Hiccup sat at his table, pouring over his notes, the Dragon Eye at his left, while Toothless snored quietly on his stone slab in the loft above. He knew the others were sleeping just as soundly, full and happy after their celebration. The peaceful mood that had settled over the Edge could be attributed to the day's victory.

The boy couldn't help but smirk. Ten Hunter ships gone. Ten! And six dragons freed. After an initial bombardment that had released the dragons, they'd hit the cliffs and sent tons of rock crashing down on the docked boats below. For once, their fast and hot approach let them escape without a hitch. After such an easy raid, it had taken awhile for the foreboding to go away.

It won't be this easy all the time, so don't get cocky.

Still, the thrill felt amazing.

Smiling, Hiccup crossed the latest port off the parchment and set his charcoal pencil down. He stood, picked up the Dragon Eye, and went to hide it in the bottom of the chest at the back of his hut.

"Should probably head to bed, huh Bud?"

Toothless snuffled in his sleep.

Hiccup chuckled and shook his head. He deserved the rest. The Night Fury had put out a lot of speed today.

Hiccup knelt down in front of the chest, passing the Dragon Eye to his other hand so he could open it.

The door to his hut creaked open. Hiccup's head jerked around and he froze where he crouched. Toothless stirred overhead, his scales scratching against stone. The lantern on the table glowed faintly against the walls. The air was mild and still.

Something bumped against a more cluttered corner of the hut.

"Toothless..." Hiccup slowly rose to his full height, setting the Dragon Eye down behind the chest, not taking an eye off the room for a second.

Too quiet to hear properly, someone started muttering words from their hiding spot behind a barrel.

"What the...?" Hiccup tip-toed toward the sound. A shadow floated out from the barrel. He prepared to leap for his Dragon Blade only to realize it was all the way on the other side of the room.

The shadow hit him full in the face, pouring into his eyes. Hiccup screamed. His cries were pulled from his lungs as if by a string. He felt his body pulled out of himself in a sort of painless agony that sent his terrified heart racing. Then his heart stopped. Hiccup heard a thud behind him, but was too lightheaded to turn around and look. Faint and distant, as though through a thick mist, Toothless roared. Hiccup wanted to shake in his boots, but for some reason he couldn't. He thought he should be gasping for air about now, but strangely he could find no desire, no need, to breathe. He wanted to faint, but that seemed out of reach, as well. The fogginess in his head was unlike anything he'd ever experienced.

Toothless crashed down onto the floor and screamed. Hiccup jolted and staggered around to look. His body felt too light. He hadn't weighed much before, but this was - oh Thor!

He lay crumpled on the floor. A second him. Toothless nudged the body hard, then looked up at Hiccup with round, panicked eyes. The dragon screamed again.

Hiccup looked down at his hands. He could see right through them.

Now would be a nice time to hyperventilate if only he could breathe.

"Oh Thor, oh Thor, oh Thor!" Even if his body couldn't shake, his voice could. He stared through his translucent fingers at his own body. What was happening to him? His thoughts raced to a standstill, ringing in his mind. Toothless kept up a steady stream of terrified noises as he nudged the body and tried to touch Hiccup only to fall right through him. Then he screamed, screamed, screamed, and Hiccup felt he probably should be screaming, too.

The hut began to shake under Toothless' hysterical movements. The table bounced against the rumbling floorboards and the timbers groaned.

"Toothless! Toothless! Shhh! Shush!" Hiccup begged, throwing out his ghostly hands. The Night Fury trembled and keened over the body on the floor. "Bud, stop!" He thought of Astrid hearing the noise in the next hut over and it horrified him. "You need to... you need to calm down." His words quaked and almost gave out on him at the end. Calm down, calm down, calm down.

He felt so horribly still. He had no breath, no pulse, no temperature. He felt nothing. He was made of nothing.

"Oooooh gods," he groaned, clutching his stomach, then his hair, to no effect. He would gladly throw up right now if he could, just to feel something. "What is going on!?"

"Gee, I'm sorry about all this."

Toothless growled, positioning himself over his rider and spreading his wings over both his physical and nonphysical form.

As out of it as he was, it took Hiccup a moment to turn around to see who had spoken.

"Although I must say you're handling this better than some people do."

Standing no higher than the table was a black, impish figure with pointed nose and ears. His cone shaped hair was as night fury black as his skin, and his eyes were blue. He gazed up at the teen with curious sympathy.

Hiccup whispered, "What did you do to me?" Normally he would be alarmed to find such a creature in his room, but considering the circumstances...

The imp blinked and transformed into a pale, blue eyed, dark haired girl, slightly taller than his previous form. The girl tilted her head, her delicate pointed ears twitching. "I granted a - " a distinctly male voice came from her mouth and she coughed, switching to a musical, female voice, "a wish."

"A wish? Wha- what wish? What did it do?"

The girl pointed to the body on the floor. "Well it killed you, obviously. If I'd known it would happen to you specifically I wouldn't have offered the wish to that guy. I feel kinda bad now. But you know once someone makes a wish I'm bound to grant it."

He barely heard what she was saying as he stared at his corpse.

"I'm a ghost."

"You're a ghost, I'm a Well Troll. There's a bunch of other crazy things like us out there. You won't be so lonely." The girl changed into a lumpy humanoid form wearing a wrinkled grin and rags out of which poked a cow's tail.

Since his ghostly body felt so uninclined to falter on its own, Hiccup flung himself to his knees. To his surprise and delight, when his knees hit the floor they did so with a thud. Hiccup planted his palms on the solid floor and burst in hysterical laugher. Toothless cooed in concern. The boy rubbed his hands over the wood planks, feeling them bump into uneven edges and watching splinters pass through his hazy skin, feeling that the floor was there and that he could actually make contact with it.

A menacing growl rippled over Toothless' teeth and he launched himself at the Well Troll, who let out a squeak and sprang up on the table. The Night Fury's shoulder collided with the table leg, and the Troll's cow tail flicked wildly to balance him. Hiccup crawled backwards until he reached his body. He found himself too nervous to touch it. His eyes were still open, and their cloudiness unsettling.

The table and everything on it crashed to the floor, the candle in the lantern flickering wildly, and the Troll scampered out of the dragon's reach. A plasma blast screamed in Toothless' throat. Hiccup scrambled to his feet and ran to Toothless' head.

"No, bud, no!" Toothless shut his mouth and looked at his best friend's ghostly hands resting on his scales. Hiccup paused to appreciate that he could touch the dragon before looking up at the Well Troll. It had changed again, this time into a furry, dragon-human hybrid, possibly female. It cowered in the shadow beyond the light of the broken lantern on the floor, watching them with large, pale blue eyes.

"Please," Hiccup whispered, gazing deep into those eyes. "Please, you have to change everything back. You have to help me. I can't... I can't live like this."

"Well duh."

Hiccup's brow dipped in a small frown.

The creature sighed and smoothed down the brown fur around its face. "I'm gonna give you the rundown of how things are gonna be from now on. Your spirit responsibilities and all that. It's standard protocol for whenever we make a new ghost.

"At three hours past midnight, you're gonna find yourself in the dwellings of whoever wished you dead. He won't be able to see you unless you let him, but whether you reveal yourself or not, you're tied to him by the Haunting Spell. You'll get to manipulate his surroundings, freak him out any way you want, find a way to make him dead, too, if you want, but for as long as he lives you can't leave him alone. Like, it's literally impossible. You can try to run off if you want, but you're just gonna be teleported back."

Hiccup took what comfort he could by rubbing Toothless' head while he listened. Which of his enemies had sought out the supernatural to kill him? Who did he know who would go to such extremes?

The humanoid dragon troll seemed to wait for Hiccup to respond, but the boy said nothing.

"Well, I guess I better get going. You have a well here, right?"

"Wait!" Hiccup reached out to the retreating troll, who flickered back into a ragged lump with a cow's tail. "There's gotta be... some way to reverse this. What if I wished myself back? Because I wish I wasn't dead!"

"Sorry. Ghosts can't make wishes, being dead and all. That's another rule."

"Aaaarrgh!"

"You don't have much longer until the spell whisks you away to your friend, but maybe I'll see ya around." The troll turned away and somehow squeezed through the inch of space under the door, disappearing with a flick of its tail.

"Wait! Come back! No!"

But it was gone.

Hiccup lowered himself to the floor, feeling completely lost. Toothless whined, crouching between Hiccup and Hiccup's vacated body.

What would he do with it? Decomposition was not a pleasant thought. He vowed that his friends and family wouldn't have to be the ones to deal with this. He found his resolve and walked up to his corpse. The skin had turned pale.

He purposely blocked the gruesome activity from his memory, though he did recall it was easier to move the body than expected. The real challenge was to do it quietly with Toothless so determined to alert the Edge. He made the dragon swear to keep silent, to guard the grave until he returned. And he would return. He didn't have much time before it was too late, but he would return.

He hid himself in a cold, dry cave on the mountain. The entire time he'd been going about this he'd felt something tugging at him, trying to snatch him away. He stood back as his Night Fury curled forlornly beside the body. They gazed into each others eyes one last time before Hiccup's ghost faded from sight.

Okay, he should have expected it to be Viggo who'd killed him.

The spell had dropped him only a few metres away from the Hunter Chieftain, and the sight of his arch enemy caused Hiccup to stumble in surprise. But the man didn't react, and Hiccup saw that he was fast asleep on his cot.

Hiccup scanned his surroundings. Wow, he was in Viggo's quarters! His greatest foe was asleep only a few feet from him. Apparently the arrival of a ghost was not enough to wake someone. The tent was quiet except for the calm, even breathing from the Hunter. Hiccup crossed his arms, standing frozen in the middle of the room.

Well this is kinda awkward.

Hiccup took a sidelong first step in enemy territory. He experimented to see if he could tap his see-through fingers against his thigh and found he could without making a sound so he kept it up, drumming away as he roamed the room. It contained the cot and its occupant in the back corner, a heavy, metal bound chest beside it, the Maces and Talons board on a custom-made table almost in the center of the room, various dragon skulls and skins around, and the desk by the wall farthest from the cot, to the right of the entrance. Hiccup ventured over to the door and reached out a bit absentmindedly to push back the flaps. His hand passed right through.

He startled, then stuck his arm through. It didn't move the dragon skin fabric at all. He slipped through to the other side, looking back over his shoulders. The flaps were undisturbed.

Huh.

For a few minutes, Hiccup practiced phasing in and out of the tent walls. If he imagined himself touching the fabric, he could do it, but if he pictured himself passing to the other side unhindered then he could slip through like nothing was there. Once, though, when he ducked through the back wall he was spooked by a Monstrous Nightmare skull and his flailing hands almost knocked it down. It swayed on its fixture. He quickly reached up to steady it.

During all this, Viggo never stirred, and Hiccup almost wondered if this was a dream; if he himself was even there.

He left the tent and paused outside. In the near distance, torchlight flickered over the mass of tents belonging to Viggo's men, casting stark shadows more than light, occasionally highlighting a passing Hunter.

The Well Troll had insisted leaving was impossible, but Hiccup had never been one to stay put before, no matter what anyone said.

He started walking away from the enemy encampment, then sprinted toward the forest.

He ran and ran, branches whipping silently by his face. Running was now so effortless. His feet were light and never seemed to touch the earth, making zero impact or sound. At this rate, he knew he would reach the beach in minutes, without fear of capture. He could make a raft there. Or could ghosts walk on water?

The sands of the island drifted into the tree line. Just as Hiccup's hopes rose, just as his boot hit the beach, the outdoors vanished in a whiplash inducing spin. Hiccup pinwheeled his arms as he tumbled forward, stopping himself inches shy of the Maces and Talons table.

Viggo snored quietly from his cot, and Hiccup wanted to tear the tent apart.

Time dragged by and Hiccup slid deeper and deeper into awkward boredom. The sensation of being trapped in the presence of his sleeping arch-nemesis - forced to just stand there and watch him - grew overwhelming.

How had Viggo done this? How? Why? Hiccup couldn't think straight. He needed answers, and he stared at the only person who might be able to give him the ones he wanted. Viggo had somehow gotten in touch with the supernatural in order to do this. He might have a way of reversing what he'd done.

That's it. Hiccup couldn't take it any longer.

He bent over the sleeping form and hissed, "Viggo!"

Daaaaammnn this chapter was hard to keep short. Originally, it had a lot more of the first chapter from Hiccup's POV stuck in it, but I finally got smart and trimmed all that out. This turned out a lot more dramatic than Chapter 1 as well. We'll be sticking to comedic roots from now on.

Thanks SO much to anyone who's reading, and for all the comments, favourites, and follows! Next chapter we get to see what Hiccup did with Viggo's gold!