Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III never considered himself an exceptional example of leader material. He didn't feel like he could lead an entire tribe of unruly vikings into a prosperous future. He was far too prone to make mistakes and bad decisions. Before meeting Toothless, everything he did ended up in disaster. For him, but mostly for others.

Heck, even now things tended to go towards a disastrous failure if he was not extra careful.

Still, here he was. Two days of flight away from Berk and about one and half from The Edge, leading his friends through a deserted village in search of anything that could explain what had happened. When Stoik had sent him a messenger, he was told of a terrified viking from a very small tribe shipwrecking on Berk and babbling about monsters in the night.

He was pretty sure it had been a dragon to cause the problem, though he could see why Stoik was worried. If it wasn't a dragon, then it meant that it was an enemy tribe out for bloodshed, and frankly, he wasn't ready to go into a war against another group of humans when they had just gotten out of one against flying lizards that could breath fire.

"I don't know, Hiccup." Fishlegs was tiptoeing behind him, looking ready to faint. Meatlug had decided that she did not want to land a single paw in that place, preferring to wait near the docks and leaving him without a dragon to rely on. "The damage to the buildings is nothing like I've ever seen before. Maybe..." Fishlegs rushed a few steps ahead and picked up a discarded bucket with a punch-sized hole right in the middle. He looked at it with a critical eye, examining every single nook and cranny. "Think it's a new breed? There is so much out there we don't know yet!"

The tall teen frowned. Having worked in the forge for most of his younger years, he knew how fire behaved. It was chaotic in nature, spreading with different speeds depending on what kind of material it was on. Denser wood lasted longer. Wool and cloth burned into ashes. Metal took a huge amount of heat to melt and did not scorch easily.

Fire, as he knew it, was unpredictable.

What he was seeing here, however, was not how fire should behave. The scorch markings were narrow and straight, going from a length of a few inches to several feet. Upon landing in the village, Hiccup had examined one of these burnt scars, noticing that its edges were as straight and clean as the line itself.

"I don't think it's a dragon," he replied, more to himself than to his friend.

Yet it couldn't be another viking tribe either. No weapon could cause such peculiar and distinctive damage. Not even his sword, Inferno, could do this.

"Hiccup!"

Astrid's voice resounded through the empty village, gaining his attention and bringing him out of his musings. He turned around and watched as the strongest girl he knew ran towards him, agitating something as big as her fist above her head. Stormfly was running after her, looking as excited as her rider.

"Hey Astrid!" he greeted with a smile as she came to a halt in front of him. "Found something for me?"

The young woman halted in front of him and held the object out in front of her. It was a sphere made of metal, polished to such a degree that he could see his dulled, distorted reflection staring back at him. He took it in his hands, rolling it slowly until he found a small hole surrounded by a band of darker metal with really fine engravings on it.

"Wow..." Fishlegs' face was so close to the ball that his nose nearly touched it. "Look at all the tiny details... Jewelry boxes have nothing on this, and usually those are as fancy as they can be."

Fishlegs was right. Some of the details on this thing were as thin as a strand of hair, intersecting each other to form complex shapes that sometimes repeated themselves. Probably runes of some sort, though Hiccup had never seen that kind before.

"Where did you find it?" He asked, bringing the sphere closer to his eyes. He had to admit that he was amazed at the craftsmanship of the object, deciding on the moment that whoever manufactured it was much more of a master than he could ever dream of being.

The moment he looked back up at her, Astrid turned towards the direction she had come from and pointed down the road. "Near the docks," she replied. "Hiccup, I never saw something like this! Have you seen how polished it is? And the details? You can't carve like that, and you're one of the best blacksmiths I know!"

Truth to be told, he was a bit hurt at her comments, though he couldn't blame her at all. Actually, he shouldn't even take this personally. As much as he was proud of his ability in the forge and as a saddle maker, he wasn't a master yet. Not when he still learned new things, be either from Gobber or from his own experimentation.

But then that was beside the point. They were there to investigate what had happened to that viking's tribe, and mulling over a wounded pride was not going to help them.

"You found anything else?" he asked, forcing himself to focus back on their mission.

Astrid shook her head and pushed at Stormfly's snout to prevent her from reaching for the sphere. "Just that," she replied. "I found it laying under an upturned cart on the side of the road. I think whoever it was, it lost this thing without noticing. Maybe they were in a hurry to, you know, do whatever they needed to do. Or maybe a viking knocked it away. This place might be still standing, but all this damage tells me there was a battle."

She proved a point there, and Hiccup found himself wondering if she could be a much better choice for chief position. Yet the girl of his dreams refused to take charge, merely contenting herself with supporting him in whatever harebrained scheme he came up with. That is, unless it was a really stupid idea. Then she would voice her disapproval and occasionally punch him in the arm before following him.

A low gurgling came from behind him, and a moment later Hiccup was stumbling around as he was pushed by his own dragon. Toothless, bless his dragon soul, had just returned from a quick round of the village and seemed as interested in the finding as he and Astrid were.

"Hey bud," he greeted his friend. One hand went to scratch the Night Fury right behind the head while the other still held the ball of polished metal. "Found something interesting?" While dragons could not talk, Hiccup had learned long ago how to read them. Especially Toothless. It was surprising how expressive a dragon could be if you looked close enough.

"Hey, think dragons could help us find more of this stuff?"

At Fishlegs's suggestion, Hiccup looked back at him and hummed absently. It was true that dragons had a far better sense of smell than humans, but he wondered if this could be the case. It was metal, after all, and for all he knew, it could smell just like an axe, a hammer, or anything metallic laying around. It could be a wild dragon chase, and that was something they had no time for.

Whatever had happened here, he didn't want it to happen somewhere else only because he was being too slow in figuring things out.

The leader of the dragon riders sighed and closed his eyes. His mind was a bit overwhelmed with questions now, and as much as he tried to clear it, he was failing miserably. "Ahh... I don't think it's a good idea..." he gave another sigh, feeling something really heavy suddenly resting on his shoulders. "But again... might as well ask the dragons to look out for something strange while we do our own search."

While he was at a loss, Hiccup refused to give up on this mystery. Mostly because he was worried, but also because of his never ending curiosity and the need to expand his personal knowledge.

He felt Astrid place a hand on his shoulder and he looked at her with tired eyes, suddenly feeling like he wanted nothing more than to just lay down in his bed and sleep for the next two days. Though dragon riding was the fastest way of traveling, getting up in the middle of the night for a very long trip hadn't been ideal for anyone involved.

Snotlout had been especially more of a pain in the neck than usual while the twins did nothing but fight through the whole flight. Astrid had been very close to kick them off of their saddle more than once.

"You want to do it now or start tomorrow?" the girl asked, bringing him out of the unpleasant memory. "Sun will go down soon, and we haven't set up camp yet."

Hiccup looked at the horizon and sighed. Due to the distance and uncooperative wind currents, they had gotten to their destination later than initially programmed. Which resulted in the group having very little time to do an initial search before the sun dipped below the ocean. Something that would be happening soon, and with whatever was lurking in the island, Hiccup had no intention of letting anyone stumble around in the dead of night.

"Tomorrow," he replied after a while. "Let's just find a good place to camp and start a fire."

Astrid gave a small smile, then started to walk beside him as they made their way back to where they had first landed. She stared ahead, sure of herself like always, but sometimes she glanced both at him and the weird ball still in his hand. "What about using one of these houses?" she asked as an afterthought, her free hand motioning at the row of buildings on her side of the path.

The boy hummed, weighting the cos and pros of taking shelter in one of those abandoned structures. It was true that a house would shield them from the cold night and give a small amount of security, but for some reason he couldn't bring himself to set foot inside, preferring to skirt around them like a skittish mouse.

It was a feeling that had started as soon as he had set foot in the village, and he hated it.

"You think it's a good idea?"

At his question, she stopped in her tracks and caused him, Fishlegs, and the two following dragons to halt as well. Her eyes were scanning the village, briefly stopping only to examine one long scorch here or one deep cut there before continuing. "I... am not sure..."

Her confidence waned the more she observed, letting Hiccup know that he was not the only one with the weird paranoia. Perhaps she wasn't as affected as he was, but at least she felt that the place wasn't as safe as it should be.

"Let's go." Hiccup urged her to resume walking with a gentle tug to her arm. "I don't want to be here when night falls."

"I'm with you, there!" Fishlegs was so eager to go back to the comfort of his dragon that he rushed ahead, leaving two bemused teens and two confused dragons in his wake.