Hiccup trod through the village another time, and it seemed almost as if he was moving subconsciously. He knew Berk like the back of his hand—he has been chief for about three months now. When he arrived in Gobber's workshop, he decided to continue tossing fish into a sack.
"Do you have to go?" a female voice says from behind him. He turned around to find Astrid leaning against a support. She tossed up a chicken leg, and Stormfly appeared, snatching the leg out of the air.
"Hey. Stop worrying," says Hiccup as he approaches her. "It's just like a search for new dragons. I'll be back before anyone even realizes I left. But if those rumors about the Screaming Death are true, then I'm afraid we don't have much time."
Several rumors have been spreading around the archipelago, saying that the Screaming Death was out sinking islands again. Stemming from a far distant tribe, they soon spread through seafaring traders and, before anyone knew, almost all tribes had received word, and some of those tribes are dragon-fighting. The people of Berk were informed only a week ago when Trader Johann visited their island again.
Astrid planted a light kiss on Hiccup's cheek. "Okay. Just remember that this is Screaming Death you could be dealing with here. Untrainable, not the best encounter we've had with rare dragons."
"Tell me something about the Screaming Death that Fishlegs doesn't know. Or something that isn't in the book." Hiccup scoffed. "I'll try to be back tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow if I'm unlucky." He peered out at the orange sunset, lighting the winter sky on fire. A cool breeze blew through the village, though they were used to freezing temperatures at Berk.
"Perhaps I'm worrying too much," she says. "I guess it's because you're chief now. You don't have nearly as much free time as before. I don't know, but you're treating this like you're saying goodbye."
"Ah, but this isn't goodbye. Maybe it's just because I haven't left the island for weeks now, it's just nice to be free from time to time. I mean, nothing interesting has really happened since Dagur's attack on the village. Flightmare's not for five years, and even then, nobody should expect it to come to this village after we drove that thing away. Dagur's most likely gone—it's been about four years since that happened. And the only thing Alvin's been saying lately, if anything, is just about the Screaming Death."
"Perhaps," says Astrid. "Well, just be careful out there."
Hiccup hauled the sack over his shoulder and kissed Astrid lightly on the cheek. "I will. I have to go before dark."
Out of her peripheral vision, Astrid can barely spot Snotlout and Fishlegs taking seats next to her. "Where are the twins? Blowing themselves up again?" she asks without turning her head to acknowledge them.
"You know it," says Snotlout, resting his elbows on his knees.
As Hiccup approached his house, he found Toothless climbing along the roof, the black dragon staring at him as if he was expecting him to say something. Toothless eyed the sack of fish that Hiccup had slung over his shoulder.
Hiccup looked up at him, dropping the sack of fish to the floor. "Well, it's almost dark, bud. Let's go find that Screaming Death."
Toothless jumped down from the roof and positioned himself next to his owner, his best friend. Hiccup clipped the sack of fish on his saddle and mounted Toothless unhurriedly. With the starry night approaching, the two of them took off, becoming a simple black figure disappearing from view.
In the clear night sky, Hiccup began drifting off on how he hasn't been off the island in weeks. Being a chief was definitely the most difficult thing he's ever done, more difficult than trying to muster up the courage to fight a dragon when he was little.
He's never felt this free in a long time.
He watched the innumerable amount of islands they passed by, traveling in no specific direction. First, he passed over Dragon Island, reminding himself of the long-distant battle he had with the Red Death.
Continuing to watch what was under him as they flew, Hiccup noted in his head each of the islands they passed. Outcast Island. Breakneck Bog. More islands he could not name, and islands he expected to disappear sometime in the next few weeks.
Spotting an aggregation of dark clouds up ahead, Toothless slowed down and began to back away from the storm system brewing off in the distance. Storms were not a good sign during a flight, and although it has been a while since a strong storm has interrupted any of their flights, the riders were always looking out for developing systems while flying.
"Let's turn around," says Hiccup. They turned around, and looking back, Hiccup could barely spot a bright flash in the distance, and lightning connecting the ocean to the clouds. About ten seconds later, the sound of thunder drummed in their ears.
Having turned back from the developing system, they continued flying in the opposite direction they were going in. Passing by Outcast Island again, which Hiccup used as a checkpoint to note their location. They must not be that far from home.
They started in a direction they have not gone previously, the tiny lights shining beneath them. Hiccup was not completely confident that they wouldn't try to attack him—though Alvin considers the Outcasts to be allies of Berk, they're still far from gaining Hiccup's full trust. But even if the Outcasts were going to target them, it was nearly impossible to see them in the night sky.
They passed by the island for the second time unnoticed. Taking advantage of the fact that they were near home, Hiccup reached for Inferno, checking just in case he forgot to bring the sword along. The handle met his fingers, and Hiccup inhaled and exhaled deeply. He hadn't forgotten anything.
Sometime during the flight, Hiccup lost track of the time. He no longer knew how long he has been gone, but he guessed that he was gone for about three hours. He wasn't expecting the sun to rise soon—days were extremely short during winter.
They passed over another series of islands—nothing spectacular, but they felt like they were traveling into unchartered territory. Hiccup didn't remember ever mapping these islands.
Hiccup dozed off for a while, and the next thing that grabbed his attention was the sky brightening. He could tell Toothless was also tired from how unstable the flight was. Spotting a fairly large island down below, he decided to direct Toothless to land so they could get a bit of rest.
They landed near a group of wild Nadders, which Hiccup decided to leave alone. It wasn't like they posed any threat anyway—if there was one species of dragon that Hiccup knew best other than the Night Fury, it's the Nadder.
He unclipped the sack of fish from Toothless's saddle and set it down. It flopped onto its side, the contents spilling over the sand. "Dig in, I guess," says Hiccup.
As Toothless dug into the pile of fish one at a time, Hiccup remembered that he promised he would be back either today or the next day. Having found nothing interesting—it seemed their first search for the Screaming Death resulted in nothing—he decided that it was time to turn back to Berk.
"Okay, bud. Let's just get some rest and we'll head back in a while," says Hiccup. He rested his head on Toothless's side and before he could do it himself, his eyes closed on their own.
Astrid paid a quick visit with Valka as the sun was rising. When she entered the Haddock House, she found Hiccup's mother tossing fish to Cloudjumper. Valka turned her head toward the front door as she heard it open. Outside, a storm system was developing in the distance, though it seemed no one was expecting it to hit Berk.
"Well, you're up early," says Valka. "Is Hiccup back yet?"
Astrid shook her head. "It hasn't even been a day yet. Give him some time," she says. "I'm just hoping nothing goes wrong out there, you know, there's another big dragon on the loose. According to the book, third largest after ah… Red Death and Bewilderbeast. Listens to no one, as far as we know."
"Well, I think he'll find a way to handle it if he ever encounters such a dragon. He's the chief. He has to come back." Valka's eyes seemed to drift off into open space, seemingly staring out at the sky and the world out there.
"You're worried, aren't you?" asks Astrid.
Valka tried to speak, but only stuttered, no words coming out of her mouth.
"It's okay. I'm worried about him too." She took a seat inside the Haddock House. "I guess I still can't trust him when he's out there. It's still quite shocking that he grew up into… what he is now. I mean, back then, before he met Toothless and before we all had dragons, he was just so helpless, always trying to prove himself to his father. It never worked."
"Go on," Valka requests.
"Stoick would always have to jump in and save him when he was on the verge of something… something horrible. All we ever did was stand there, watch him, and sometimes tease him if things went really bad. Man, it makes me feel kind of terrible on the inside."
"I can see how Stoick always jumps in the way to save Hiccup." Valka's eyes turned into glass. "I can't handle it. I've already lost someone in the family. I don't think I can imagine losing Hiccup as well…"
"But he's changed so much since that happened. Ever since that one night when he actually hit a Night Fury, things really weren't the same. But that's really when I feel worst about myself. He kept besting all of us in dragon training, and I grew jealous of him because he was a natural, literally, at dragon training. I guess I was the one built for dragon killing."
The house fell into silence. Valka tossed another fish at Cloudjumper, while Astrid just listened to Stormfly's footsteps as she trod outside.
"Well, now he's chief, and he's been chief," Astrid says, breaking the silence. "He's going to come back.
Hiccup's eyes fluttered open, the sound of waves crashing on the shore soothing his ears. The sun was now directly overhead, and he had to hold his arm in front of his eyes to prevent it from blinding him.
He stood on his feet, and Toothless's eyes opened shortly after. Hiccup began gathering everything, clipping the now-empty sack back onto the saddle. "Well, I guess we should head back now, bud. No signs of Screaming Death here. No missing islands, nothing."
Mounting Toothless, he watched as several Nadders passed overhead, though he doubted it was the same group they had seen last night. As Toothless was about to take off, a low rumbling sound only he could hear seemed to catch his attention. His head perked up, trying to track the source of the noise.
"Something wrong?" asks Hiccup, patting his best friend on the side.
Toothless didn't need to answer that question. The rumbling grew louder, and soon Hiccup could hear it as well. He dismounted and started dawdling alongside Toothless toward the noise. The island was quite large, and Hiccup did not know what types of dragons inhabited the island.
The terrain was uneven, and they had to climb a hill before the land dropped down into a valley. The rumbling sound seemed to come from inside the valley.
Then everything went still again. The rumbling had stopped.
Looking down toward where Toothless had pinpointed the sound to be coming from, Hiccup found that the ground had been ripped up. Felled trees scattered the area, and boulders surrounded the seemingly lifeless circle in the middle of a prosperous island.
The circle had no grass, no signs of life at all. There was just soil. "That's definitely not something Screaming Death would do," says Hiccup.
The next thing that came to his mind was a Typhoomerang, but then if it was the work of a Typhoomerang, its emblem would be implanted in the dirt. No such emblem marked the land. There was ash on the ground, though.
That must mean it's a new dragon! Hiccup thinks to himself. His sense of curiosity pulled him closer toward the circle, toward the patch of dirt surrounded by boulders in the valley. It was a reasonable conclusion to jump to—things like this don't occur naturally, no matter how perplexing a phenomenon. Only a dragon that they have never heard of could have done this.
But what could this dragon look like? Will it be large like a Typhoomerang, or small like a Smothering Smokebreath? Will it be a boulder, stoker, or sharp class dragon—he had already ruled out strike and tidal. The ring of boulders and felled trees looked like something a boulder class dragon would make, but the singed soil seemed to be the work of a stoker class.
Drawn toward the center of the circle, he and Toothless inched their way down into the valley. Surrounded by fully grown trees as they walked, they felt the ground shaking beneath their feet, and the strange rumbling sound had started again.
"Is something tunneling below us?" Hiccup says to himself, looking down at the grass. "Well, that could only mean one thing."
But something about the rumbling continued to pull them toward the circle. Somewhere, Hiccup felt like this rumbling beneath his feet was not because a Whispering Death or the Screaming Death may be tunneling below them. It felt like the source was the circle.
Reaching the group of felled trees, they found the circle, but some strange force seemed to emanate from the circle. All the felled trees in the area seemed to be attracted to the center of the circle, and they drifted over the boulders and into the circle.
Hiccup and Toothless exchanged glances, and right away, Hiccup hopped onto Toothless, who took off the moment the prosthetic leg was secure on the saddle.
As they watched the event occur from above, they could see that the interior of the circle had now been tinted purple a bit, like a strange field. A part of a tree fell into the circle, and one of the strangest things that had ever seen occurred.
It disappeared.
It was baffling, something that Hiccup has never witnessed and was supposed to be impossible. Matter does not simply disappear into thin air. It must have gone somewhere.
They watched as more debris entered the field. Several stones. More trees. Even a few Gronckles flew over the area, and they seemed to drift toward the field, but the force wasn't strong enough to pull them in.
Hiccup directed Toothless a little closer to the field, trying to get a closer look at what exactly was going on. They hovered only a few stories above the field, continuing to observe what was happening.
Trying something for himself, Hiccup unclipped the empty sack and tossed it down. He had no use for it now that it was empty, and there were a million of those back home.
One moment it was there, and the next moment, it was not. It was gone.
What the two hadn't noticed was that they were gradually touching down, closer and closer to the field. When Hiccup found out that Toothless's tail was now only inches from the field, it was too late.
The second the two made contact with the ground, the world before them changed into something beyond imagination. Colors swirled around them all over the place. Gravity seemed annulled, as Hiccup felt like he could just float there. The buckle on his leg was the only thing keeping him and Toothless together.
Around them, debris floated all over the area. They dodged several uprooted trees and stones as they continued into the void.
Hiccup took a glance back where they came from and found nothing. It seemed like they just appeared where they were.
Then he focused back on what was in front of them, and found that off in the distance, the colors seemed to fade away into whiteness.
Deciding that it was the place they should go, he urged Toothless to try to move toward it. They found that they could move easily.
As they continued, the white in the distance seemed to grow closer. Time seemed to turn to nothing, and they felt like everything was slowing down right before their very eyes. After a while of just flying in open space, they only had a split second to react and dodge something that was coming their way.
Hiccup looked back to see that it was like a stone, but it was cube-like. Another piece missed them by just inches, and Hiccup reached out his hand and felt the material. It was smoother than stone, and just as hard. He pulled his hand back as his wrist was about to collide with a pane of glass.
Something tiny and black seemed to break when it hit Hiccup's arm. More and more of the tiny things came their way, and it didn't prove to be that difficult to catch one. The design was strange, and Hiccup wondered what it could be used for.
The one thing he held in his hand seemed to want to join the rest of the other tiny things. It pulled itself straight out of Hiccup's hand and attached itself onto the others.
As they continued, they also ran into something strange, shaped like a cloud. Its colors were off—there were red and pink ones—and Hiccup, as curious as he was, did not want to know what would happen if he stuck his hand into one of them. Not after previous experiences with strange gases like Zippleback gas.
He took another tiny black thing flying toward him and tried to toss it into the cloud. It entered the cloud and faded away from view, but never came out. Yep, I'm not going in there.
Turning his attention back to where they were going, they white just grew and grew until it was the only thing they could see. Hiccup squeezed his eyes shut, blinded by the bright light.
He felt like he was in the middle of one of the strongest storm systems ever encountered, just without the rain pattering on the stone paths and without the booming thunder.
Hiccup opened his eyes, and suddenly, something appeared off in the distance. Lights and colors flashed in front of them, but Hiccup couldn't make any sense of it.
And then, darkness.