sighed defeatedly and frowned. "Right… Please don't kill each other…" He winced, before continuing, "Whenever you're ready, I guess…"

And so it began.

Astrid narrowed her eyes and started to pace back and forth, evaluating the girl. Syl gripped onto her ax, and watched her closely, but didn't move.

After a moment's decision, Astrid made her move.

She leaped at the girl.

For a moment, she was met with the delightful sight of Syl's terrified eyes staring into her own before she jumped out of the way at the last moment. Growling, Astrid dug her claws into the dirt as she landed, nearly plowing her head into the ground before catching herself. Syl took a step backward, and raised her ax up protectively. Astrid wheeled to face her with venom in her eyes, and swiped at her ax, trying to knock it out of her hands. Syl saw this, and fell back once again, leaving Astrid's claws to swipe idly through the air just a few inches away from the weapon.

Gaining a bit of confidence, Syl took a cautious swing at her, but it was just as futile as her own attempts. While it had enough power, the swing was clumsy and misdirected, and the head of the ax ended up slamming into the ground almost a foot away from her head. Syl heaved it back up quickly with a grunt, and sidestepped, adjusting her stance.

She stood there again for a moment, assessing the situation. As much as she hated to admit it, Toothless had been right - the jump she had just tried had sapped a lot of her energy, and forced her to take a moment to recover and plan her next move. This meant that her quick movements were limited to swipes with her paws, which only extended so far in front of her. Luckily, Syl was inexperienced as well, and thus hadn't yet learned how to use that to her advantage yet, but it was only a matter of time until she did… Unless she finished this quickly.

Glancing at the girl one last time, she concentrated as much power as she could into her rear legs, and leaped at Syl claws first. Once again, Syl sidestepped, but this time, Astrid was ready. One thing she had noticed earlier when she had Syl trapped under her claws was that whenever she tried to escape, she would favor trying to wriggle out to her left every single time; a beginner's mistake. Knowing your enemy was one of the most important factors in a fight, and thanks to their training session the day before, she already knew Syl's fighting techniques like the back of her hand, er, paw.

Syl yelped as she fell back to the ground, and let go of the ax, throwing her hands in front of her face. Astrid threw her front claws down around the girl, pinning her underneath her in nearly the same position she had been in before. All she had to do was move her claw to lock down her neck-

Astrid blinked. She was gone! Without the weight of the ax holding her back, Syl had slid herself straight out from underneath her snout, and was already up and running towards the forest, leaving the weapon lodged in the hard-packed earth.

COWARD! She screamed in her mind and granted herself a wild roar before chasing after her.

Syl dashed under the trees, with Astrid swiping at her madly close behind, cursing when her claw was lodged into a tree. Roughly jerking it out after a moment of struggle, she sprinted in after the girl once again, trying to make up the lost time.

Whilst she easily could've caught up to her in seconds on the open ground, Astrid had significantly more trouble in the thick, shaded forest. The dark and coming fall had created a nightmarish labyrinth of hidden thorns and dead bushes that she had to navigate not two, but four feet around, not to mention her tail, which seemed to smack against the side of every tree she passed. Luckily, her wings seemed to have remained folded since she woke up, something she hadn't realized nor been grateful for until then.

She squinted as she stared into the forest, trying desperately to keep her eyes on Syl, who by then had put a frighteningly sizable amount of space between the two of them. How has she gotten through this forest so quickly? Astrid pondered, trying to keep pace with her. This is at least the third time I've been in here in the past two days, and I don't even think she's walked more than two feet off of the beach since we got here. But it's like she's been running through it for her whole life.

She removed the thought from her mind and ran up ahead. She had more important business, anyway. She would just ask her when she had her pinned between her claws.

She kept running, trying to listen for the sound of Syl's footsteps over her heartbeat, before nearly running into a flat wall. She had reached the cliff face, the easternmost side of the ravine. Syl was nowhere to be found, likely either already running back to the clearing… or waiting silently nearby. She wasn't the only competitive one in this game, she realized. Syl still fully intended on winning… But so did Astrid.

The forest lapsed into a near dead silence, the only sound that of the crickets' soft chirping, and the area around her lit solely by a shaft of moonlight that barely lit up the back half of her body, as well as a small portion of the ground around her. Nonetheless, she backed into it defensively, wanting as much light and visibility as she could possibly get. This was no longer a chase; it was a hunt.

She scanned the area. She wasn't looking for the girl herself, she knew, she was looking for her clothes. Astrid's clothes. While her tunic was natural enough to blend in with her surroundings, her shoulder pads shined brightly due to hours of polishing each day, along with the spikes and skulls on her red skirt. On top of that, Syl had already died her hair blonde, and it was starting to shine through the previously black streaks, making her stand out in the dark. She would be easy enough to find, as long as she didn't figure it out...

Astrid tensed for a moment as she felt a light pressure on her back, but it was nothing. An acorn falling from a tree, perhaps a dead leaf slowly gliding down onto her back, or…

A hunt, she realized, eyes widening, and I'm the prey.

"Hey," Syl cried from on her back, light as a feather. "I'm finally riding a Night Fury! Maybe your boyfriend will finally shut up about getting me to ride on your pal Toothy back there. Too bad he isn't here… Not yet, that is..."

Astrid whipped her head back around. Out of the corner of her eye, she could just see the girl straddling her back, holding something in her hand that she couldn't see. Was it her ax? It couldn't have been. They hadn't been there long enough for her to run back to the lake. No, it was still there. She was sure of it. So... What was she holding?

"You're pretty easy to sneak up on, you know that? You'd think that with your new dragon ears you would be able to hear me from a mile away, but… I guess you just weren't paying attention."

She was certainly taunting her now, and Astrid realized why; there was nothing she could do to get her off. Her forearms couldn't reach that far, nor her back legs, and if she tried to shake her off, she could end up hitting a tree or the cliff wall, and hurting herself. She could try rearing up on her hind legs and making her slide off - she had seen Toothless do it plenty of times - but if she did, there was always the possibility that she could lose her balance and fall backward, turning the girl into a little, splattered puddle of fake Astrid underneath her. As satisfying as the prospect of finally putting her in her place sounded, she knew Hiccup wouldn't be too pleased - they did need her, and he had a tendency to pass out around any visible injuries, never mind death.

She growled, and shook as much as she could, but the girl still held on quite easily. What else was she supposed to do? The girl was in a perfect weak spot, she realized - a rider on a dragon's back had never been a problem before, but now, when they were fighting? It was a brilliant tactic, though she would never let her know that. Whilst she might as well have just sat there in defeat, trying to work out just how this girl had defied logic by not only managing to surprise her but drop onto her back without her noticing. But this girl wasn't done yet. She was savoring her victory, waiting it out. But she had a feeling that Syl would grow bored of mockery soon enough, which meant that if she was going to do something, she would need to do it soon.

"Hah! Trying to shake me? Nice try, but your boyfriend, unfortunately, taught me where to hold on to your kind yesterday, and, well, you're a dragon, now. I know more about you than you do, in a way. Strange, isn't it? Speaking of him, it shouldn't be long before he finds us..."

Sure enough, she could faintly hear the sound of Hiccup's voice calling out to her from the clearing, slowly but surely getting louder and closer as he came looking for them in the woods. If he found her like this, it would be over. As a witness, there would be no question as to who won, and if Toothless found her… Well, she wasn't willing to let that happen. There was no way she would let that stupid reptile think he was right, which he wasn't.

"Oh, and by the way," Syl told her, a sing-song arrogance in her tone of voice, "If you were trying to be all silent over here, you really need to work on your tactic. Your tail was swishing up so many leaves, I'm surprised Hiccup didn't hear you."

Her eyes lit up as she suddenly had an idea. It was ridiculous, and defied her argument, as well what she had stood for over the past few days, and overall would probably hurt a lot. But it was the only way she could think of to win, and she would only have one shot before Syl figured it out.

One hit, she thought to herself, One blow to my hide was what we agreed upon. She hasn't hit me yet, and she doesn't have my ax, but she still thinks she's won - that's my advantage.

Slowly, she relaxed her rear muscles, once again feeling the alien tendons of the limb sprouting from her rear connect to the rest of her body. She wouldn't have time to worry about it, though. If she was going to do this, it would have to be quick, and it would have to be soon.

For a moment, she feared that the girl might notice what she was trying to do, but she was preoccupied, savoring every moment of Astrid's continued displeasure by mocking her to no end. "You know, I like to think of this as revenge for all that 'training' you made me do yesterday. And sure, maybe I had a part in turning you into a dragon, but after all the times you've tried to kill me since then? I think it's high time you be taken down a no-"

Before she could continue, Astrid whipped her tail up over her back, wincing as she both heard and felt new muscles crack and snap under the newfound position. No, there was no way she would be able to ignore her tail after this. With a Gratifyingly terrified yelp, Syl tumbled off of her back and onto the ground. Grunting, she started to hoist herself up to her feet, but Astrid was ready. She spun around, and slammed her right paw down against her, slamming her into the ground so hard that it was a surprise she didn't black out. She groaned, and made an attempt at wriggling out again, but it was no use. Astrid's claws were already locked around her throat, locking her in place. She felt something else on her back, too - maybe the stupid girl had dropped something on her when she had fallen off - but she chose to ignore it. Now was not the time for distractions

Take me down a notch, huh? Astrid thought, grinning down at the startled and petrified girl. Good luck with that. You're supposed to BE me by now, and you still look and act like a complete wimp who's still somehow more afraid of a fair fight than a dragon named 'Toothless'.

They kept up the position; Syl glaring up in shock and utter anger (synonym) from beneath her, Astrid relishing in her sure victory. Still, she was cautious; Syl still seemed to hold a hint of confidence under all her anger, making Astrid wonder if she had some other foolish plan brewing in her mind. A moment passed, and she heard Hiccup's voice grow louder and louder, until he and Toothless emerged into the small clearing, and gasped. At first, only their outlines would be visible by the sliver of moonlight shining into the glen, she knew, but it would be obvious enough who won.

"Astrid! Syl! Are you guys alright? What happened? We just heard a lot of growling, and…" He frowned.

Syl sighed almost mockingly, and replied, "Ah, well, Astrid got me. Too bad - I almost thought I had her. Finally rode a Night Fury, though. Happy? I certainly am not, and tired, too." Astrid sent a confused look down at the girl. Why was she taking this as calmly as she was? All of the other times they had fought, or she had been pinned down, she had been madder than a Viking who spilled his fifth beer at a feast. And yet, she seemed to be taking the whole thing quite well… Almost too well...

"Oh, Gods! Astrid!" Hiccup's voice quickly brought her out of her thoughts. "You… You're, uh…" Hiccup seemed to be staring at a particular spot on her back and looked about ready to pass out, before Toothless said, "Astrid… You're bleeding."

She snorted loudly and rolled her eyes. "Bleeding? Toothless, I've been hurt before. I think I would know if I was-" But as she turned her head around, she was just able to see a tiny drop of a dark, shiny liquid roll off of her back and land on the ground, illuminated solely by the pale white moonlight shining through holes in the clouds.

She whipped her head back around to Syl, who smirked, and slowly revealed a knife hidden under her skirt.

Astrid bared her teeth at the girl, but retracted her foot and let her climb out from under her.

YOU CHEATED!

"I won!" Syl proclaimed, waving the knife tauntingly in her face, and grinning. "Besides, you never said that I couldn't use a knife, just that I could use your ax. Thanks for that, by the way. Even if it did only slow me down. Anyway, I won, and that's what matters. You used your tail, remember?"

Astrid growled, and took a step forward, threatening to tackle or swipe at her again, but she stepped back towards to forest, out of reach of her claws.

WE TIED.

Syl's jaw dropped. "Tied?! There's no 'tie' in fighting! It's win or lose! You, of all people, or should I say, dragons, should know that. I was on your back for almost a minute straight, and I managed to get a flesh wound on you! On your scaled dragon hide. How is that a tie?!"

YOU USED A WEAPON I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT

YOU RAN AWAY

SNUCK UP ON ME

SPENT A MINUTE GLOATING ABOUT YOUR VICTORY

BEFORE LETTING ME TACKLE YOU,

MADE A GASH FAR WORSE THAN A BLUNT WOUND

AND OVERALL
FOUGHT WITH NO HONOR WHATSOEVER.

Syl narrowed her eyes. "Honor? That's what this is about? I'm sorry, but I don't remember you mentioning honor in the rules," She shook her head. "You probably think I'm some sort of terrible, evil coward for running away? You know what I call that? Evening the odds. We both know I was outmatched back there. Coming into the woods and pulling that trick on your back was the only way I could even think of winning! You talk a lot about my lack of skills, but I'm starting to wonder if you've ever seen a real fight in your life. You think anyone remembers their little codes of honor out on the battlefield? You think somebody is going to go 'Oh, I could decapitate my enemy right now, but it's dishonorable, so I'll let him go'? Well, you're wrong. Vikings forget them, and more importantly, dragons never learn them in the first place. So come back to me next time you win one of your 'honorable' battles. Dragons don't care, and most humans don't, either.. If you're going to spend so much time down here, you better as hell learn that, along with all of your milk-drinking friends here on Berk." With that, she stormed back off into the woods, leaving the three of them in a stunned silence.

"What's her problem?" Hiccup asked after a moment, looking up at Toothless for an answer. He snorted indifferently, and Astrid frowned.

SHE'S PROBABLY JUST MAD AT HERSELF.

Hiccup's eyes widened as he read her message. "Oh, gods! Astrid, you're hurt! I-I think there are some bandages in my bag - I'll be right back!" He turned, and rushed back through the woods limping slightly from trying to run on one leg.

"Do you feel alright?" Toothless asked, sniffing at the small stream of blood trailing from her back. She flinched when his snout lightly brushed against the wound. "I don't think so… It doesn't hurt very much, so it can't be that bad… Right?"

It was a lie, and they both knew it, but she wasn't ready to accept she was hurt, and she definitely wasn't going to admit that she had lost.

He raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't seem like a very good way to judge injuries. You're hurt, Astrid. Not badly, it seems, just a scale wound, and not very deep, at that. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure how she managed to pierce your back at all - it's supposed to have better protection than anywhere else. I thought I heard her say she… Dropped down onto you?"

She grimaced, and looked away. He shook his head, dumbfounded. "How did she even manage to-"

"I wasn't paying attention, alright? I think she was in the trees above me, the wimp. Anyway, just let it go - I said we tied."

He shrugged. "Fine. What does that mean, anyway?"
"It means…" she yawned and laid down on the ground dejectedly. "Nothing, I guess. If she starts being nice to me, I might not tackle her or try to kill her quite so often, but I doubt either of those things are going to happen, regardless. It doesn't matter, anyway. You're leaving soon, and… And I might never see her again. Good riddance, I say."

"But… She's going to BE you. Aren't you the least bit nervous that you just fought the girl who's going to take your place in your life? What if she ruins your reputation?"

"Then," she sighed, "I'll just have to make it right again when I change back. Besides, I don't think she's mad at me. She's mad at… Something else, though I'm not sure what yet. She'll just have to get over it."

"If you say so… Still, I'm surprised you're so comfortable with this whole thing."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm NOT comfortable, but the way I see it, Hiccup's given me such a short deadline to train her that worrying about it would be a waste of time. Though no guarantees after you leave - she's been making it hard enough already. I don't even want to think about what'll happen when I'm NOT there to hold her hand. I wish you two good luck with THAT."

Toothless chuckled for a moment, before looking back at her wound, and frowning. "You need to clean that."

She turned her head back around, trying to see it, but it was still impossible for her to reach. "It'll be fine. I've seen you heal from much worse, outside of your tail, that is. I probably don't even need Hiccup's bandages, really. I won't try anything too daring down here, believe me. It'll have plenty of time to heal. Otherwise, we can just throw a bucket of water over it later, or something."

"Water? What are you- listen, if you're not going to, I'll do it myself."

She raised an eyebrow and turned her head to the front again. "Do it yourself? What's that supposed to me-AHH!"

Her entire body suddenly tensed up as she felt a long, sticky and wet stroke travel up the side of her body towards the scar, stopping just before it reached it. She leaped sideways and glared at the dragon, whose tongue was hanging out of his mouth in a way she might've thought was funny if she weren't so mad at him.

"Toothless! What the hell?!"

He cocked his head to the side innocently. "What? It could be infected otherwise, and you weren't willing to do it, so…"

She stared back at him, astonished.

"Infected?! How do you even know what that means?!"

He purred softly. "We have a… A different word for it in our tongue, but I heard Hiccup talking about it once with his foot, and I was able to figure it out from there. Of course, I never thought I would have to use it, but… Here we are."

"That… That still doesn't justify your licking my wound! Haven't you ever heard of privacy, or medicine, for that matter?! I can handle myself just fine!"

"Just trying to help…" Toothless grumbled. She growled back at him but laid down roughly a moment later. Perhaps he was - she could see the innocence in his eyes was genuine. Yet with all of the time he'd spent around humans, he still didn't understand all of their customs...

"Fine," She squeezed her eyes shut. "If you really insist, you can… Clean it. But don't touch the wound itself, and don't swallow any of my blood, either! That's just plain weird, and it crosses a line."

"Hah. You think I'm enjoying this?" He rumbled.

He bent down, and she winced as she felt his tongue collide smoothly with her tough hide, but just before he brought it up along her back, he froze.

"... Toothless?" She started, "If you're not going to do this, could you at least take your, erm, tongue, off of my-"

"Um… Astrid?" It was her turn to freeze.

Not again… She thought, daringly opening one of her eyes, and turning towards the source of the voice.

Indeed, there Hiccup stood, his satchel dangling from one arm, a bandage from the other. He dropped them both.

His cheeks grew as red as Toothless's tailfin.

"I-I, um…" He clenched his fists and looked away. More than anything in the world at that moment, Astrid really, really wished Toothless would take his tongue off of her back - being on the opposite side of her from Hiccup, she didn't know what it looked like to him - but he abstained, still fixed in place behind her, eyes bulging out of his head and staring straight at his rider.

She hadn't forgotten about Hiccup - she just hadn't expected him to come out from behind them. Though it was dark, she knew that their camp on the beach was to the west, the way she was facing, and thus expected him to come back the same way. Toothless had apparently anticipated the same.

Hiccup blinked, as though coming out of a trance. "I… Um… Syl isn't at the camp… I figured she must've been sulking in the woods somewhere, so I went looking for her again… Um, what exactly were you…?"

TOOTHLESS INSISTED UPON CLEANING IT

I TRIED TO STOP HIM

I SWEAR.

He stared back at her for a moment, astonished, forcing her to add,

PLEASE DON'T TELL SYL.

She meant it, too. If the occurrence from the night before hadn't convinced her that she was going feral, this certainly would. Toothless suddenly licking her wound might've been believable, at least in her mad perception of dragon ferocity, but Astrid actually accepting it?

She frowned. What was I thinking? I'm going more and more savage every day I'm here. The sooner I get away from Toothless and the others, the better. Still, it was happening a lot faster than she anticipated - not that she had anticipated any of this at all - and a small part of her couldn't help but to imagine Hiccup and Toothless coming back one day to find her setting fire to trees, eating fish raw out of the lake and making a hot burnt bed for herself on the ground.. By the gods, if it ever came to that, she would force Hiccup to bring her back to the village.

"What? N-no, of course, I won't. I… Um…" He bit his lip, before looking down at his bag. "Oh! Your, uh, wound! Let me just, ah…" He walked over to the gash slowly, and tenderly graced the gauze over it. Still, she couldn't help but grimace as the cool linen pressed against her damp scales, creating a tingly sensation just beneath the outer layer, for some reason. Upon feeling it, she couldn't help but remember the scar she had gotten when… When…

Her eyes widened, and she stood up, finally forcing Toothless to pull his tongue back into his mouth - something she had nearly forgotten about in her shock.

HICCUP, THERE'S SOMETHING I WANTED TO TELL YOU.

IT'S ABOUT MY TRANSFORMATION.

His eyes brightened for a moment. "Oh, yeah? What? Anything could help."

REMEMBER HOW I TOLD YOU

THE SCALES WASHED OVER MY BODY AT FIRST?

He nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, you said they were like waves, erupting out of your skin. Gross, I guess, but… Kind of interesting. That's just me, though."

She rolled her eyes.

WELL, I THINK WHEN IT STARTED

IT CAME OUT OF MY SCAR FIRST.

THE ONE I GOT WHEN TOOTHLESS SCRATCHED ME THAT DAY.

IT WAS ALL PUFFED UP AND GRAY

WHEN THE BANDAGE FELL OFF.

DO YOU THINK THAT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT?

He frowned, putting on the expression he had whenever he was deep in thought. "Yeah… Yeah, I think it might! Maybe some sort of reaction to it, or an infection from the wound…" He grinned again. "Thanks, Astrid. You don't know how helpful that is. At least now I know where to start, though it could take a little while. A lot of the books in the Great Hall have been locked up in some of the old chambers, so I'll have to find a way in… But I'll work as fast as I can - I promise!"

She raised an eyebrow.

AND GOTHI'S WORKING ON A SOLUTION TOO, RIGHT?

His eyes seemed to become panicky for a moment, but he responded quickly. "Oh, yeah. Workin' hard. It's just, uh, good to have a Plan B, in case it doesn't work, right?"

She sighed but nodded.

He finished applying the bandage, and with an excessive amount of convincing, Astrid assured him that she would be able to walk just fine. On their trek back to the camp, Hiccup asked an abundance of questions regarding her scar, along with a few more about her being a dragon in general, to which she would have to stop and write in the dirt for each. Hiccup didn't seem to mind too much, though Astrid decided that it was a waste of their time and her energy by the seventeenth question, and just rolled her eyes every time he asked one after that, continuing to move forward and eventually forcing him to shut up.

To Hiccup's dismay, Syl still hadn't come back to the campsite by the time they got there, which was obviously starting to get on his nerves, especially since the moon had nearly completed its descent below the horizon, signaling dawn to be less than an hour or two away. All three of them split up and went searching for her - Stormfly was still asleep, despite a few more attempts at waking her up - but she somehow managed to go entirely undetected in the forest. Even with Toothless's advanced senses, and Astrid's own expertise in staying hidden, she apparently masked her scent, as well as travel and conceal herself without making a sound.

Eventually, they gave up, choosing to just wait her out by their camp - she had to come out sometime, right?

But even then, it was almost an hour before she finally came back, under the pretense that she 'needed time to think', whatever the hell that meant. This girl was about to take on quite possibly the most difficult and dangerous task of her entire life, and yet she chose to spend the final hours before she left building up her ego and hiding in the woods out of spite. It took all of Astrid's effort and concentration not to just strangle her right there.

"Well, now that that's over with," Hiccup told her with a sigh, "We have less than an hour before we have to leave if we're doing this by dawn. We have just enough time to go over everything before we leave. Luckily, it seems like your hair is starting to dry out, so at least that worked…" He was right, she realized - Whilst it still wasn't near perfect, if you glanced at the girl out of the corner of your eye, you might almost think it was her. Almost.

"The bruises should help cover up most of the differences, as well - I'll paint some on myself, too - and, well there is one more thing…" He glanced down at his satchel, and Astrid suddenly remembered the strange vial of liquid he had been carrying around since they had left Gothi's like it was a drink from the feast in Asgard itself. But before she could ask him about it, he continued "Anyway, we should probably spend some more time going over Astrid's, I mean, your life, friends, family, etcetera. That is the most important part, after all. Maybe a review would help?"

She rolled her eyes and shrugged. "Whatever."

He nodded. "Alright. Your name?

"Astrid."

"Full name, please."

"Astrid Hofferson."

"Your dragon's name?"

"Ugh. Stormfly, right? Deadly Nadder. She calls her 'girl' for some reason."

"That's right. His name?" He pointed to his Night Fury, who looked up curiously.

She raised an eyebrow. "The very offspring of lightning and death itself?"

He sighed, and shook his head, "No, it's-"

"Agh!" She groaned, bringing the palm of her hand to her forehead. "It was a joke! Toothless, I know. As if I'm ever going to forget a name like that."

He smirked. "Alright. Your parent's-"

"Wait!" She said, holding up a hand. "What about my voice? Do I sound anything like her?"

Hiccup's eyes widened. "You're right! I… I almost forgot about that. Her voice is a bit deeper than yours, but I didn't think it would be that much of a problem. I figured we'd have more time to practice, too, but… Well, you were there when we were looking at the map, right? Do you remember what she sounds like?"

"Um," She cleared her throat. "Like this?"

She grimaced as the words left her mouth, and so did Hiccup - she sounded more like a dying yak than a Viking, never mind Astrid.

"Well…" Hiccup said, bringing his hand behind his head sheepishly. "Maybe we can say you caught a cold in the storm… And can't speak easily... or just lost your voice altogether…"

"You sure about that?" She smirked, raising an eyebrow. "I thought you said that your girlfriend couldn't shut up-"

"What?! No!" He replied quickly, waving his arms frantically. Astrid narrowed her eyes at him, and he whipped around to face her. "I never said that! Let's just, uh, finish the review."

She rolled her eyes, but let him continue.

Once again, they went through all of her friends and enemies, and what they looked like, as well as some of the most important people in Berk, with Astrid occasionally probing her more extensively with those she knew better. She had heard about their war with Alvin long before she met them, as well as their ongoing tensions with Dagur - most people had. When they were both satisfied that she knew as much as she would need to 'survive' an average day in the village, they went over her mannerisms, hobbies, and daily schedule, before she suddenly stopped them halfway through.

"This is ridiculous. You can't possibly expect me to remember all of this. Couldn't you just tell them I lost my memory and reintroduce me to everyone like I don't know any of them? It would make everything so much easier."

He shook his head. "People would be too weirded out if you did, I think. Especially if you started acting all different from how she does. Besides, what should she do when she does come back? Just act like she has no memory of any of them? Of her parents, or friends, or Stormfly?"

Syl shrugged. "I don't see why not."

Astrid growled at her deep within her throat, but the girl didn't seem to notice.

Hiccup sighed, and continued, luckily receiving no further complaints during the rest of the review, though Astrid had a distinct feeling that Syl purposefully stopped listening to him after that.

"Okay," Hiccup told her once they had finished, rubbing his eyelids sleepily. "There's so much more we should go over, but… I guess that'll have to be it for now. Let's just hope that this disguise works just as well."

With that, he walked back over to his pack and pulled out several small jars of red, yellow, gray and blue powder, each of which he mixed with the remaining water in the flask.

"Sit down," Hiccup told Syl, pointing at a nearby rock large enough to rest on.

She raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"You still don't quite look like Astrid, and we don't have the time to make it more accurate, so we're just going to have to make you completely unrecognizable altogether. I'm not really an expert at this, but… Well, I'll do my best."

"Wait!" She exclaimed as he dipped his fingers into one of the mixtures. "I'll do it myself."

He frowned. "Are you sure? It'll be much easier this way, and well, I know what Astrid looks like a bit better than you do. I can just-"

"No, really. I used to mess around a lot with green and brown dyes on my face and arms to help disguise myself in the woods - I know this stuff. Besides, there is no way you are putting your hands in my face - Not gonna happen. Though a little light might help - I can't really see my reflection that well in the lake right now, if you hadn't noticed."

Hiccup groaned but nodded after a moment.

"Toothless," he asked the dragon, who was resting next to Stormfly. With a low purr, he opened his eyes sleepily and looked up at him. "Could you give Syl a bit of light?"

Her eyes widened. "N-No! Just a torch, or a pebble and some iron, or anything else would be fine! I-I don't need… Him." But it was too late - Toothless was already padding towards Syl with his mouth open, filtering a bit of gas into his mouth as he did. He turned his head as soon as he reached her, setting fire to a small group twig on the ground, and making Syl jump almost a foot in the air. He glanced up at her for a moment, before walking back to Stormfly, and lying back down.

The girl's eyes flicked back and forth between the burning sticks and Toothless, before turning to look at Hiccup. "Is he… Going to do this sort of stuff all the time?"

He smirked. "You'd better get used to it now."

She shivered and turned back to the lake.

She slowly applied the paint, the others all sitting behind her in an awkward silence. Astrid tried to strike up a conversation with Toothless at one point, but he seemed tired, and once again told her that he needed time alone, for whatever reason. When she had finished, and Hiccup deemed her so beat-up looking that she could probably pass off as anyone, he tried to explain how Astrid normally braided her hair, with a fair amount of difficulty. When his attempts proved absolutely futile, Astrid shoved him aside and told her it was a basic fishtail braid with a small ball on the bottom, which the girl had luckily made with other little girls her age, when she was much younger. She started to teach Hiccup the basics of how to braid it before he interrupted her and told her he already knew how muttering something about one of the contraptions he had been working on for the past few weeks.

Whilst the end result still wasn't entirely accurate, Hiccup said they could just tell everybody it had come partially undone when she was in the storm, unlikely as it may have seemed.

The whole process took almost half an hour, leaving them with little time before they would have to leave. Luckily, even Astrid was willing to admit that Syl looked a bit like her, maybe at least enough to pass off as her for most of the day. Though if someone were to stare at her for more than a few seconds, it would be easy enough to raise a few questions. She just had to hope that Syl would have the answers…

"Well," Hiccup said once they had finished. "I guess it's time. She said this was the 'final step', at least before I explain what the plan is…" He started to pull the vial out of his bag.

"Wh-What's that supposed to mean?" Syl asked nervously, backing away from him. "What's that stuff going to do to me?"

He shrugged, and opened his mouth, before closing it again, thinking better of whatever he was about to tell her. "Honestly… I'm not sure. But we can trust Gothi. She wants to help us with this, for some reason, and she's wiser than anyone else on Berk. And who knows? It might not be anything at all. She's not a witch, you know, and magic isn't that common."

"Tell that to your dragon girlfriend…" she told him, still backing up.

He sighed. "Please, Syl. She only said a drop, anyway - not that much. And I'm pretty sure she said the effect wears off eventually, too. Something about mead, I think... Either way, I'm sure you'll be fine. I mean, you've trusted us this far!"

She shook her head. "I'm not about to drink some magic potion that only your witch on the mountain knows the properties of. No way."

Astrid stepped up to her, growling, and she backed up another foot.

Toothless looked up at them sleepily. "I thought you said you would be nice to her."

"I said I would be NICE if she cooperated, which she's clearly not doing."

"I'm almost positive those weren't the words you used-"

"Shut up!" She snapped at him, before turning back to her, and growling again. Syl's eyes flitted back and forth between her and the liquid, evaluating the potential threat of each, before finally settling on the vial.

"Fine, I'll take it. Not like I have much else to do with my life if it turns me into a freak…"
Tenderly, she picked up the vial, and slid the cork off, placing it gently on the ground as though the contents within were explosive. Then, ever so slowly, she tipped it back and let a single drop dribble into her mouth before quickly moving it away from her lips.

She reeled.

"Ah, Gods, it tastes like rotten fish!" She scraped her fingers across her tongue, trying to get the taste out, before spitting into the lake. After a moment of extravagant gagging, Syl noticed that they were all staring at her expectantly.

"What…" She examined herself for a moment. "Has something happened to me?"

Hiccup shrugged. "Maybe you didn't drink enough?"

She shivered in horror and shook her head. "I don't feel any diff-"

Her hands flew up to her mouth, clamping down over it, and her eyes nearly bulged out of her head.

Everyone's jaw dropped, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Stormfly shoot up, but she was too shocked to notice.

She sounded exactly like Astrid.

"I… Wha… My v-v," Syl stuttered.

Hiccup just shook his head. "Your voice… Sounds like… Astrid? How... How did she…"

Astrid took a step back, still in shock, eyes locked onto Syl, and the words that had just come out of her mouth.

"Toothless… This is getting weird…"

"Yeah… This isn't supposed to happen, right?"

She shook her head, and he turned to her.

"Are you sure your elder's not a… Witch?" He asked her.

She was about to deny it, as she had been taught - but she caught herself at the last moment. Surely, this had to be an act of magic - it was far too clear, far too accurate to be anything else. Yet, did that make her a witch? She certainly didn't seem like one. At least, not like the ones she had read about. But still, how had she captured her voice and made a potion to copy it? She didn't know much about magic, hell, she didn't know anything about magic, but she was pretty sure that something like this would require a strand of hair, or at least a warning that she had been experimenting with things like this. Did the Village know about it? What about Stoick? If he knew she had magic like this...

Syl opened her mouth, and stuttered for a moment, experimenting with different sounds, and tones of voice, pushing her hand against her throat to make it deeper, or lighter. Then she laughed.

"Hey, look at me, I'm Astrid! I ride dragons and think I'm the only smart person in the world!"

Normally, she wouldn't have taken her or anyone else that mocked her seriously, but the fact that she was somehow speaking with her voice irritated her to no end. She growled at her, but the girl only laughed. Her laugh.

"Oh, no you don't. I'm Astrid, now. You're just a dragon in the woods."

She growled at her for a second, before she realized that in a way, she was right. Where the flaws in her disguise left some holes, her voice filled them in; any immediate doubts someone might have about who she was would be forgotten when they heard her voice. It had never been something she had thought about, of course - her voice was unimportant, only used to communicate. It wasn't something she had worried about, and it wasn't anything anybody else had ever seemed to worry about, either. But now, hearing it come from another person's mouth, and a spy's of all people… It was more than unsettling - it was personal. Not to mention just how she had done it, of course - she would make that woman answer, one way or another.

As to whether she was just a dragon in the woods… Well, in a few hours, she would be. By all rights, she might've been - in fact, she was a nothing in the woods. Hiccup wouldn't, no, couldn't tell anybody what had happened to her. In less than an hour, she officially

"Right… That's, ah, um…" Hiccup stuttered for a moment, before giving up on talking. Stormfly walked over and sniffed at Syl for a moment, much to her displeasure, before going back to lie down on the sand. This lead Astrid to realize something she hadn't considered before.

"Toothless… Will the other dragons know who she really is? Because of her scent, I mean."

He frowned. "She's wearing most of your clothes, so some of them might be fooled. Your scent is mainly a collection of the things you keep nearest to you, though hidden underneath is another layer - the one that truly identifies both dragons and humans. Each one is different, unique to one's own self, but over time, if becomes buried underneath all of the others - it takes a skilled nose to find, along with a fair bit of effort. Though of course, there are still plenty of my kin that don't yet trust humans, so I can't guarantee that none will be checking for it. But if any of them ask, or try to interfere… I'll just have to tell them the truth. They may be bound to their riders, but that's all the more reason for them to understand the situation you're in - Stormfly's quite worried about you, you know."

"She… She is?" She looked at the resting Nadder. "I… Thought she liked me better as a dragon. I figured she would…"

He shook his head. "No, she's very protective of you, Astrid. More than you know. She cares about you very deeply, and wants you to go back to normal, so you can ride together again, and she knows that you're all well and healthy. It may be true that we are bound to our riders just as we are mates - for life. But it's a choice, and one we were all very glad to have after the queen died, and..." He frowned.

She stared at him deeply for a moment, contemplating what he had told her, before glancing back at Syl, who was still playing around with her 'new' voice, and obviously making Hiccup very uncomfortable.

"It's not your fault," She told him. "What happened to Hiccup and Berk, or… Well, any of this. It's that… Queen. She controlled you, manipulated you and forced you into doing what you did. I was there when you took us to your nest, remember? I saw what was happening to you… To all the dragons. You SAVED them. Maybe you got shot down one night, but you were the one that changed all of this. You were given a choice BEFORE you killed the Queen, as well - don't even think that Hiccup hasn't told me about how you met a billion times. You chose to spare him because he spared you. That's the honorable thing to do, Toothless. That's the RIGHT thing to do."

He chuckled. "Yeah? Well, maybe if I hadn't been shot down, you wouldn't be stuck in this whole situation. I know why SHE was sent here," -He nodded towards Syl resentfully- "it's because she hates… Us, right? I don't blame her, really. We've done some terrible things, to your people, and to each other… But we're trying to change, Astrid. We really are."

"I know, Toothless… I know." She glanced up at the moon, which was by then almost completely invisible, the majority of it having disappeared beyond the walls of the ravine.

"You should go soon." He looked up at the sky, following her line of sight, before looking back at her.

"Good luck down here, Astrid. We'll be back soon, I promise."
She smirked. "What's with all the emotion? I thought you were supposed to hate me."

He snorted and grinned. "Oh, I do. I absolutely loathe every ounce of you. You're stubborn, competitive, and mean. You tried to kill me when I first met you, and nearly did until Hiccup stopped you. You take Hiccup away from me so you can either punch him, try to kill him, kiss him, or all three at once, but…"

She raised an eyebrow. "But?"

"But… I know you won't let anything happen to him. I've seen the way you look at him - don't try to hide it. We have love, too, you know, and I know what it looks like. You might still have a way to go, but…" He shrugged. "I suppose I can tolerate you, at least for now."

With that, he walked back over to Hiccup, and purred softly, luckily pulling him out of what looked to be a very awkward situation. Rolling her eyes, she walked over to join them.

"Well, then…" Hiccup said, seeming to have found his voice, "I… I guess this is it."
"Great," Syl replied, mimicking the sarcastic tone she had obviously heard Astrid use at some point. "Are you finally going to explain this elaborate plan you have in mind?"

Hiccup smirked. "Well, you've probably already figured out most of it, but… Here it is." And with that, they finally told her. Whilst they hadn't had a lot of time to discuss it until then, they had both been planning it since they first went to Gothi's hut, and had worked up what they believed to be at least a solid story for why they had been missing, as well as how she had gotten so beaten up, and why they were gone so long. Whilst it was relatively basic, it was somewhat unlikely, and could easily fall apart if they suddenly couldn't come up with the details, but she knew in her heart that it would work - it had to.

When he was done, and Astrid had assured that all of the smaller details had been covered, as well, Syl raised her chin and replied. "Alright… Seems simple enough. I'm assuming you'll be doing most of the talking?"

He nodded. "We can just say you're tired. It certainly looks that way… Your clothes are pretty dirty, as it is, and your, uh, sweat is still there from yesterday, by the looks of it. Not that I've been looking! Anyway... It should be convincing enough… Things like this have happened to us a few times in the past, after all."

She frowned. "Okay… What's the catch?

He glanced back at Astrid, raising an eyebrow before turning back to Syl. "Catch?"

"Yeah, the catch. Come on, there's gotta be something to it. I have to kiss you, or ride on your dragon 'till we get there, tell the Chief I'd promised to marry you after you saved my-"

"What?!" Hiccup blurted, cheeks reddening. "No, there's nothing like that! Nothing at all! No kissing, or… Uh... Just follow my lead. You have the voice for it, at least…"

She raised an eyebrow, still suspicious. "Hmph. Whatever you say. I could get used to this new voice for a little while, though, sorcery as it may be."

Then, she walked over to Stormfly and saddled her, obviously having garnered a lot more confidence around dragons since a few days before. Still, Astrid noticed her sneer at the Nadder before she climbed on, making her wish Stormfly would just bite her head off, and end the whole thing for a moment. She would probably do it, if she asked her, though she decided otherwise, at least for the time being.

She turned back to the two of them just before they lifted off.

"I might do a few laps here, just to, you know, get used to it. I'll just follow you two as soon as you take off. And, ah, Astrid?" She grinned down at her. "See ya later, I guess. I'm sure loverboy here will find a cure for you… Someday. I'll try not to ruin your life if it makes you feel any better, though I make no promises."

With that, she leaned her head down to the dragon's ear, and whispered for her to do a few loops around the cove, obviously not aware that Toothless and she could hear every word she said. And so the two lifted off above the gorge and trees surrounding it, beginning their first loop around.

Hiccup watched them for a moment, before turning back to her. "Listen, Astrid…" He sighed. "We… We still don't have to do this, you know. She wouldn't like it, but… I don't want anything to happen to you down here. We could just go back, and tell the village what happened. Maybe negotiate a return for Syl… And then I could find a cure, and maybe get Dad's help. It's not too late."

She exhaled slowly.

IT'S NOT ME YOU SHOULD BE WORRYING ABOUT.

He smiled sadly. "Syl? I don't think she'll be that much of a problem. She knows what she has to do here, and she seems to be taking it seriously enough. We've done it before, and I know that was with you, but… Well, it kinda worked, didn't it? This time, it'll be even smoother."

She sighed.

IT'S NOT THAT.

THE ONLY REASON SHE WAS SENT HERE

WAS BECAUSE SHE WAS A SPY

SENT TO FIND OUT OUR TACTICS, AND OUR BATTLE PLANS,

HOW LARGE OF A FORCE WE HAVE.

IT SEEMS LIKE SHE DIDN'T DO A VERY GOOD JOB,

WHICH IS WHY SHE'S STILL HERE.

WHAT IF SHE LIED?

WHAT IF SHE'S STILL WORKING FOR THEM?

WHAT IF SHE DID TURN ME INTO A DRAGON ON PURPOSE,

AND THIS WHOLE THING WAS A SETUP TO GET INTEL ON US?

THEY'RE HER FRIENDS,

HER FAMILY

FOR ODIN'S SAKE, HER MOTHER IS THEIR CHIEF.

He shook his head. "No, I don't think she's working for them, still. Stormfly and I found her in the woods by chance. She probably would've died, otherwise. That landslide was bad and dangerous - there was no way she could've planned that. I think she's really on her own here."

THAT MAY BE,

BUT EVEN SO

WHAT'S HER ONE BARGAINING POINT TO GET BACK?

INFORMATION.

AND WHEN SHE'S ME, SHE'LL HAVE ACCESS TO,

AND HEAR EVERYTHING WE HAVE PLANNED,

AND WE'RE THE ONLY ONES WHO WILL KNOW.

THE VILLAGE IS OBVIOUSLY TENSE RIGHT NOW,

BUT THEY'LL BE LOOKING FOR SPIES

MORE THAN TRUSTED VIKINGS.

HER DISGUISE IS ALMOST PERFECT, HICCUP

WHETHER THAT'S A GOOD THING OR BAD,

She left the sentence open, making him groan. "Then… I guess I'll just have to keep an eye on her. That is, assuming she agrees to do it for more than a day. And when we do finally cure you… Well, maybe we can put her in a cell before she can get anything back to her tribe.

She raised an eyebrow.

THAT SEEMS PRETTY CRUEL, HICCUP

COULD YOU REALLY DO THAT?

"I… I don't…" He frowned and buried his face in his hands. She purred softly - something she knew Toothless did when he was feeling sad - and nudged him with her snout.

I'M NEVER GOING TO TRUST HER, HICCUP

YOU KNOW THAT.

BUT YOU'RE GOING TO NEED TO MAKE SOME HARD DECISIONS

WHEN YOU BECOME CHIEF.

IT'S THE TRUTH.

"I know," He whispered, just loudly enough for her to hear, "But… Not yet. So… Is that a yes, or a no? Do you still want to go through with this?"

This was the moment, she knew. Hiccup was giving her the option - it wouldn't be running back on her own, or abandoning them. It would be her choice.

The consequences ran through her mind at speeds quicker than a Night Fury's blast. If she went back, she could beg them for help, if not forgiveness first. If a divine power had deemed this curse upon her for eternity, then so be it, but gods be damned if they hadn't, she would sure as hell do everything in her power to get back to who she was. And, of course, she wouldn't have to live with the knowledge that Berk might never find out what happened to her… Or that anything ever happened to her at all.

And yet… Hiccup's plans had almost never failed her in the past. And with people like Mildew always looking for easy ways to blame dragons for things, she couldn't imagine the time he would have with this. He could round the whole village up against them, maybe even force Hiccup and Toothless to leave… It was a risk she'd rather not take. Plus, if she stayed there, she might have more time to figure out what they were supposed to do with Syl. Of course, she might also go crazy in the process…

She turned to Hiccup, finalizing her decision. There would be no going back after this, she knew - no second choice. But she trusted him.

GO.

WATCH HER.

AND PLEASE,

BRING ME BACK

I WANT TO PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE AGAIN.

And tell you how much I love you for doing all this with my own voice… She thought to herself but chose to leave out.

He nodded and grinned at her. "I will turn you back, Astrid. I just need to figure out how, first. I… I'll see you soon. Tonight, if I get the chance. Just… Keep calm down here, okay? Try not to make too much noise, either. They'll probably start sending out more search parties soon, so just lay low, at least for the next few hours. Nobody found Toothless here for a few months, though, so you should be alright. But just in case… Stay safe, okay? I promise you I'll be back as soon as I can, and this will work."

He turned back to look at Toothless for a moment and frowned. "Hey, bud… Could you give us a moment alone? I wanted to say, uh, goodbye."

He raised an eyebrow at him but eventually walked away enough that he wouldn't be able to hear their conversation… Probably.

"Alright, Astrid," He told her under his breath, "It's time that I told you why we're really leaving before dawn."

She narrowed her eyes at him. It had been something on her mind that morning. After all, he hadn't done more than leave, and then come back a few hours later, suddenly demanding that they needed to leave a day and a half earlier than they had planned. She knew he had been worried about his father, as well as the search parties they all knew were out looking for them, but at dawn the next day?! It was insane, even for his standards. She had known from the start that there had been something else, but she had never bothered to ask.

"Have you noticed how Toothless has been… Distant, lately?" He asked.

Her mouth dropped open. Really? Was he asking this now? She had just been turned into a dragon, a Night Fury, of all kinds! Of course he would be distant - apparently, he had never even seen another one of his own race, and whilst she still hated what she had become, she could understand his curiosity at such a strange occurrence and his time to think it over.

Besides, who was he to talk? For the first time in his life, she had given him the opportunity to talk to his best friend, and now he had the nerve to go on about how untalkative he had been of late? He would never be pleased, she decided.

He seemed to sense her annoyance, as he quickly replied, "No, no! I figured it was pretty normal at first, too. Well, normal compared to the other things that have been happening of late… But then it started getting… Worse."

He glanced at his dragon for a moment, who was preening himself, before scooting up closer to Astrid's ear. "It was just small things, at first. I tried talking to him, and he would just… Blank out, like he didn't even hear me. Don't get me wrong - this dragon just loves to ignore me, but these past few times it's just been... Different.

"But I didn't think anything was wrong, really. With all of this, he's had a lot to think about lately, I know. He's a smart dragon, and he likes to try to figure things out on his own. But yesterday, when we were coming back from Gothi's hut… Something happened.

"He just froze up. Midair, like. It was sort of like the time he took us to their nest, but this time… This time, his legs went stiff, and his tail as well, straightening right out. His eyes were closed like he was asleep, but… He couldn't have been. It reminded me a bit of a study Fishlegs and I did on dragon's attack and defense behaviors - a lot of Nadders and Gronckles do that when they hear or smell danger nearby - but this was completely random. We were just on our way back here… I didn't even say anything, I don't think. We were just… Flying.

"Well, we started plummeting, of course, so I shook him, trying to get him to wake up, but he didn't even blink, or open his eyes. We might've died if he hadn't woken up at the last moment, and the trees hadn't been there to help break our fall. But when he woke up, too… It was almost like he didn't know what happened, or where he was. Something's wrong with him, Astrid. Something very, very wrong."

He sighed. "I don't know what it is, though. And if anyone knows how, it's Gobber, and Fishlegs, too, along with everyone else. So, yes, I do want to figure out how to change you back as soon as possible, and I was worried about my Dad and the search parties…" He looked over at his dragon, who had moved on to licking his legs, for whatever reason. "But something is wrong with Toothless. I think… I think he might be sick. The scariest part of it all is that he doesn't even seem to realize what's happened to him after it's over. But… Don't ask him about it, alright? I can fix this for him, and I don't want something else for him to worry about, as strange as I know that sounds."

He sat up on his knees, preparing to stand again - a somewhat more difficult feat with a metal leg, she knew.

"I just need to get him some help as soon as I can. I don't want him to suffer, and if this goes on for any longer… It'll be the death of us."

She took a moment to contemplate what he had said.

It was valid reasoning, of course. If something like that started happening to Stormfly, she didn't know what she would do. And considering how close the two of them were… She knew that if one of them suffered, the other would, too. On top of that, she couldn't help but admire his selflessness. While he took it a bit too far on occasion, he always seemed to have more true concern for those around him than himself, which was something she had always admired about him, at least when he wasn't being a smartass about it. Still, that meant that someone like her always had to be around when he wasn't worrying enough about himself, and he had refused to take any more training and self-defense lessons with her on the account that they were 'inhumane' and 'ridiculously impossible', which she didn't understand at all.

As he walked over to his dragon, he turned back, as though suddenly remembering something. "Oh, and Astrid?" His eyes shot to the ground. "I-is there anything… Personal, of yours, that you wouldn't want Syl to see, or do? She's going to see almost every part of your life that you do. Sleeping in your house, eating with your parents... I know that you probably don't want me to see that much of your personal life either, but…?"

She started to shake her head, before stopping herself. She had never taken too much time to think about it - her daily activities were pretty public, at least in terms of in the Village. Of course, her mother would wish her goodnight every night, and she knew her father would silently come in to check on her as she fell asleep, too, but that was normal enough. All girls fathers did that kind of thing, right? There was nothing she could think of that would hinder the girl's disguise, or surprise her significantly. No traditions or prayers every night. At least, none that anybody else knew of. Of course, there was one thing… But Syl wouldn't find it. She had taken lengths to ensure it was hidden and was the only one who knew about it, as well. No, she had nothing to worry about.

She shook her head again, more confidently, and smiled back, letting him hop on Toothless. The dragon looked at her as Hiccup situated himself on his saddle.

"Astrid…" He turned his head, looking out over the lake. "I don't really know what to tell you. I guess I… I just…" He paused for a moment and frowned, thinking.

"When I was down here, I thought I was as good as dead, for a long time. I had no way out, and that scared me a lot more than you know. Hiccup kept bringing me back here every night after we flew, because it was safe, and hidden. I knew that. You were the first one to find it, and even you had to follow him down here. But I'm a dragon, and of the same kind as you, as well - you probably think that I don't know how you feel, but…" He looked back at her, a sympathy in his eyes so stunningly deep that it couldn't be described with mere words.

"When I lost my tailfin, I felt like a part of me was gone. I was a Night Fury, as you call me - the fastest of my kin, and stealthiest, too. I was meant to be in the sky, unseen and silent. And then I was brought down, exposed, mercilessly trapped and put out for all to see. When Hiccup approached me that day with his knife… A small part of just wanted him to kill me - I had become everything I wasn't supposed to be. Yet… He spared me. He saw my weakness, my vulnerability, and he spared me. He's… He's a strong Viking, stronger than you, stronger than your leader, stronger than anyone else there.

"It's not a strength shown through prowess in battle or killing. Until then I thought that that was the only kind there was. If strength wasn't physical, what else could it be? But… I've seen it in him. You've seen it, too. And it's that same strength I can see in his eyes when he says he wants to change you back. He will do this, Astrid, or else die trying. But I don't intend to let that happen. Don't lose hope in us. Get some practice moving around, too, especially with your tail, and maybe your wings. That tail's going to be sore for a few days, as well, after that maneuver you pulled in the forest I don't know how long you'll be down here, but it'll help, one way or another, as well as keep you busy. It's what I spent most of my time doing."

He raised his wings to take off, but just before he did, added, "Oh, and if you start hearing voices in your head, don't listen to them. It's mostly nonsense, anyway."

Then, he leaped up, sending several powerful gusts of wind down on the ground, before stabilizing himself, and lifting off over the trees, leaving Astrid all alone in the chasm.

---

Syl and Stormfly caught up with them as soon as they lifted above the trees.

"Hey!" She yelled at him over the wind.

"Hello again!" He yelled back, having to blink once to remind himself it wasn't Astrid sitting on Stormfly's saddle. "You seem a lot more comfortable than yesterday!"

"Well, the way I see it, if she's going to try to kill me, I have a much better chance back here than in front of her mouth! I'd rather plummet to my death than end up in the stomach of one of these beasts!" She yawned. "Or maybe I'm just too tired to care either way!"

He grinned and shifted Toothless's fin position. They would need to gain some altitude if they wanted to keep gliding, he knew. Toothless swooped upwards towards the clouds, and Syl urged Stormfly to follow, obviously taking it as a challenge.

"I'm not sure you're ready for dragon racing just yet!" He yelled down at her.

"Wanna bet?" She said, catching up to him, and commanding Stormfly to shift into a glide.

Hiccup snorted in disbelief and raised an eyebrow at his dragon, who only grinned back.

"Well, she's certainly getting into character…" He looked out over the trees in front of them, trying to judge the distance between themselves and the mountain that marked the back side of Berk.

"Alright, Toothless, we've got time," he told the dragon, "let's show her what you can do, huh, bud?"

He smiled a Toothless smile, tongue flapping in the wind, and tucked his wings against his side, going into a nosedive for a moment before pulling them back out, and screaming past her at almost twice the speed.

"You cheated!" He heard her yell at him.

"I won!" He replied as they struggled to catch up.

Eventually, they were side by side once again and glided for a few minutes in silence until Toothless landed near the base of the backside of the mountain, with Stormfly following close behind.

Syl nearly fell out of her saddle when she landed, forcing him to stifle a laugh. Toothless, on the other hand, was not so lenient and chuckled as he watched her climb off, looking quite flustered.

"You can tell your dragon to shut up," she snapped at him. "And as far as that race goes earlier, it's no wonder you won. You've had a few years practice, but I'm just getting started."

He raised an eyebrow, and she smirked, saying, "What? I'm kidding. Like I actually want to ride a dragon. I'm just doing this to get back home someday. Thought you would've figured that out by now. Just trying to get in character."

He nodded, becoming serious. "Good, because from this point on, you're no longer Syl - you're Astrid. That's all you ever were. I'll start calling you that, too."

She grinned. "Don't you mean your girlfriend?"

His cheeks flushed, and he quickly replied, "It's not like that, we're just… Friends, who are, um, very close to each other… And sometimes kiss. But we don't have to do that! I mean, um, don't do that. It's… Ah… We're just friends…" He winced.

She snorted. "Oh, come on, I saw the way you looked at her when you came out of the Great Hall... And when she's a dragon, actually - that's pretty weird, just so you know. Anyway, you're in love. It doesn't take a genius to see that."

"Wha-? No! I…" He looked back down at the ground, taking a sudden interest in his worn shoes.

"Oh, really?" She asked, obviously trying to make Astrid's voice as romantically extravagant as possible. "Here, I'll do you one better - Oh, Hiccup! I love you! You're the most handsome, manly Viking I've ever met! I wish you'd swoop me up in your arms, take me away from the world, and kiss me like there's no tomorrow!"

She laughed as his face burned red, and he looked away. "Hah! Admit it; you've always wanted to hear her say it, and now she finally has… Sort of. Happy?"

He didn't respond - it was obvious this girl just loved to torture him. Why couldn't she have turned into a dragon?

She snorted, annoyed. "Whatever. You two are weird, but I can see how much you like her, even if I don't know what you see in her."

They continued to walk in silence until the mountain got too steep to just walk up.

"What now?" She asked him.

"Well," He said slowly, "This is it. We go around this Mountain, and we're almost right in the middle of the Village. My Dad'll be in the Great Hall if he isn't already out looking for us. Though I'm sure we'll see some people before we get there. So… Are you ready to go, Astrid?"

She smirked. "Only if you are, boyfriend."

He winced. "Please don't call me that."

"Well," She replied, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "How about 'bud'? You seem to like calling ol' Toothy here that. Why not you?"

He shivered. "Just… Hiccup is fine."

She shrugged. "Whatever, Hiccup. Wouldn't have been my first choice."

He started around the mountain, Toothless at his side, and Stormfly following close behind before Syl stopped them. "Wait,"

He turned around. "Something wrong?"

She frowned. "Could you, ah, give me a minute alone? I promise I'll be right back. I just... Need to do something first."

He glanced up at the sky. Though the sun was hidden behind the mountain, a faint yellow line was making its way across the horizon, signaling the break of dawn, and the start of another day on Berk.

"Yeah, I guess we have a second or two. But what-" But before he could finish, she had already run off into the forest.

He shook his head, and turned to Toothless. "Well, things will settle down soon, bud. Kind of, anyway. I need to do a bit of research to find out how to bring Astrid back, but hopefully, it won't take too long. Tomorrow we can go out flying for two hours, though! How does that sound, bud?"

The dragon grinned back at him in response, purring deeply in his throat.

He smiled back. "Of course, she mentioned that it started from her wound, so does that mean it's some kind of infection? Well, it's certainly a dangerous one, if it is. But this sort of thing doesn't just happen to people. Syl doesn't say it's anything new, or out of the ordinary, though I doubt she knows that much about acid. Of course, I don't either, but... There must have been something that happened there that was different. I just wish I had seen it happen… If only you could talk. Maybe you and Astrid can tell me a bit more tonight, but- Toothless?"

Caught up in his thoughts, he hadn't noticed the dragon collapse to the ground, his eyes roll back up into his head.

He gasped. "Oh, Gods, not again!"

He leaned down, and shook the dragon's head, but he only rested heavily in his arms, lifeless. Stormfly sniffed him with concern.

"Toothless, stay with me, bud! I'll be right back!" He ran into the woods as fast as he dared on his metal leg.

"Syl! Syl, are you out there? Syl!" He squinted, searching for her in the dimly lit forest, but it was impossible to see anything.

"I thought you said you were gonna call me Astrid from now on. What's up?" The voice came suddenly from behind him, and he whipped around, coming face to face with Syl. For a moment, he wondered what she had been doing, but didn't bother to ask.

"We need to go. Now!"

She raised an eyebrow, and followed him back through the forest when he started running back.

"Wait, what? What's going on?"

"This!" He gestured sharply at Toothless once they had reached him. Suddenly, he sprung up, clutching desperately at his head, his claws digging mercilessly into his scales.

"Wha-" Syl started as his eyes suddenly flashed open, and gazed right into her. He growled, and squeezed them shut again.

"What's going on? What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know! But we need to get him help, now! Stormfly, stay here!" He started running along the treeline at the base of the mountain, forcing her to follow him.

"But… What about the plan?!" She yelled after him.

"Just follow my lead! I just need to get him help, quick!"

"I thought you were supposed to be the dragon expert around here! How is anyone else going to help?!"

"Gobber knows more about anatomy than me and even more about behavior!" He yelled back, trying to remember what he had told her about the two-limbed teacher. "If anyone here knows what's wrong, it's him!"

"Wouldn't it... Be faster... To fly there?!" She asked between quick breaths.

"I need Stormfly... To stay and watch... Toothless! We're almost there... Anyway!"

It was true; the first houses were starting to come into view around the bend - and the first Vikings, as well.

"Remember… Don't stop… And follow my lead! We'll have time to explain… Later on!"

They bolted into the village, ignoring anybody who noticed him or waved, and trying to take the closest possible route to the Great Hall, behind houses and sheds. As they leaped into the main path leading up to it, he heard a host of both mutterings and greetings fly past his ears, each of them suddenly cut off as he sprinted out of range.

"Hiccup… Chief's been worried sick… 'Thought the storm swept 'em out to… Astrid doesn't look… Wonder what happened to… Half of Berk's out looking…"

He ran past them all - their arrival in the town would formally be announced soon enough, he knew, but at that moment, all that mattered was Toothless.

As he climbed the steps, he spared a second to glance out over the horizon - the sun was indeed rising, and the day looked to turn out clear, if a bit cloudy. The cool morning air nipped at his skin, though it was still warmer than he was used to, having spent the majority of the past few years of his life soaring hundreds of feet in the sky.

He ripped his attention off of the landscape, and back to the task at hand. Reaching the top of the steps, he risked another glance back, this time at Syl. Most of her hair was matted to her forehead, some of it falling in front of her eyes, and a few of her fake scars were starting to run down her face, but it looked realistic enough to pass off as puss, dirt or blood from the wounds, disgusting as the concept may have been.

He leaned against the doors with all his might, trying to force them open. Syl helped, and together, tediously slowly, they were able to make the doors swing into the hall. Hiccup rushed in and turned to the nearest person he saw.

"Where's my Dad?!"

Looking quite flustered, the heavyset Viking pointed back out the door. "I don't think he's up yet, Hiccup. But where have you-"

Before he could finish his sentence, they were back out the door, flying down the steps. He ran up to his house and slammed the door open. His father was standing there next to their fire pit, looking quite downcast, and holding a pile of firewood to add to the small blaze.

"D- Dad…" He stammered, leaning against the door, and catching his breath.

His father's eyes widened, and his mouth slowly dropped open. "Son…"

The logs clattered to the floor.