Hello everyone, welcome to this new story. Another classic 'Hiccup runs away' story. This is my first fanfic and I am only 16, so pls be nice in the reviews, but constructive criticism is very welcome. I'm going to try and keep the characters in character as much as possible, while taking their current situations into account. Also I don't really like Valka as a character so don't expect to see her here. Finally, I noticed that alot of fanfics don't draw much material from the shows (RoB, DoB, RTTE), which I am going to do quite alot. This is quite inspired by Becoming Lífþrasir by Midoriko-sama, which is one of my favourite works of fiction of all time, but this story has a very different plotline. This is rated mostly for violence. With no further ado, I hope you guys enjoy!


Prologue

Astrid's patience was wearing thin. Not that she had much of it anyway, but he was taking much longer than she had expected. And she was annoyed. And jealous, though she would not admit this to anyone – even herself.

She was supposed to be the best warrior of her generation, and tomorrow she was supposed to be killing her first dragon in front of the whole village.

Hiccup had changed that.

The chief's useless, scrawny boy had somehow robbed her of this great honour, instead claiming it for his own. Hiccup had always been as his name suggested: a Hiccup. He was weak, and somehow always managed to mess up whatever he did, whatever the task or his intentions.

Then suddenly Hiccup had started besting even Astrid in the ring and she clenched her fist in anger while the thought passed by. He was not strong enough to wield sword nor shield effectively, yet managed to subdue and defeat dragons seemingly without even touching them. Also he now had a habit of disappearing into the woods near Berk whenever he had the chance.

On top of this, Astrid had briefly seen him in the forge one evening where he had acted weird. Well, weirder.

Something wasn't right.

Astrid had tried to track him down the day before, but he had disappeared near a strange rock formation. However today, she had managed to find where he had been sneaking off to: a peaceful cove with a small lake in it. He clearly had been coming here – she could see discarded fish bones and remnants of fires that once burned, and for some reason a shield that had been wedged in a gap in the rocks around the entrance to the cove.

Finally came the sounds Astrid had been looking for: footsteps that betrayed Hiccup's arrival. She had to keep her cool, so she took up her axe once more and started sharpening the edge with a whetstone.

The boy ran into the cove, out of breath. He was quite short for his age of fifteen years, just shorter than Astrid herself, but undoubtedly he would continue to grow. His arms and legs were thin but on his back he carried a huge sack, much bigger than the one Astrid had last seen him with. She could not see inside but sticking out of the top was a sort of wooden shaft, which she thought to be the haft of a weapon like an axe or a hammer.

Hiccup looked left and right with a seemingly crestfallen face. He appeared to be looking for something, but to Astrid's annoyance she remained unnoticed, though she sat perched on a rock not far from him.

Suddenly he started speaking with his nasal voice, though whether to himself or someone else Astrid could not know.

"Leaving! We're leaving. Let's pack up. Looks like you and me are taking a little vacation. Forever, or at least for quite a while. Ah, man..."

What was he going on about?

Out of patience by now, Astrid ran the whetstone along the blade extra quickly, producing a loud shing and causing Hiccup to spin a face her, and he jumped with surprise when he saw the blonde Viking girl. "Aggh! What the- What are you doing here?"

Astrid jumped off the rock, and she with a scowl on her face pointed her axe at Hiccup while advancing towards him menacingly. "I want to know what's going on. No one just gets as good as you do. Especially you. Start talking! Are you training with someone?"

"Uh... training?"

Astrid did not relent, and continued to back the nervous, stammering boy up. He was wearing a strange leather harness, and she clutched at it, almost pulling him off of his feet. "It better not involve this!"

Hiccup managed to stutter a reply, and Astrid heard desperation in his voice. "I know this looks really bad, but you see...this is, uh... You're right! You're right! You're right. I'm through with the lies. I've been making... outfits. So, you got me. It's time everyone knew. Drag me back. Go ahead. Here we go."

He made a point of this by grabbing her hand and pretending to drag himself with it. Hiccup had always been a terrible liar, especially to Astrid, and she could see through his badly made up ploy as if it were glass.

She simply reversed the grasp and twisted his wrist, forcing him on the ground as he cried out in pain.

"OW! Why would you do that?!"

Astrid then kicked him in the stomach.

"That's for the lies."

She proceeded then to drop her axe so the butt of it landed on Hiccup's gut and he grunted in pain again.

"And that's for everything else."

Hiccup slowly got back onto his feet – wary of the furious girl who was glaring at him, her eyes daggers.

However a sound behind her caused her to spin.

A growl.

Astrid knew that sound. She had feared that sound since before she could remember, and was taught to fear it by everyone she had ever known.

A black shadow revealed itself from where it had been concealed behind a rock, before suddenly it bounded towards her, its four obsidian legs pumping as it ran swiftly towards the terrified girl.

Night Fury. The unholy offspring of light and death itself.

It was smaller than she would have imagined, and devoid of the many spikes that usually adorned the reptiles, but she took no notice of such details in the moment. Astrid then managed to find the courage to speak, and she shouted at Hiccup, her voice thick with fear.

"Get down!"

She threw herself at Hiccup, and they both landed on the floor in a heap. Astrid seized her axe and stood up again, only to find the shadow dragon almost upon them, its wings black as midnight; its green eyes fury and slit pupils the depthless abyss. Astrid however was a warrior, and she knew that if she were to slay this beast – this terrible foe that no Viking had ever even properly seen, let alone kill – it would be a chance to regain the honour of her family after the Flightmare killed her uncle. She sidestepped nimbly and readied a blow that would crash through the fury's skull.

However, as she started to swing, suddenly the breath was knocked out of her lungs and Astrid's golden head met the ground with a thud, while her axe flew from her hand. As she sat up, shaking the dizziness out of her head, her eyes widened in a mixture of horror, wonder and disbelief.

Hiccup had her back turned to her, and he was motioning to the enraged dragon, while speaking softly to it and holding its head in restraint.

"NO! No. It's okay! It's okay... she's a friend. It's okay."

He seemed to be unharmed and the night fury had apparently stopped itself in front of him, rearing up and growling through bared teeth like rows of white knives. Astrid knew that if the dragon wanted to Hiccup would have been long dead. She looked on the bizarre scene with astonished eyes, while the fury seemed to calm somewhat from Hiccup's voice.

What new dragon-training trick does he have now?

At this point, Astrid was hyperventilating, still in terror of the monster and the strangeness of the situation unfolding before her.

The dragon had calmed down now, and sat back on its haunches almost like a cat or dog, still glaring at Astrid. Hiccup turned around, immediately noticing her fear and nervousness, and simply said "You scared him."

"I scared HIM?!"

Astrid was incredulous, Hiccup talked of this beast, this monster of terror and destruction as if it were a person or pet! She tried to move but her legs did not comply, frozen in place like a statue.

"Who… is him?"

Hiccup moved slightly away from the fury.

What the Hel is he doing?

Hiccup gestured to the dragon and with a now very nervous expression, introduced Astrid to the fury. "Astrid, Toothless. Toothless, Astrid."

The dragon growled at her, but she didn't speak.

It certainly was not toothless – two rows of glistening white blades were bared at her. Astrid noted that strapped onto the dragon's back there was some sort of leather padding, attached to a kind of metal looking contraption, almost similar to the pedal that operated the grinding wheel in the forge. It was connected by rope to one of the fury's tailfins that was strangely a different colour, almost like a leather brown, which differed considerably compared to the rest of the dragon which was jet black.

Astrid blanched even paler, if that was possible, when realisation hit her like catapult shot.

He was not lying. He actually shot down a night fury – and apparently befriended it. That tailfin is made of leather, and that metal thing is a pedal. With… a saddle…

Astrid shook her head subconsciously in denial, and she stared, terrified by the traitorous boy and his 'pet'. Her legs finally answered her desperate calls and she turned and started blindly running towards the exit of the cove, only stopping briefly to retrieve her axe, not hearing the conversation that seemed to take place behind her between boy and beast.

She didn't get far however.

A noise of something soaring through air rapidly approached from behind her, and a dark shadow blocked the sun as it landed in front of her, blocking the exit. Sat astride the beast was Hiccup, his face once more crestfallen and reluctant. When he spoke his voice sounded tired.

"Astrid, you have to give me a chance to explain."

She was too horrified and in rage to be reasonable to any degree, and screamed a furious reply.

"Hiccup, let me out from here! I am not listening to ANYTHING you have to say!"

"Then don't reply, but just hear me out and I'll be gone, and you never have to see me again if you don't want to."

What's he talking about?

This unexpected reply took her back slightly, but still she was horrified and angry at what had happened. He, Hiccup the Useless, had bested her - the strongest warrior of their age by far – in dragon training and stole the prize of killing the nightmare in front of the whole village, while in the process stealing her fame. He had shot down a dragon – not any dragon but a night fury. He had trained it and was ridi-

"I'm leaving Berk. With Toothless… forever. Probably at least for a few years."

Now Astrid was confused, her rage partly diminished, and she managed to stammer out a reply. "Why?"

"Because… because no one accepts me." He now glared at Astrid and spat his words accusingly. "You don't accept me."

The words cut through her previous walls of rage and she flinched, for she knew it was true, at least to an extent. Astrid never openly said the horrible things that everyone else did, but she still looked down upon him. She tried to mutter a reply, but he cut her off, his words dripping with fury.

"Toothless will never be accepted, and everyone on the Thor-forsaken island has a skull as dense as iron: no-one will ever accept the fact that dragons are not the monsters you lot make them to be."

Astrid was starting to feel guilty, but he continued before she said anything.

"So go regain your desperate honour and pride tomorrow, and fulfil your ego, so kill that nightmare, and put him out of his tortured misery."

At this point he seemed to catch himself, an internal battle of emotions raging beneath his red skin. Expression now turning to regret, he now muttered an apology, almost too quietly for Astrid to hear. "I'm… I'm sorry, Astrid. I shouldn't have said that. But I have to go."

Despite this, Astrid became flustered with embarrassment, face turning red, for she knew he was saying the truth, though she couldn't bring herself to admit it. "But I don't think that Hiccup…"

"I can't stay. My best and only friend is the only one accepting of me, and I of him."

Astrid flinched again at this, for she had once been his friend long ago, before he had lost his reputation and acquired the name of 'Useless'. At this point, Hiccup unslung the sack with a sigh and removed a pouch, before passing them to her. "Please deliver these to their respective owners. One of them is for you."

He rummaged further in his sack while Astrid opened the pouch. They were three letters, one for her, one for his father and one for Gobber. She wondered with a quizzical expression of why he would send her a letter. She had never shown him any particular kindness since they were around twelve, when they had been friends.

Turning to Hiccup, she saw that he had apparently freed what he was trying to get out from his sack. He grasped the haft of the unknown tool or weapon, and pulled with both hands. The night fury, who both of them seemed to have forgotten, tilted its head in interest.

Astrid's eyes widened in awe and wonder as Hiccup drew an axe from the sack. It was beautifully crafted; it had carvings running down the wooden haft and on the axe head itself. The blade gleamed in the afternoon sun: a polished mirror of razor sharp iron, and a short spear point protruded from the top. He swung the axe down, grunting in exertion and embedded the blade into the ground. "That's for you, your old axe was getting too small."

The expression on Astrid's face was now one of shock, and she managed to mutter a quick "Thanks".

Hiccup then turned to face her; her head snapped up when he spoke, sudden confidence and certainty in his voice. "I'm going now. I should be back, in around five years or so, once I have accomplished what I set out to do." He laid a hand on her shoulder, slightly blushing as he did. Astrid was too in shock and confused by the situation to notice. "Goodbye, Astrid."

Without another word, he had slung the sack onto his back, before mounting the night fury. The pedal gave a metallic click as his foot slipped in. The fury's wings stretched out, and he was gone in a whoosh of air, quickly becoming a diminishing speck in the sky.

Still in shock, Astrid slowly pulled her new weapon out of the ground. It was truly a marvel to behold. The metal holding to the blade to the head was hollow, except for a supporting structure in the shape of an 'A'. This was obviously Hiccup's work, she noted, and not Gobber's, for only Hiccup had an eye for detail. Beautifully carved runes spiralled along the haft of the axe, and when Astrid held it, the weapon was perfectly balanced.

Promising to herself to inspect it more and practice with it later, Astrid put the axe down and instead found the letter that was addressed to her. She tore the bound envelope open in her typical, impatient fashion, and read the contents.

Much later, when she walked back slowly towards Berk, she carried both axes and the letters. Tears threatened to break free from her eyes, but she willed them not to. Astrid was overcome with guilt, and she wished she could just even say sorry to Hiccup, but he was gone.


Hope you enjoyed that, the next chapter roughly outlines the future situations of our characters. I aim for this story to be around 120-150k words.

With Astrid's axe, in my mind it's a bit like one of Gimli's axes from the Lord of the Rings films, where a few struts attach the blade to the haft.