A/N: And here we are again! Earlier this week, I promised on my Tumblr (aleteia-ff) that I would post on Thursday and I'm very glad to be able to follow through on that.

As already teased on my Tumblr as well, this chapter will consist of two parts; the first part will pick up where the last one left off, whereas the second part will introduce a new – minor – POV character. And no, it's not Hiccup!

I will also be seeing HTTYD3 on Saturday (I am from the Netherlands and the movie releases early here) but will not include any plot details from that movie in Phantom of the Arena, regardless of what happens. So no spoilers here!

That said… please enjoy!

Stranger Than You Dreamt It

Astrid didn't move, but simply watched Hiccup's green eyes widen as he seemed to realize what was going on. His eyes went from her face to his helmet in her hands. Then, he drew his lips into a line, his pupils almost visibly shrinking.

"You bitch," he spat.

He got up before she could react, grabbing her wrists and pulling her to her feet. She dropped his helmet in shock. There was nothing tender about his grip. The expression on Hiccup's face was as cold as ice, freezing her soul. Before she realised what was going on, he was making her back away from his bed, pushing and pulling her along. She tried to resist, to dig her heels into the ground or to kick him, but he was stronger than she was – miles away from the scrawny boy from Berk – and the rock solid floor wouldn't give.

"Hiccup?" she asked, trying to remain as calm as possible. "What are you doing?"

Hiccup laughed wryly to himself, shaking his head. "You apparently think you're so clever, try to figure it out." He had dropped the accent. It was Hiccup's own voice, his slightly nasal and whiny tone, which was currently completely creeping her out.

It didn't escape her attention how they were slowly getting closer and closer to the cave's edge. She kept trying to free herself from his grip, but his hold was so strong that she was sure that if he hadn't been wearing gloves, his fingernails would've been buried deep into her skin. She tried to topple him over, but whenever she approached him, he'd parry her and push her backwards with one of his boots.

As they arrived at the edge, her practically standing on it, panic took a hold of her. Looking behind her, she could still see the deep abyss. He wouldn't, right? He was Hiccup, he couldn't!?

"Damn you, Astrid," he told her. His face was close to hers, but there wasn't a sign of friendliness on it. Harshly, he nudged her backwards once more. One of her feet slipped, sending her tumbling backwards. She yelped, fearing she'd fall. Hiccup held onto her, but increased the distance between them, keeping her at an arm's length from his body. She managed to place her foot on the side of the cavern wall, but now found herself balancing over the edge. If Hiccup let her go, she'd fall. Hundreds of meters downwards.

"Hiccup, please," she begged, looking at him pleadingly. "Please don't."

"You little viper," he bit. "Is this what you wanted?"

Before she could shake her head, he released one of her wrists. She screamed once more, slightly losing her balance but quickly realising that this was her chance. With one hand free, she could actually fight back. Instinctively, she reached for her back to get her battle axe. Only to realise it wasn't there. Neither was her dagger.

Hiccup laughed. Gods, him doing so in his own voice rather than in the Phantom's was even more harrowing. Sweet, little Hiccup's voice. About to kill her. "Don't think I'm that trusting, Astrid," he told her. "I took them all away. So you'd sleep better, of course."

"Please, Hiccup, pull me back up," she tried, tears appearing in her eyes.

She had been so stupid. She'd assumed that because the Phantom had never hurt her no matter what she'd done – apart from obliterating her shoulder, but that was before all... this – he wouldn't ever lay a finger on her. She hadn't thought about how he'd react to his helmet being pulled off – after all, he was Hiccup, and Hiccup was no killer, he was the clumsy boy from Berk. But she'd been wrong. So, so wrong. The man who was menacingly staring at her right now was nowhere close to the Hiccup she'd vaguely known. And that had been her mistake. Assuming things had stayed the same. While they clearly hadn't.

Toothless appeared next to Hiccup, seemingly woken up by the noise. He looked at her with sad eyes, which made her feel like her fate was even more sealed. There was nothing she could do. She could hardly reach Hiccup, and even if she managed to, what would she do? It was two against one. She could try to pull him down with her, but the dragon would save him and possibly kill her. She was unarmed, defenceless. She didn't like to beg, but it was her only option at this point.

"Please, Hiccup," she tried. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have, I –"

"We had a good thing going, Astrid," Hiccup said, slightly cocking his head and taking her in with a faked sense of pity. "It's such a shame you had to ruin it. You little demon."

"Hiccup, don't, please don't," she cried, begging him fully. "Please, I don't want to die! I'm sorry –"

Hiccup pulled her up slightly, still looking at her with an icy glare. She felt relieved for a moment and tried to grab him with her other hand to steady herself. But he swat it away.

"I don't believe you," he told her as he increased the distance between them once again. She sputtered and cried, but the expression on his face did not change. He looked at her with no other emotion than that of pure hate. "Bye, Astrid."

He released her wrist. She fell. She screamed, tumbling downwards, her limbs flailing around. Time slowed down as she realised she was going to die, her mind frantically looking for ways to increase her chance of survival. Even though she'd fall into a lake, the impact with the water surface alone was likely to kill her, shattering her back if she'd land flat on it. She didn't know how deep it was; diving in head-first would likely yield her a broken neck if she hit the lake's floor. And feet first would shatter all the bones in her legs and possibly her spine. It was hopeless. She'd need a miracle.

She fell for what felt like ages, her sense of time evaporating, her own scream ringing in her ears. This was it. She'd tried. And she'd failed. She'd miscalculated the ruthlessness of Berk's worst enemy. She'd let herself be played like a puppet by the Phantom. Hauled in by his sweet words, blind to what had been behind his façade. And now she was about to die in a cave full of dragons. At the hand of someone once considered a Viking.

The lake's surface rapidly coming closer, she braced herself for impact. But it never came.

Instead, she felt two claws close themselves around her shoulders, yanking her back up. Black ones. Only a few seconds later, her feet were being dragged over solid ground, the claws releasing her. She fell to her knees instantly, all strength sucked out of her body. Panting, she tried to get back to her senses. She was alive.

Looking around her, she found herself on the lake's stone shore. Hiccup and his dragon were in front of her, the former getting off and leaning against the latter, his arms crossed, the eyebrow he no longer had pulled up.

She looked back at him. He'd saved her. But he'd been the one to try to kill her as well. How? Why?

After sitting there on the floor, on hands and knees, trembling, for minutes on end, she finally managed to calm her heart down enough to allow her to speak. "You're a madman," she panted.

"Never denied that," Hiccup simply responded.

"You tried to kill me," she stated, still trying to come to terms with the situation herself.

"Astrid, we've been over this I don't know how many times now," he bit. "I don't kill people."

"You gave it your best shot," she snapped back, transforming her intense fear into anger. "If you weren't trying to kill me, why did you do it?"

"You deserved it."

"What!?" she spit. "How could I possibly deserve that?"

"I gave you a tiny sliver of my trust," Hiccup explained. "And you broke it."

"I broke your trust?" she snapped, finding the strength to get back to her feet in her upcoming anger. "What about my trust!? You just threw me down from gods know how high!" Tears of fear, her mind still processing what had just happened, and anger welled up in her eyes. "You knew I'd figured out who you were! Why didn't you tell me!? Why didn't you just show me your face!?"

"We had a deal. We'd talk about it today," Hiccup snapped, his posture unchanged.

"It's not that simple!" she blazed. "You played with me for months, left me wondering who you were! Every. fucking. night!" She didn't know how much longer he was going to let her hold onto her life this time, so she had to make sure he knew how she felt. "I even helped you! You can't blame me for wanting to know who you are! Besides, how was I supposed to be sure you'd actually follow up on what you said? Given that you consistently dodge every question I ask!?"

"It's not like you gave me a chance," Hiccup spat. "You betrayed me first chance you got."

"You betrayed all of us!" she yelled, his accusing tone sending her over the edge. "You left Berk, you chose the fucking dragons over us!" She balled her fists. "You let us think you were dead! For five years! Gods, all of Berk still thinks you're dead!"

"Oh, boo-hoo!" Hiccup yelled back at her, angrily gesturing and walking up to her, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Poor no-good Hiccup is dead! Berk has finally been released of its greatest burden! What an incredible tragedy!"

"We looked for you!" she screamed. "All winter!"

Hiccup scoffed angrily. "No, you didn't. You looked for Hiccup, the Prodigy Dragon Killer. You didn't look for Hiccup the Dragon Rider, or for Hiccup the Clumsy, Hiccup the Chaotic, Hiccup the Fuck-Up. You looked for who you wanted me to be." He looked down at her, disdain in his eyes. "No one ever looked for me."

She shook her head, refusing to accept his words. "That's not true. We looked for you! So did I, I –"

Hiccup interrupted her by laughing loudly. "Don't even try to pretend you cared for me, Astrid. You told me yourself. You hated me." The iciness with which he threw her own words back at her echoed through the cave. "You looked for me because you felt guilty, not because you cared for me. You never did."

Before she could open her mouth to retort, Hiccup interjected: "And don't even try to pretend you care for me now. You have some sort of weird, dysfunctional crush on the Phantom." He scoffed, pointing at his own face, which was still clearly visible. Including his scars. "The Phantom's a persona. This guy? You don't know him at all."

She stared back at him in anger, hardly even registering what he was saying to her, or the meaning of his words. She wasn't going to let him talk to her like this. "Don't act like you're the good guy in this. You left us. You knew about dragons all along, you've known about the queen for gods know how long, you could've helped us!" She gestured wildly, acting out her exasperation. "Together, we could've solved this! But you didn't even tell any of us. You just ran, like a coward." She walked up to him, trying to regain a bit of dominance. Toothless warbled angrily in response, but she didn't care. She'd almost died just now. She could do it again. "And you never even looked back. You could've come back, but you didn't." She pretended like she just remembered something, overacting the gesture to mock him. "Oh wait, you did! To torment us!"

Hiccup just eyed her, seemingly unimpressed. "Because of course, Astrid, things were that simple!" he threw back at her with just as much sarcasm. "I could've just walked up to my dad and told him I'd befriended a dragon. He would have been absolutely fine with it. Could've told you too; you didn't absolutely hate my guts after all." The way he consistently glared at her intensified. "Of course you'd go as far as calling a 15-year old boy a coward for leaving the village that almost physically spat on him."

Hiccup turned around, walking up to Toothless and fumbling around in the dragon's saddlebags. After a moment, he made his way back to her. "And besides, I did come back. After winter had passed, I returned to the cove on Berk. And I found my "memorial stone"." He waved his hands around, seemingly painting the words in the sky. "In honour of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Berk's Bravest Dragon Killer." He scoffed. "Not even half a year later, and I was already dead to Berk. But that part could be fixed. The way it had chosen to remember me however, couldn't." Hiccup bit his lip, his expression having changed from sheer anger to a mixture of incredible anger and something she supposed looked like hurt. "I was everything my village did not want me to be. I guess we could say it wasn't really the 'Welcome Home' I'd expected. So I decided that it no longer was."

"That what no longer was?" she responded, asking him an actual question for the first time since the start of their argument.

"That Berk was no longer my home."

"That doesn't make it right, what you did to Berk. What you're still doing to it," she retorted.

"And what gives Berk the right to kill dragons?" he asked.

"They attack us. We defend ourselves," she answered stoically. Despite her current beliefs about dragons, that answer had been carved deep into her brain.

"I just don't quite believe that," Hiccup told her. He'd walked up to her and was now looking at her, revealing that he was holding a piece of rope. "Hold out your hands."

"Why?" she asked, defensively backing away from him. She hadn't forgotten how he'd just nearly killed her.

Hiccup closed in on her again. "Because I'm taking you back to Berk. And I don't want you to try anything funny."

That didn't seem logical. "Why would you do that?" she hissed.

"Because I don't want to kill you, but I don't want to deal with you any longer either," he bit. "And dropping you in the middle of the ocean would make me seem cruel."

"Aren't you afraid I'll tell everyone who you are?" she threatened.

Hiccup scoffed. "If you want to tell Berk who I am, be my guest. Feel free to tell my dad how his son has become his village's nightmare. See if that helps him hunt me down." Hiccup laughed, the tone of voice nearly freezing the space around them. "Especially considering he's been doing an absolutely marvellous job at that so far." He closed in on her, using his height to tower over her. "If you're willing to have that on your conscience, go ahead. But then again, why wouldn't you? If you think I'm a traitor, what does that make you?"

Trembling in anger as he threw his insults at her, she lost the last sliver of self-control she still possessed. In one smooth movement, she flattened her hand, lifted it, and struck Hiccup right across his cheek. The impact threw his head sideward, a red imprint of her hand clearly visible on the good side of his face. Its colour now almost matched that of his right. "You're despicable," she spat, making sure some of her spit actually landed on his face.

She heard Hiccup swear under his breath as he wiped his face with his glove, finishing with an audible "Curse you" directed at her as he violently grabbed her wrists. She kicked him in response, backing away as soon as he winced and let her go.

"Look, Astrid," Hiccup hissed as he moved back to her. "We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. If you dare to hit me again, I'll gladly let Toothless blast you to pieces." He gestured at the Night Fury, who growled in response, assuming a predatory stance. As friendly as the dragon had looked the day before, it certainly wasn't on her side today. "So just let me tie your hands so I can take you home. And then we can both continue living our lives without each other's delightful presence in it."

"I don't think we're quite done here," she hissed, not backing down so easily. There were so many things she wanted him to pay for.

"I am," Hiccup bit. "So choose wisely."

After staring at him, hoping her gaze would make him change his mind but finding him unfazed, she deliberated for a second. Voluntarily letting her hands be tied was a bad idea in nearly every scenario, but what other options did she have? If she tried to fight him, he'd win. She wasn't bad at hand-to-hand combat, surely better than Hiccup himself, but the dragon gave him an unfair advantage. And even if she managed to somehow outsmart Toothless, there were hundreds of dragons around her. They were currently keeping their distance from whatever was going on, but she was quite sure they'd rush in to protect their "alpha" if necessary. Perhaps even Stormfly. She always came second, after all.

She didn't see another solution than to listen to him. She wanted to get out of here. She wanted to go home. And he was the only one who could get her there.

With a deep sigh but not completely resigned, she held out her hands in front of her. "Fine," she mumbled.

"Thank the gods," Hiccup snarled as he took her wrists in his hands, quickly tying them together.

As he worked, she couldn't help but look at his face, which was currently extremely close to hers. She studied it more intently, her eyes often resting on the lines of his scars. She hated how he looked handsome in spite of them. Or maybe even slightly because of them.

"What happened to your face?" she grumbled, unable to control her curiosity.

Hiccup laughed wryly. "You want to know how I got these scars? Let's just say I was naïve and stupid, and my luck ran out. That's all you need to know."

"Is that why you hide your face?" she prodded.

Hiccup scoffed as he checked the strength of the knots he'd tied her wrists together with. She could feel the rope cut into her skin; so if you asked her, it was tight enough.

"No, I don't hide my face because I am ashamed of my scars," he answered, seemingly content with his work. "They made me who I am. Besides, they keep the right people away and earn you respect with others." He gave her a slightly wicked smile. She noticed how the right side of his mouth didn't respond as smoothly as the left. "After all, you said it yourself; It's only fun if you get a scar out of it."

Ignoring the jab at 15-year old Astrid's philosophies as Hiccup moved behind her and started pushing her towards Toothless, she asked: "Then why do you hide it?"

"Because I don't want to deal with people who think they know who I am," he snapped as he sort-of pushed, sort-of helped her onto Toothless' back. "Like you."

"Then why did you even bring me here in the first place?" she bit at him while he got on behind her.

"I make mistakes too," Hiccup answered while putting his feet in the stirrups and setting his hands on the saddle's edge. His arms were around her once again, but there was not a single hint of fondness in it this time around. "I thought you were different. I was wrong."

Before she could argue back, they shot off from the floor. They landed back in Hiccup's cave, him quickly grabbing his helmet from the floor and fixating it back on his head.

"Can I have my weapons back?" she tried.

"No, I could use the spare metal," Hiccup retorted, leaping off of the edge the cave and diving downwards. After gaining some speed, he pulled Toothless up again, sending them rocketing out of the volcano's mouth and into the sky.

Magical Lasso/Notes/Prima Donna

Life had roughly been the same for Stoick the Vast throughout the years. For twenty of them, he had been a husband without a wife. For five of them, he had been a father without a son. But for all fifty of them, he had been Berk's chief, or chief-to-be. A job that only became harder the longer his life lasted.

The war with the dragons had been a given from the moment he was born. That was something he'd been able to prepare himself for, something he knew he'd have to deal with. What no one had prepared him for however was what and who he'd lose along the way. And how much more difficult his work would become because of it. And with what had to be a human ally now fighting alongside the dragons, his never-ending task as Chief – to keep his village safe from harm – had started to become nearly impossible.

At first, he hadn't thought much of it when a few dragons were released from the arena. They could easily catch some new ones, given the frequency of raids. What came with it however was something that even he could not handle. In his lifetime, he had killed more dragons than he could keep count of. He had cut off their tails, had torn their wings to shreds and had pulverised their skulls. But this was a new kind of enemy.

The Phantom made sure he was never seen and never heard. He worked tactically, striking where people weren't looking and taking whatever he felt was his. He always avoided direct combat and to this day, no one on Berk had even caught as much as a glimpse of him. He never killed, but he had taken nearly everything from Berk nevertheless. And Stoick had been powerless to stop it.

How do you find something you can't see? How do you outplay someone who always seems to be one step ahead? How do you keep rebuilding a village, knowing it'll be destroyed again the second you take your eyes off of it? How do you keep your people from turning on each other because they can't find someone else to blame? How much longer can you keep your face straight, knowing that everyone's looking at you to solve their problems?

The Phantom was playing with them. Stoick had known that for a long time. Burning their food supplies to ashes, then saving them from the disaster he'd created himself… Some people had even momentarily seen the man as their saviour. Which was absurd.

And he was letting all of it happen. As chief, he was responsible. He was letting everyone consistently get strung along. And no matter how hard he'd tried for the past one and a half years, he'd been powerless to stop it.

In spite of all that however, he had to stay strong. If Berk sensed their chief no longer knew what to do, panic would most certainly reign. And he couldn't let that happen.

So, on the second day after Snoggletog, he was patrolling the village once again, helping the people with their problems and answering questions if need be. It was as cold as ever, but he kept his spirits up nevertheless. He liked this part of the job; the more everyday problems allowed him to temporarily take his attention away from the bigger challenges Berk faced. Even though they continuously weighed on him nevertheless.

Of course there were always those everyday problems that required more attention than others. And that category of problems was usually caused by the Thorston twins. And this day was no different from the others.

Stoick found the two troublemakers in the centre of the village, a group of children and teens gathered around them. In the distance, less hidden behind a building than he thought he was, was Snotlout, his nose visibly purple as a result of the punch Tuffnut had landed on it. The two young men apparently hadn't put aside their differences yet.

Stoick waited for a minute, confirming his suspicions before he'd interject.

"Remind me brother, what is that we've learned about the Phantom of the Arena?" Ruffnut asked her twin.

"Good question, sis," Tuffnut added. "We know – so this is first-hand information." He looked around the circle of faces, laying his eyes on every single one of them. "That the Phantom is actually not a man."

Ruffnut gasped in response, inducing the same sound from the crowd. "He isn't?"

Tuffnut nodded. "No, he isn't, my dear sister. The Phantom is in fact not a man, but the ghost of a dragon himself. It is said that this dragon – whose species remains unknown to this day – was killed in Berk's very own arena. And now, it has come back to haunt us." Pretending to be a ghost himself, Tuffnut made some of the children nearly jump backwards.

"He doesn't breathe fire from his mouth, but he shoots it out of his eyes," Ruffnut added.

"It is said he does not have a nose," Tuffnut chimed in again, mimicking everything they were telling.

"He doesn't walk; he floats." Ruffnut crouched to get to the children's eye-height.

"Which is why he never leaves footprints," her brother completed.

"And he only eats yak dung."

"Except for on the weekends! Then he eats…" They were building up the tension, coming closer to the climax of their story.

"Children!" the twins yelled, synchronised.

As some of their audience ran away in fear, Stoick decided he'd had enough of the twins' little play. "Telling fictional ghost-stories again?" he asked, speaking up loudly enough for most people to hear. The twins looked visibly shocked as they realised they'd been caught.

"Kids, you should know by now that nothing the twins say is true," Stoick mused as he walked up to the group, immediately seeing the consoling effect his presence had on some of the shocked kids' faces. The teens knew better than to believe the twins and usually just stuck around them because they were synonym to trouble. The looks on their faces was just as guilty as those on the twins'. "They don't know who the Phantom is and he does not eat children. They're just trying to scare you."

"Chief," one of the teenagers asked. Gustav Larson, he recognized. He knew every face on Berk. "Do you know who the Phantom is?"

Stoick loathed this question. But he always answered it truthfully. "No," he calmly told them. "But I know he's not strong enough to take down Berk."

"Besides, if I were the Phantom, I'd go after these two troublemakers instead of the children," a voice behind him chimed in.

Stoick turned around. "Ah, Gobber," he greeted his long-time friend.

"Can I borrow you for a minute, Stoick?" the blacksmith beckoned with his prosthetic, which had taken on the shape of a hammer today.

He sighed. Unfortunately, he knew all too well what Gobber wanted to talk to him about. He nodded and turned to the twins. "You two: take home the children you've brought to tears and explain to their parents exactly why that happened. I'll be back to check soon."

The twins nodded – as much stuff as they pulled, they did not have the guts to directly disobey orders. They just consistently looked for things their chief hadn't specifically forbid them to do. He'd have to make a list sometime.

Following Gobber, they soon arrived at his workshop. It was even more of a mess than it normally was; they were hoping to get their weapons supply back up to the normal level now that the Phantom and his dragons had seemingly abandoned them for the winter. It wasn't going well.

"You got another one?" Stoick asked.

His friend nodded. "Yes, after sabotaging most of our new weapons over Snoggletog, he actually had the guts to drop another one this morning. Or well, the Terrible Terror did."

"He seems to have an endless supply of those," Stoick noted. They'd killed at least ten of the little dragons ever since the Phantom had started to use them as messengers. They moved over to Gobber's desk, a small note laid out on top of it. "Anything out of the ordinary?"

The blacksmith shook his head. "No, the usual stuff. Metal connection rods, bolts, gears. Smaller parts mostly, which are very time-consuming to make."

"The usual indeed," he concurred. He sighed, this decision always weighing heavily on him. "I guess, given that he seems to still be around despite it being winter, we have no other choice than to give him what he wants."

"Again," Gobber added dejected. "Did you receive any kind words from the Phantom for the holiday?"

"Nothing I haven't seen before." Another note had been waiting for him this morning. "Leave, stop killing dragons, stop making weapons, don't dare to repair your watchtowers. One of those, ending in Or else. I don't even keep track of which one I receive on what day anymore. Given that I can't possibly oblige to any of them."

"Makes you wonder why he sends them," Gobber pondered as he went through his supplies, looking for the parts the Phantom had demanded. They'd usually put them out behind the forge, and the Phantom would pick them up during the night.

"Maybe he wants to make us believe that if we listen to him, he'll let us be. Or he just wants to make sure we don't forget about him. It's hard to say, given that he's a madman. Can't know what goes on in those people's heads."

"Then why do you still listen to him?" an annoying voice interjected.

Both Stoick and Gobber looked at the door. "Good day to you too, Spitelout," Gobber mused sarcastically as the man in question walked in.

The workshop becoming slightly crowded with three fully grown men inside of it, Stoick did not feel like this was going to be a friendly conversation.

"If you keep making him those supplies, you're just giving him what he wants," Spitelout argued. "We're helping him."

"Then what do you propose we do instead?" Stoick asked, not looking forward to having this discussion. It wasn't the first time they'd had it.

"He's a terrorist," Spitelout simply said. "And we shouldn't negotiate with terrorists."

"I agree, he is," Stoick concurred. The worst kind of terrorist Berk had ever seen. "But it's not a coincidence that, with all our military and tactical buildings consistently being blown up, this place has only ever seen a minor fire. Which happened the one time we did not meet his demands. We can't afford to lose the forge, Spitelout."

"And he knows that," Spitelout pointed out. "He's got us right where he wants us."

"I know he does," Stoick admitted. That fact stung him immensely. "But what if he blows up this place? What will we do then? It'll take us weeks, if not months, to build a new forge. We don't have that much time. Especially considering he's not going to start leaving us alone."

"It's not like we haven't tried to catch him," Gobber chimed in. "I watched the stuff he was supposed to pick up until I nearly lost another limb from the lack of movement. But he's always quicker. Or extremely patient. One time, it took him over two weeks to pick up what he'd asked for. I'd been on watch the whole time. Then I sneezed – particularly loudly, I might add – and it was gone. Only took my eyes off of it for a second."

Stoick nodded, looking Spitelout sternly in the eye. "Every attempt we've made to capture him or sabotage him has failed. So if you have a better idea, I'd like to hear it."

Spitelout stayed quiet, simply staring back at his Chief.

"Exactly," Stoick confirmed. "So until you do, I'm not risking losing this forge." He gestured to himself and the two other men. "And whatever happens here, stays between the three of us." Since Spitelout was officially his second-in-command, they hadn't been able to conceal the Phantom's consistent stream of notes for very long. Although Stoick wished they could have. It was of utmost importance that the rest of Berk did not figure out they were making deals with the Phantom. It would only seed more doubt, which was the last thing they needed.

"You can't keep this up forever, Stoick," Spitelout bit before walking out, rejection audible in his voice. The double meaning behind his words did not escape the Chief of Berk.

"That was constructive," Gobber remarked when their colleague was out of earshot.

"I don't know why he still tries," Stoick sighed. "He's right in a sense, but he knows there's no other way. We've been over this countless times."

"Well, we both know it's not about that," Gobber answered, getting back to whatever he was working on. "The longer you keep his boy away from what Spitelout thinks he deserves, the more often he's going to act up like this."

He knew that all too well. Shaking his head, he said: "I can't make Snotlout chief in a time like this. He'd hardly be competent in normal circumstances."

"You're not exactly giving the boy a chance either," Gobber pointed out.

Stoick shot him a look, but Gobber knew him better than to be fazed by that. The blacksmith put his tools down for a minute, looking his friend in the eye with an amount of pity Stoick did not like to receive. "You can't keep it reserved for Hiccup forever, Stoick. He's not coming back."

"I know," Stoick admitted. He'd known that for a long time. Still, he couldn't pass on the position his family had fulfilled for generations to the Jorgensons that easily. Snotlout had to deserve it first. The Haddock bloodline would die with Stoick the Vast, but their honour wouldn't. He would make sure of that. Even if it was the last thing he did.

A/N: Did I just end a chapter without too much of a terrible cliff hanger? I think I did!

Some of you had already predicted that Hiccup's reaction wouldn't be the most cheery, and you were right. It feels very satisfying to have this chapter and the confrontation between Astrid and Hiccup - rather than Astrid and The Phantom - done! Although I did have to teach myself to write Hiccup rather than the Phantom while writing Astrid's POV in this chapter… Kept getting it wrong as I'm so used to calling Hiccup The Phantom by now.

I want to thank you all again for your continued support!