Althea Sirius: the crimson goregutter is such a rad dragon like i need to find a play to put this. and im just onw realizing this fic is a little bit of a fix-it fic? it didn't start out that way but here we are :)

June: I'm glad I was able to surprise you! Sorry this update took so long :P

Ashmarvel: i'm glad you love it :D terribly sorry about the past like seven months of nothing :(

Whovianeverlark17: one of the things that I struggle with when it comes to like roleswap or timetravel fics is when nothing changes (my own fics included) so i'm doing my best to change things up to keep em interesting!

toothlessgolfer: Horrendous has really dug a hole and now that he's gone he's handed the shovel off to Eret. I love Stoick so muchhhh, like, he's not perfect by any means but I still love him so much and you can't tell me he doesn't love his son 3

oOo

The fog laid heavy on the sea, making progress slow and hard. Stoick held his ax in hand as he stared out, praying to the gods that perhaps today they'd find the dragon's nest. He thought back to Berk, where his son was being trained to fight dragons. His son, who could not fight dragons, who could not lift an ax above his head if he tried. He hoped Hiccup would learn something, but there was no guarantee he'd be a true viking by the end.

But if Stoick could find the nest, could destroy it, then Hiccup would be safe.

His son wouldn't meet the same fate as his mother.

And yes, Stoick was a good chief, he was doing this for his people, who were starving, who kept having to rebuilt their houses and couldn't afford to get too attached to anything they owned. But Hiccup was his son, his boy, and if it was him that Stoick thought of most during each outing, each desperate search, then that was nobody's business but his.

Technically, they weren't making any progress at the moment, fog or no. It was hard enough to navigate the pillars of rock during the day and down-right suicidal at night. It was night now, and Stoick stood guard. They'd already lost one boat to dragons. Luckily they hadn't lost any actual people, all being pulled from the wreckage and onto other boats, some even managing to save some of the supplies. There are been worst voyages than this one.

It was a quiet night as Stoick stood watch. Most of the others were sleeping. They'd need the rest. Stoick needed rest himself, but he was the chief. He could go without it for days if he had to.

There was something moving in the mist.

Stoick shifted his grip on his ax.

It was small, and Stoick huffed as he realized it was a terrible terror. A lone one at that. They usually traveled in larger thunders, but one being cast out or hunting momentarily on its own wasn't a rare sight. Well, it'd be the last time this one thought it could hunt alone.

The dragon landed on the front of the ship. Stoick knew what was supposed to come next. The dragon would scamper forward, fast and quick, trying ot steal their rations or deliver a poisonous bite. Stoick was faster and quicker and immune to terrible terror poison by this point. However, the dragon did not do any of that. It just sat there, staring at Stoick, and that was when Stoick noticed that the dragon was holding something in its mouth. The terrible terror cocked its head to the side, dropped the thing - a piece of parchment - onto the floor of the boat, and the took off again, flying back the way it'd come.

A chill ran up Stoick's spine that had nothing to do with the weather.

Slowly, he approached the parchment.

There was writing on it.

Return to your village, before something irreparable happens to it.

The parchment crumpled in Stoick's hands. His heart beat louder.

A threat delivered by a trained dragon?

Stoick hadn't thought about Drago Bludfist in a long time, but what had happened that night had stayed with him and now it loomed over his shoulders.

He had to get back to Berk.

oOo

"So we can agree that Eret is lying, right?"

Astrid and Hiccup stood in the forge, Astrid leaning against one of the walls with her arms folded. Hiccup shuffled awkwardly, deliberately not looking at where his designs were sitting. Most of the villagers were in the Great Hall, listening to whatever story Eret was weaving about how Horrendous had been carted off, probably killed by a dragon.

"Definitely." Hiccup nodded. Those cuts on Eret's arms looked bad, and certainly they were bleeding a lot, but there was something off about them. They looked far too deliberate, and for all those scratches to just be on the man's arms sent up more than one red flag. "The real question is why."

"If I had to give a guess, I'd say it's so that Horrendous can disappear without anybody asking questions. Think about: someone getting carried away by dragons isn't all that unlikely of a story, clearly everybody else believes it. So Horrendous can return back to Eret and his tribe and report what he's learned about us, our weakness and such, and then return to attack while our defenses are low." Astrid smacked her palm with her fist. "We can't let that happen."

"But we don't have any proof that he actually left alive - we don't even have his armor anymore!" Hiccup gestured to the very-much empty spot on the counter where Horrendous' armor had been taking up space for a while. If they wanted they could present that as proof, but somebody actually wearing their armor was a pretty weak defense.

"Then we'll just have to find some. I'll go check the docks and see if any of our remaining boats are missing, right down to the smallest dinghy. While Eret's occupied at the Great Hall, you should check your dad's room and see if he or Horrendous left anything in there that we can use." Astrid directed and Hiccup nodded. And then Astrid smiled at him, a smile that almost made Hiccup melt under its surprising warmth. "You know, I can't believe I'm saying this, but you're not as terrible a viking as you seem, Hiccup."

The feeling soured at that last sentence, Astrid rushing out to go check the docks. He was no viking, he would never be a real viking. Feeling a bit heavier with a rock made of guilt in his stomach, Hiccup went over to his house. Now was not the time to think about his own betrayal of his people. He wasn't a threat to them, he was just a twig of a boy who thought dragons were neat and harmless and was starting to think that maybe there was a different way to end this war. Eret and Horrendous, on the other hand, were up to something that had every possibility to make things worse for Hiccup's tribe.

Hiccup had thought about checking out his dad's room since the two foreigners had come, but between the dragon training, the secret meetings with Astrid, and the secret dragon-riding training with Toothless, Hiccup had been pretty busy the past while. He had taken a second to look around when Eret had been taken in, but with everybody else who had been in the room and how he and Astrid were trying to keep their investigation quiet he hadn't been able to look too thoroughly. But now with Horrendous gone, Eret busy, and it just early enough that dragon training hadn't started yet for the day (and if Gobber was still busy with Eret, it'd be put off even longer) it was really the perfect time to poke around.

His dad's room looked, for the most part, the same as it ever was. There were the two dragon skulls, the huge map on the wall with the x's that marked where he hadn't been able to find the dragon nest and the other x's that Hiccup didn't know the purpose of. None of the weapons had been taken from the wall, or looked like they'd been used since Stoick had left.

Hiccup made the bed as he looked around. It didn't look very much lived in. Stoick spend much of his time around the village doing chiefly things that needed to be done, and it's two current occupants seemed to spend as much time in the room as Stoick did. But that didn't mean they wouldn't leave some kind of hint of what they were up to lying around.

He found what he was looking for under the bed, and once he did he wished he hadn't.

There was a stack of parchments, and Hiccup place them on the bed, climbing on and leafing through them, his heart sinking as he realized what he was looking at. They were blueprints, clearly, but they weren't for death machines or houses or ships or traps. The designs were for a saddle. There were sketches of various dragons to go along with the designs. Sometimes it depicted something that looked startling like a night fury (Horrendous had said he had seen one before, it shouldn't be surprising, Hiccup had already known Horrendous had been lying about how brief the encounter had been) while others had terrible terrors drawn in the freespace, some kind of weird contraction strapped to them, and one picture had a dragon that Hiccup had never seen before with a frill.

"A dragon didn't take Horrendous," Hiccup whispered, standing up, clutching the paper in his shaking hands, "Horrendous flew away on a dragon!"

oOo

Horrendous and his thunder had been flying for hours now, and the great feeling of freedom had worn off enough that Horrendous remembered why he usually went flying with somebody else along, especially if he was going such distances as he was today. His thunder was down a number as Crackle gave the letter Horrendous had written to Stoick. It was all a part of the new 'Stoick Doesn't Die' plan that he and Eret and made up last night.

It was important for the plan that Stoick was at Berk when Horrendous showed back up with a Bewilderbeast in tow.

Horrendous' terrible terrors were supposed to be keeping an eye out for Toothless. Horrendous was entirely sure that'd work, considering the terrors hadn't ever met Toothless, but every bit of help he could get finding his best friend while he tried to carry out his plan he'd make use of.

"Alright, we shouldn't be far from Sanctuary now." Horrendous mused, looked at his quickly-sketched map. It wasn't the most accurate, but it was better than nothing. It had been a pretty uneventful trip so far. There'd been a few boats that passed by underneath them, a few outcroppings of land that they'd taken brief breaks on, and quite a few birds that the terrible terrors had chased after and then delivered to Horrendous like they were the very best of jewels. Things were going good, all things considered.

So of course, that's when they got shot down.

"Shit!" Horrendous hissed as he and Serrated fell towards the ocean - no, towards another boat. This was what he got for letting his guard down - and for a second time at that! Serrated made a sound like he very much agreed with that feeling. The dragon was able to flip around so that he was the one that hit the wood instead of Horrendous squished underneath him. Horrendous scratched the dragon's neck in thanks.

The terrible terrors had managed not to get caught, and Horrendous counting his blessings where he could find them.

"Stay close!" He shouted. There were answering squawks from the terrors, but he couldn't see them as the trappers converged on him and Serrated.

"A rider?" One of them said.

"Toss him under with the rest of them." Somebody else grunted uncaringly. "Must've gone crazy to do something like this."

Horrendous' broken arm didn't feel too good, but at least it didn't feel like worse damage had been done to it. With his other arm he tried to reach for his dragon blade, but somebody noticed the movement and stepped on his hand. Horrendous grunted at the pain, not giving the trappers the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

"Wait, what's that?" The first trapper said.

"A rider, you pointed that out yourself." A third trapper's voice joined the conversation.

"No, no, the sea, is it… what's going on?"

The boat started to rock.

There was a crescendoing roar above him.

The thunder of terrible terrors seemed to take this as a cue to attack. The boot on Horrendous' hand lifted and the dragon rider went right to work unwinding the rope from around him and Serrated. The dragon's scales were red with anger, not doubt made worse by the fact that this was the second time this had happened to him.

"Give them a piece of Hel, bud." Horrendous grinned at Serrated.

Then the whole boat tipped, torn apart, and Horrendous fell into the ocean.

oOo

A/N: alright, I have no excuse. I'm sorry I have updated in the past seven months. I wish I could say that there'll be another update soon, but I can't :( I'm busy witha few other projects, finals are just around the corner for college, and I'm also working on my nanowrimo right now (i'm at like 30K words which is the best i've ever done at this)

On the brightside, I have a decently clear idea of where I want the rest of this fic to go, so that'll help it along and help me be convinced to update. Thank you so much to everybody who had stuck by this fic and commented! Each one absolutely makes my day and makes me all the more likely to update 3