(A/N: Holy cow, this is chapter eight! We're already eight chapters into this and it's only two months old. Can you guys believe that? I can't!
With that out of the way... get excited for this chapter guys! In this chapter, Hiccup and Ladok will be meeting for the first time! Obviously, I won't give too much, but I can tell you that it won't exactly be a joyous or comfortable meeting.
I hope everyone is as excited for this as I am and please enjoy it. Again, please enjoy reading this.)
I-o-x~*V*~x-o-I
The Dragon Riders had been on their new island for over a month, they were kept busy with the construction of the outpost and all of the buildings a part of it. Their huts and the other buildings were all finished and even painted, with only personal additions needed to still be added.
It was the evening and everyone was inside of the recently finished clubhouse for dinner. Most of the dragons were in the stables for their own supper, Toothless was the only one in the clubhouse with them.
Snotlout stirred a pot full of beans with small pieces of mutton and onions with a wooden spoon. He was following his father's instructions on a piece of paper precisely, stirring it slowly with the speed of a snail.
"Snotlout, is dinner ready yet?" Ruffnut groaned groggily, slumped on the table that was built around a fire pit.
"For the tenth time, no!" he snapped. "My Dad's black bean chili must be perfect!"
He lifted the spoon and brought it to his lips in order to taste the chili. He licked his lips and hummed, nodding, "I think it needs a little more pepper and it'll be perfect."
Tuffnut picked up his own spoon and tasted it for himself. He looked up at the ceiling as he ruminated on the flavors, "I think it needs a little allspice."
"The recipe doesn't call for allspice, it says pepper, so I'm putting in pepper!" he shouted.
"And I'm saying it needs a pinch of allspice," he insisted.
"Pepper."
"Allspice."
"Pepper!"
"Allspice!"
"Guys, stop!" Hiccup yelled. "Why don't you put a little chili into bowls and put pepper and allspice into each. Decide which is better."
He turned away from them with a face that showed how stressed he was. He lowered his head into his hand and shook his head, trying to get himself to relax.
Suddenly, he heard Toothless letting out growls and warbles that sounded very concerned. Then he suddenly perked and ran outside of the clubhouse, howling at something.
He went outside and saw Toothless looking up something above, "What's wrong, bud?" He put a hand on his dragon to calm him down.
He looked up at the sky and saw a dragon flying in erratic circles. He took out a spyglass from his belt and looked through it as he looked up at the dragon in the sky.
"Is that a Nadder?" he asked himself in a muttering voice.
Toothless crooned at his rider and they went back inside the clubhouse. He saw Snotlout and Tuffnut eating from the same bowl of chili.
Snotlout swallowed a spoonful of the chili, "Hiccup! You've got to try this."
"It has pepper and allspice!" Tuffnut ate another spoonful of it.
"Sorry, guys, but it looks like dinner will have to be put on hold," he stated.
"Why? What's going on, Hiccup?" Astrid asked.
"Come outside and take a look," he responded.
They all went outside and saw the dragon flying in circles above the outpost. Astrid used her hand to provide shade to her eyes as she squinted them.
"Is that a Deadly Nadder flying above us?" she questioned.
He nodded, "I think so."
"What does it want?" Helene inquired.
"I don't know," he replied, "but it's clearly stressed about something."
Astrid hummed to herself as she thought about something, "Let me try something."
She cupped her mouth and let out the dragon call she used for Stormfly. Both the Deadly Nadder in the sky and her own heard the call. Stormfly roared loudly, which caught the attention of the other dragon and it roared back at her. She roared again and it started to fly down to the stables, landing on their landing strip.
Using the platforms, the ladders and stairs, they went down to be on solid ground and walked to the stables. There, all of the other dragons were standing outside on the landing strip, watching as Stormfly and the other Deadly Nadder exchanged vocalizations, as though they were communicating with each other.
"Stormfly," Astrid spoke, causing her dragon to look back at her with a caw.
When Astrid spoke, the Deadly Nadder backed away from Stormfly slightly and the spikes on its tail extended. It was clear it had been startled by the sudden appearance of the Dragon Riders.
Hiccup slowly walked towards it with an extended, outstretched hand. It squawked cautiously and took a step back, clearly a little suspicious.
"It's okay," he spoke softly, "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a friend. There's nothing to be afraid of."
His words calmed it and it allowed him to touch its snout. He removed his hand from it and it cawed at him.
His eyes moved along its body and stopped at a reddish-pink discoloration at its pelvis. He caressed the area around it to keep the dragon calm as he looked at it.
It appeared to be a puncture wound and didn't look fresh, it looked healed, there was dried blood on top of it. It looked like it could have been caused by an arrowhead, or possibly even the end of a dagger.
"Fishlegs," he looked back at his friend, "look at this."
He went up to the Deadly Nadder and looked at the wound. He hummed and tapped his finger near the injury, "It's completely healed, but he was definitely injured at some point."
"How old do you think it is?" he asked.
"The discoloration is still prevalent and the dried blood tells me that it's probably less than a day old," he answered. He shrugged as he gave an estimate, "Maybe no older than twelve hours."
The blue and red dragon walked away from them and stood at the very edge of the landing strip. It looked back at them before looking forward and letting out a squawk.
"I think he wants us to follow him somewhere," Fishlegs surmised.
"But where?" Astrid inquired.
"I don't know," Hiccup began, walking over to his dragon and climbing onto the custom made saddle, inserting his metal leg into the pedal, "but I want to find out."
Darkness fell upon the island sooner than Ladok could have ever anticipated. His arm was no longer in the same amount of pain they were in hours earlier, but he wasn't holding his breath that the pain wouldn't return.
He was still unable to find anything to eat, so he decided not to reach for the pears again after falling into the ravine. It didn't matter to him anymore, he no longer felt the hungry rumble in his stomach.
For the past couple of hours, he did nothing but wander around the island aimlessly, his mind blank for some time. At first, he was trying to think of what to do next, but his mind began to wander as aimlessly as he was before it eventually became as blank as paper.
Now, he was sitting on the ground, in between a tree and a boulder, doing nothing but breathing. He stared listlessly at nothing but the plant life encased in the darkness of the night around him, as if trapped in a trance.
The state he was in was enabled by the disappointment he still felt for nobody else but himself. It was difficult for him to stomach the failure of only hours ago.
His mother would tell him that not all rescue operations were successful and that was true, but he still made many mistakes. Mistakes that he hadn't made since he was very young, the last mistake he had made was when his mother had allowed him to participate in rescuing dragons with her.
Then, he was suddenly broken from the trance when he heard vocalizations from dragons. It wasn't from one dragon, but several, and he recognized them immediately. The sounds were from at least two Deadly Nadders, one Monstrous Nightmare, a Gronckle, a Hideous Zippleback, a Shockjaw, and one he couldn't identify.
He stood up and began to follow his senses of sound and smell as he made his way to the beach. It took him a little bit of time but he eventually found it, it was then he discovered the dragons he had heard, and he also discovered that there were humans with them.
There were seven of them in total, four males and three females. All of them were young, none were older than he was in his late-teenage years.
One male was short and muscular with oddly thin legs, another was very obese and slightly taller than the other, another male was slightly shorter than the obese male and very lanky, and the final male was the tallest and also thin yet one could tell that he was mildly muscular, he also had a metal leg. One of the females looked similar to one of the males, almost identical with her height and lanky body, another female was nearly the same height as the other yet she had noticeable muscle development that she obviously lacked, and the final one was also identical in height and had a body similar to the previous female yet she was noticeably lithe by comparison.
His eyes soon travelled from the humans to the dragons, there were also seven of them and they were all the species he had heard earlier. A brown Gronckle, a red Monstrous Nightmare, a green Hideous Zippleback, a light blue Deadly Nadder addition to a blue and red one, a purple Shockjaw, and a black dragon that looked like a darker version of a lighter dragon he had encountered with his mother.
He recognized the blue and red Deadly Nadder as the one he had freed and later helped him with his own escape. Had it left to find help for him?
What immediately stood out to him was that the dragons were all standing with the humans, not trying to get away from them, and they were calm, not displaying the least bit of distress. On their backs, he could see what appeared to be padding on their backs with straps around their bodies, they were saddles.
These dragons were… tame? They had been tamed by these humans? And now they were riding them?
He had been around dragons his entire life and knew they were often wary towards humans because they were often abused by them. They trusted his mother because they knew that she was a savior, not a victimizer. He wondered if that was how these dragons saw the humans they were with.
Could they be trusted, then? His mother trusted a very limited amount of people, people he never met, only heard of. And the only person he trusted was his mother, she was all he ever knew his entire life, besides dragons.
Because of that alone, he was wary of them, dragons or not. He knew human behavior and their superstitions about what they did and didn't know about the world. If they saw him, someone who was nothing like a human, he wondered if he would see his next birthday.
He did not leave the safety of the shadows and wilderness, instead electing to watch them. He might be able to learn more about them and if he could possibly trust them enough to show himself.
The blue and red dragon led the riders to an island some distance from their island, the Dragon's Edge. At first glance, there appeared to be nothing of significance, the beach they landed on was all but a clean sheet of sand, with only an uprooted bush being on the otherwise empty slate.
Snotlout picked up the bush and shook it in anger and annoyance, causing some leaves and berries to fall to the ground. "This is why we skipped out on my Dad's chili?! A damn bush?!"
"Snotlout, will you relax for once?" Hiccup retorted, resisting the urge to yell at him. "The Nadder must have brought us here for a reason."
"But why?" Astrid questioned. "There's nothing here."
Helene's eyes began to look around to answer her friend's question and that was when she saw something odd in the sand. She bent down on one knee to look at it, but couldn't see it clearly because of the darkness.
"Ripwave," she called for her dragon. The said dragon approached her and warbled, waiting for what she wanted from her. "Give me some light, please."
The tendrils on her chin glowed as the electricity gradually built in them. The purple light illuminated the sand, allowing her to see what appeared to her to be footprints along with drag marks. The drag marks appeared to be from a dragon, yet the footprints looked human, like the prints made by a person's bare feet.
The idea of another dragon-riding person crossed her mind, but it didn't make a lot of sense to her. Very few tribes in the archipelago knew of them and their dragons and none were riding dragons yet, although it was something her father had discussed with the council of Outcast Island more than once.
With that in mind, what were the chances that a random person from a random island was flying around on the back of a dragon? Very slim.
"Guys," she turned her head back at the other riders, "take a look at this."
Everyone gathered around her, her dragon, and the footprints she found. With Ripwave's light, they were able to see what she discovered in the sand.
"Are those footprints?" Astrid asked, pointing down at them.
"I think so," Fishlegs replied. He then pointed down at the tracks as well and asked, "But what these drag marks? They're too thin to be from a dragon."
"I was kind of thinking the same thing," Helene claimed.
"And look at where they lead," Hiccup held up the lantern in his hand, the orange light revealing more tracks that led up into the forest.
"Yeah, they lead uphill," Fishlegs began.
"Into the forest," Hiccup finished in a slightly quiet voice as he lowered his lantern. He turned back to his friends as he stated, "Someone or something is here on this island, and I want to find out who or what."
Hiccup wasn't sure what compelled him to want to search the island for something he wasn't even sure about or why. Yet, he somehow felt that there was something there that made him want to know, to discover.
"Alright, then, um, we should split up to cover more ground," Astrid suggested.
He nodded, "Good idea. Send out a dragon call if you find anything."
With that, everyone mounted their dragons and separated to other areas of the island. Hiccup, on the other hand, wanted to see if he could follow the footprints, to see where they led, if they led anywhere.
Ladok had watched as they all separated by climbing onto the backs of their dragons and flying away. The only one who didn't was the tallest of them, the male with the metal leg, who he interpreted as the leader. The black dragon stayed with him and warbled as it sniffed the sand.
Why was he staying? What was he planning?
His questions were answered when he saw the metal-legged leader and his black dragon walk up to the forest as they followed the tracks he had inadvertently left in the sand. He didn't know what would happen if they saw him once they reached the end of the tracks, what their reaction would be. He quickly ran further into the forest, brushing against a shrub as he left.
The lobes on Toothless' head raised when he heard the sound of rattling leaves. He warbled in curiosity loudly, which caught Hiccup's attention.
"What is it, bud?" he asked.
Toothless crooned and followed the tracks into the forest. In between a tree and some bushes, he discovered a clear pair of footprints. They were clear enough to see every detail of the feet, from the toes to the heels, as if someone had been standing in that single place for a while.
Hiccup crouched down to get a closer look at the footprints his dragon found. "These are fresh. Someone was watching us."
He shined his lantern and discovered more tracks that trailed off from the prints. He stood up, then he and Toothless once again followed the footprints further into the dark forest.
Ladok ran as fast and far as his feet could carry him in his panic. Eventually, he stopped next to a tree to catch his breath, placing a hand on the tree's tall trunk to maintain his balance as he felt as if he could collapse with all of the heavy breathing he did.
He always wanted to meet another person other than his own mother without weapons being drawn. However, he didn't want to take the chance of scaring anyone with his unusual appearance. He was once called a demon by someone who saw him as he was saving a dragon in a cage.
He let out one last heavy huff and looked behind him when he was no longer breathing heavily. That was when he saw the orange light of a lantern not too far behind him.
He felt panicked again, he wanted to run again, but thought he wouldn't be able to get far enough, especially if the black dragon saw him and decided to chase him. He found himself looking upwards, along the length of the tall tree, there was a branch low enough for him to climb with ease, so he did.
He leapt onto the thick wood of the trunk and used his sharp nails on the tips of his long fingers and toes to bury into it as he climbed. He reached his hand up to the branch and grabbed onto it, hoisting himself up on top of it as he grabbed it with his other hand.
He clung onto the branch tightly, wrapping his body around it. He watched as the tall male and his ebony companion approached the tree. He thought they would continue walking and he could take that opportunity to leave, but they never left, they stayed and looked around the tree.
Hiccup and Toothless followed the tracks, the deeper they walked the darker it seemed to get. If it wasn't for the lantern, he would have thought he and Toothless had been covered in ink and dropped in a cave.
Soon, the tracks suddenly came to a stop at the base of a tree. The last set of footprints were slightly distorted and facing the tree. That prompted him to take a closer look at the trunk and he discovered deep puncture marks in the thick wood.
Now feeling nervous, he gripped the handle off the lantern tightly and raised it upwards. And that was when he saw something holding tightly onto a branch.
All he saw were bright pale golden orbs for eyes as the being on the branch shifted to standing position. He would be lying if he said he didn't expect whatever it was he saw to stand on all floors like a dragon, more to reassure himself if anything else. Instead, it stood erect on two long legs that looked more human than dragon.
The light from the lantern allowed him to see a badly torn pair of trousers with a shredded cloth wrapped around his hips like a loincloth. He also saw what he thought to be a tail with small fins that became slightly larger as the tail got thicker. The tail had to be potentially three feet long in length, perhaps even longer.
He also saw a pair of bare feet holding onto the tree branch. They were human-like in shape, but they were tipped with sharp black nails like talons.
He raised his lantern and discovered arms with hands on the ends with claw-like nails similar to the ones on the feet. The lantern's light also revealed a torso that led up to a neck with an oddly shaped head.
The head was shaped similarly to a lizard or a snake with a long snout and slightly elongated skull. The top of the head was covered with small ridges that even encircled the top of the bright eyes.
There was no hair, instead there appeared to be horns, two elongated horns that pointed slightly backwards on top of the head with two more slightly longer ones slightly above the eyes. On the chin were two considerably smaller horns with three larger ones traveling upwards along the jawline.
What really struck him, however, was the skin, it wasn't skin at all, it was scales, very similar in texture and appearance to the hides of dragons. It was a dark color, blending in almost perfectly to the darkness around them. On the torso, however, were scales that were noticeably lighter and thinner than anywhere else he could visibly see. Some of the darker scales were scattered on the torso, seemingly highlighting the pectoral and abdominal muscles.
Overall, he was perplexed by whoever or whatever he was seeing in the tree. Yet, he would be lying to himself if he never felt even slightest bit intrigued as well.
"What are you?" he inquired, furrowing his eyebrows inquisitively.
He thought he heard the being in the tree attempt to make some type of vocalization, as if trying to reply to him. He couldn't be certain, however, it also could have been nothing but a growl.
The light of his lantern was beginning to fade, making it even more difficult to observe. He still wanted to be able to see more of what he was seeing.
"Give me some light," he told Toothless. His dragon complied by firing a plasma blast above, providing Hiccup with the light he needed.
However, the plasma blast seemed to have a negative effect on the being. As soon as the blast dissolved into a small purple explosion, a startled shriek rang out in the area around the tree and Hiccup suddenly felt very nervous.
He unconsciously directed his feet to turn to a different direction in preparation to begin running. He took a step back, but before he could get too far, he found himself rolling on the ground and on his back with the being pinning him down, immobilizing him.
Ladok no longer knew what he was doing, one moment he felt as if he was frozen on the tree branch and the next he was shrieking and covering his ears when the purple orb the black dragon released suddenly exploded above him. His shriek startled the metal-legged male and he began to step back.
He had no idea what he was doing or where he was going. His first thought was that he might have been about to leave to find the other people he arrived with. His heart started racing with panic and nervousness, he felt the vibrations in his throat, he couldn't let anyone else find him.
He let his instinct to remain hidden take over and he was suddenly jumping off the tree branch and onto the male. They rolled on the ground for a few moments before they came to a stop and he was on top of him, pinning him down by the shoulders.
Now that they were closer to each other than before, he found himself staring at an eerily familiar face. It didn't seem possible, but he thought he was looking at the face of his mother.
The jawline, the shape of the eyes and mouth, even a mole near the corner of an eye and the amber hair color, they were all the same. One thing that caught his attention, however, was a small scar on the chin, one that could have been caused by the tip of a dragon's claw.
He remembered his mother telling him how they found themselves in the icy mountain that made up a dragon's nest. She told him a dragon, her Stormcutter, had broken into the house they lived in and when she ran inside to protect his brother, she discovered that the dragon wasn't attacking him, but was actually intrigued by him. Before they were taken away, she said his brother started crying and she thought she might have seen blood on his chin.
If the pieces were coming together correctly, he was staring directly at the face of his brother. The chances were astronomical, and yet he couldn't say that he didn't feel like he wasn't looking down at his lost family.
He felt frozen again, yet he felt like he had to say something. He opened his mouth and tried to speak, but his throat was still hurting badly, so much so that all he could muster was a high-pitched squeak.
Hiccup was trying to remain as still as he possibly could, unsure about the lizard-like being above him, keeping him pinned. He couldn't help but to notice that the bright eyes seemed to be analyzing him.
His heart started racing when the large, tooth-filled mouth opened. He closed his eyes instinctively in fear and anticipation for a gruesome fate, but he was confused when he heard a squeak. He slowly and cautiously opened his eyes and saw the head and mouth moving, and for some reason it gave him the impression that the being might be attempting to communicate with him.
Toothless howled in anger when he saw his rider become forced to the ground. He approached them while growling with clear anger and hostility.
Uncertain about the black dragon, Ladok removed himself from the male and stood up. The dragon walked up to him, continuing to growl at him, prompting him to slowly walk backwards. His back hit the bark of the trunk of the tree he was perched on just a couple of minutes previously, his hands were pressed against it.
His legs were bent slightly and shaking with fear. Fear was something that could be sensed by dragons, if someone was afraid, they were afraid and it wasn't uncommon for them to attack.
Hiccup stood up from the ground, bearing an almost overwhelming feeling of shock from everything that happened. He saw Toothless approach the being, growling as he did.
He quickly ran up to his dragon, placing his hands on him to calm him down. He was saving the one who had pinned him to the ground by the shoulders and who was definitely not human, but he still did so anyway, he felt he had to for an unexplained reason.
"Calm down, Toothless, calm down," he soothed.
Ladok was in utter shock when he saved him from his dragon, who had the unusual name of 'Toothless', despite the teeth he saw in his mouth. Why would he save him after all he had done?
His mother had once told him that she felt his brother was pure of heart from the moment he was born, and now he had witnessed a pure heart forgiving him enough to save him. He was confident and convinced he was now standing with his brother.
After he had calmed Toothless, Hiccup looked up at the being and watched as a hand was raised to the neck. The hand rubbed the neck gently, as if attempting to soothe it.
The mouth opened again and the lips moved as a strained, gravelly voice struggled to speak, "B… br… bro-" It seemed what wanted to be said could not be, until the weakened voice made one last attempt, "Bro…ther!"
Ladok felt very fatigued and lightheaded when he was finally able to speak, he thought his heart was skipping beats and he was breathing heavily and quickly. He barely felt anything as he fell to the ground and struggled to remain conscious. The last thing he remembered was the look of shock upon his brother's face before everything became black.
I-o-x~*V*~x-o-I
(A/N: Phew! Done, finally. Like I said before, I don't like to update on weekdays for stories like this, but I'm going to be really busy. I'm going to be visiting my brother for his birthday and I just don't think I'll have any time to update.
This chapter was really more or less to show the different sides of Hiccup and Ladok and I hope I accomplished that. You'll notice the differences between them in how I transition between them and how they see each other.
I'm excited for the next chapter, but as you know it will take me a while, so the wait may have to be longer than usual. Stoick will be in the next chapter and let's just say, Hiccup will be in for the shock of his life. That's all I have to say and until I can update again, stay safe.)