Howdy again.
This is the teaser chapter, the next upload will be the actual first chapter.
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Hiccup had seen the javelin coming. He'd seen it coming, and he'd screamed.
The air tasted of fire, and his skin felt raw.
The Nightmare hadn't even seen it coming. He had been shoving his snout into a basket behind a collapsed stall, searching for food. He had only turned his head at the approaching footsteps of a dozen angry Vikings, charging. He'd snapped his jaws and burst into flames, snarling and hissing at the bloodthirsty group of squishy two-legged creatures. He'd sucked the gas into his mouth, and then it was over.
The javelin skewered it's skull, puncturing bone and muscle and scale in a single second.
The Monstrous Nightmare reared up, as if offended at the prospect of it's own murder.
He had been majestic. Scales of dark red, burnt oranges and bright greens, speckled over the wing and belly. He might have lived to be much older, Hiccup thought. The babies would've been fantastically coloured, he thought.
But the Nightmare's eyes grew pallid, and it dropped, the javelin embedded through its skull ending its life.
Hiccup watched from his knees, the Vikings nearby hooting and clapping forearms in celebration. Proud of killing something that had been starving. Clamouring over their murder together, battle brothers.
The heir of Berk distinctly wished to vomit. Or to scream. But something deeper, something more instinctive came out.
Hiccup Haddock snapped. Like all the bones of a Nadder's wings when they were trampled.
What came next was pain. Deep and infinite, yet clarifying and surgical.
The 'CRACK-THOOM' of Thor's fury sounded once, silencing the clamour of battle on the remote island village for a full second as the participants of the bloodletting all froze for a moment. An instinctual reaction, something no amount of battle-fervor nor training nor instinct could stop.
Hiccup Haddock was gone.
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