When they got back to Berk, dawn was breaking over the island. It had taken them hours to fly to Phantom Island and back, using up the night that had cloaked them as they left. The people of Berk would start waking up any moment now, and they had to get back to how they should be before anyone suspected anything.

"Hello, boys," came a feminine voice from above them. Hiccup looked up to see Cloudjumper gliding steadily above him, Valka on his back.

"Oh, hey mom," Hiccup said guiltily. In truth, he had no reason to be feeling guilty, but this was a feeling he had every time his mother found him doing something she hadn't known about before.

"And what were you doing this time?" Valka said, a gracious smile on her face.

"Oh, nothing," Hiccup said, waving her away. "Just some early morning flights, as you do."

"That's strange," Valka remarked. "If you were out having an early morning flight, why didn't I see you?"

"Oh, ahh, well, you see, we were gone out a long way," Hiccup said jovially. "Just getting our dragons some nice stretches," he added, laughing nervously.

"I see. And where did you go, hmm?"

"Oh, you know," Hiccup said, with a laugh. "Here and there, and then everywhere."

"Hmm," Valka said, smiling. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"What? No, no, never!" Hiccup said frantically.

"Very well then. I'm sure you have your reasons." Valka straightened up. "In the meantime, there is something that I have to tell you."

"Oh? What's that?"

"You'll see. Come." Valka flew off with Cloudjumper.

"Come on, Fishlegs. I suppose our bit of research can wait," Hiccup sighed, and flew away after his mother.

"Coming!" Fishlegs called, following them.

=0=

After some time, Cloudjumper stopped, hovering in the air, flapping his great wings almost silently.

"Look down there," Valka said. "What do you see?"

"An island?" Hiccup said, uncertain what he was supposed to be seeing.

"Look closer. There's something important on that island."

"Ahh, a beach? Rocks? Trees?" Hiccup asked.

"Close. Look for something alive."

"You mean the wild boars?" he said sarcastically. Then he frowned.

"Oh. I see what you mean."

"Yes. Them."

He hadn't been able to see them before while they were in the forest, but now that the Dragon Hunters had come out from the cover of the trees, they were, in their dark clothing, as clear against the yellow sand as blood on snow.

"What are they doing there? And whose Hunters are they?" Fishlegs wondered.

"They're not any of Drago's men, that's for sure," Hiccup said. "And they're not any of the Dragon Hunters we encountered outside the Archipelago."

"Outside the Archipelago?" Valka asked. "When was this?"

"Oh, a couple of years back. I'll tell you all about it later."

"I'd love to hear it. Now, what of these Hunters?"

After a few moments' pondering, Hiccup looked up at them, a mischievous smile on his face that they only rarely saw.

"I think we should go down there, give them something of a fright, and then we capture and interrogate them."

"Uh, Hiccup," Fishlegs said, motioning towards the Hunters. "I think someone's doing that already."

Hiccup looked back at the Hunters to see them cowering in front of a black dragon. A black dragon with a rider sitting on top of it. Hiccup couldn't see well enough to make out any special defining characteristics, but one thing was for sure. This dragon was massive, and he had a rider.

"Do you think that's their leader or their enemy?" he wondered.

"From the way he's got a sword to their throats, I think he's their enemy," Valka commented. Sure enough, the mystery man had dismounted his dragon and extracted a sword from somewhere on his person. He was now holding the silver blade to one of the Hunters' throats. The rest of the Hunters were getting whacked out of existence by the dragon.

"Well, you know what they say. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. What do you say we go down there and meet him?" Hiccup suggested.

"It's worth a try," Valka said.

"Hey," poor Fishlegs said, having been unable to get a word in edgeways for the last few minutes. "Don't you think we should confirm if he's on our side or not first?"

"You have a point, Fishlegs," Hiccup mused. "Let's just go and hide in the trees for a while. Hopefully, he won't see us, and we'll be able to figure out what's happening down there."

Valka and Fishlegs nodded, and they silently descended into the trees. The dragon, which Hiccup was now able to see clearly, looked at them with an almost bored expression on its smoothly rounded yet somewhat sharp triangular face, as though it didn't care for them.

It was definitely big, maybe even the size of a Sentinel. It looked like a mix between a Sentinel and an Eruptodon, holding itself up on two muscular looking legs, but not in the way Sentinels did, resting the front parts of their bodies on their wings. Instead, it stood like an Eruptodon, balancing on those two legs alone. Its scales were black as volcanic ash, just like an Eruptodon, but they had the same hard, rocky look that the scales of a Sentinel had. The tail started out thick, and thinned as it went down, but then ended in a strange sort of club, like a box of spikes in every conceivable direction. Its wings were another matter entirely. They were folded, but Hiccup could make out the shape of a Skrill's wings.

This dragon had everything, he realized. It was big, but it wasn't bulky, which meant it could fly faster than it would have otherwise. It was rough and jagged, but in such a way that it was still sleek and streamlined. It was big and presumably powerful, and it was tough and had an impenetrable hide, and it must have been suitably fast, and it was smart enough to show complicated emotions. This dragon was… something else.

Even though the dragon had seen them, its rider hadn't. The Hunter's back was to them, and they could see bits and pieces of the rider from between the leaves.

The clothes he wore were a mix of three and only three colours: black, silver and gold. The colours were arranged specifically around his clothes. The lower half of his apparel was black, with intricate, draconic silver embroidery going down the sides in a line. The top half of his clothing was black as well, but this time with simple gold lines used as highlights around his arms and torso. Clearly, he was all about being fancy while making an understatement of it.

Crouching in the trees, they managed to eavesdrop on what he was saying to the Hunter.

"Where are the eggs?" he was saying. His accent was unlike anything Hiccup had heard before. Elegant in an unassuming, almost unnoticeable way.

"I'm not going to tell you," came the swift response from the Hunter.

"Tell me, or I'll kill you right here and now."

"But if you kill me, you won't know where those dragon eggs are," the Hunter said smugly.

The mystery rider was quiet for a moment, then he spoke.

"Fine then. How does torture sound?"

"You can't do anything to me. I'm valuable to you, and you can't risk damaging me too much, or you'll never know what you want to know," the Hunter replied, the grin he wore not visible to them, but the grin in his voice very much distinguishable.

"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure of that," the rider said, smiling. This was a fierce and ferocious smile, dangerous, with shark's teeth.

Nervously this time, his cockiness gone, the Hunter asked, "What do you mean?"

"You see, torture is about making it unbearable without making the victim hurt too much. And I'm sure I could do that. And if you're not cooperating," the rider said, smiling viciously, "I have contingency plans."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know, I could kill you painfully, burn you with Singetail fire, wear you away with Changewing acid, crush you under a Catastrophic Quaken, impale you with Nadder spikes, shock you with a Skrill, and then, to top it all off, have you eaten by a Death Song."

In the forest, Fishlegs squeaked with terror. Hiccup quickly clapped a hand over his mouth. Thankfully, the unknown rider did not seem to have heard them.

The Hunter, clearly unnerved by this man's ruthless approach to things, quietly said, his voice trembling, "Th-this way sir. Just-just follow me."

"Good man. Wreckage, come," the rider said, the last part addressed to his dragon, who was apparently named Wreckage.

The Hunter gulped, and said, "If you wouldn't mind, could we just leave the dragon behind? He makes me nervous."

"Wreckage comes with me. I don't trust anyone who works for Myre, no matter how afraid of me they are," the rider said, holding up his sword. It caught the light and flashed in the morning sun, and from within the trees they saw that it was made in such a way that the light bounced off of it in every way from every place, scattering to create a million glittering stars on the ground.

The Hunter, who apparently worked for someone named Myre, said nothing, simply gulped and motioned to follow, which the rider did. But then he stopped, and tapped the Hunter on the shoulder.

"Before you take me there, mind telling me about your friends in the trees?" he asked.

In the forest, Hiccup's breath caught.

"What friends?" the Hunter asked, genuinely puzzled.

"I see. So they're not yours. Well, if you want to know, I was talking about the people who seem to have hidden themselves in the trees. Those ones," he said, pointing his sword in their direction. His dragon stood in front of him, and opened its mouth.

A huge shockwave erupted from the infinite hole with teeth that was the dragon's mouth, ripping entire trees out of the ground and sending the Berkians and their dragons flying with the force of the blast. They landed on the ground, dazed.

The dragons were the first to recover. They jumped up, growling, standing in front of their riders protectively. Wreckage growled right back at them with a sound like grinding metal.

The rider looked at the entire group suspiciously.

"They say things aren't always as they seem," he said. "Even then, you can get a pretty good idea." He shook his head, bewildered.

"But what is going on here?"