"Hiccup?"

…

"Hiccup?!"

Hiccup could hear Cami's voice coming from far away. But it sounded like the voice was speaking from underwater. Unintelligible. Unimportant.

"Hiccup! Ugh, Toothless, can you snap him out of it?"

The ringing in his ears was still too loud to hear properly. But it didn't matter. Nothing the voice said would change anything.

Distantly, something sticky licked his hand. He didn't react. He just stared at the paper as if reading the words over and over might make them untrue.

If you delay, or bring any other guards, your little friend will die on the third sundown.

"ROAR!"

Quite suddenly, the world didn't so much as tilt as it was shoved sideways. He hit the ground with momentum and the weight of a dragon on his stomach. And just like that fateful day nearly 4 years ago, his dragon roared in his face with all his might. Hiccup actually saw stars for a moment.

"Toothless!" he yelled in indignation. Toothless's expression immediately brightened and he clambered off of Hiccup at once. He licked his rider's face, making Hiccup grimace. "Ugh, Toothless, you know that doesn't wash out! I'm fine!"

"Could have fooled me," Camicazi said, half annoyed, half worried. She had her arms crossed and glared down at Hiccup, who in his prone position was for once shorter than her. "Come on, Haddock. You don't freeze when there's a crisis, we go fight it!"

Hiccup shook his head, abashed, as he worked to get his feet under him again. "You're right, Cami," he said, standing. Toothless nuzzled him again, and he gave him a scratch behind his ear flaps to reassure his friend he was okay. "I don't know what came over me."

"I could make a guess," Cami scoffed. "You've really got it bad for this girl, don't you?"

"More than I knew," he murmured to himself, so softly that his blonde friend couldn't hear.

"What?" she asked.

Hiccup shook himself. "Never mind. I'm going," he said, ripping the parchment from the tree and shoving it into a saddlebag. He had one foot already on Toothless's stirrup when he was knocked aside by Camicazi. "Hey!" he protested.

Cami scowled again, this time up at him. "Hiccup Haddock, I said we go fight it. No way are you flying after some psycho with no backup!" she declared. "I'm coming with you."

"What? Cami, no!" Hiccup protested, horrified. "It'll be dangerous! And they said they'd kill her!"

"Do you hear yourself?" Cami demanded. "You can't take on these guys alone!" Toothless huffed in agreement. "And they won't even know I'm there until it's too late," she added with a smirk. Hiccup rolled his eyes and made another attempt at the saddle, and again was knocked aside by Camicazi. Now her eyes were furious. "If you don't let me come," she said, voice low and threatening, "I'm going straight back to your dad and telling him everything. And you know he'd never let you go."

Hiccup felt like he'd been slapped. "Cami, you wouldn't," he began, but he knew he was wrong. Cami wasn't afraid to do anything, and she never made an idle threat; Hiccup had found that out the hard way, more than once. She really was useful in a fight, Hiccup knew. And every minute they sat here arguing was another minute Astrid was facing gods-knew-what at the hands of Viggo. But the risk…

"You promise you won't get caught?" he asked, fixing his friend with a look. Her eyes lit with excitement.

"Come on Hiccup, it's me," she said with a wide, mischievous grin. "A good burglar never gets caught."

"And there's no better burglar than a Bog-Burglar," he replied, actually cocking a slight smile. It was an old refrain. He shook his head. He wished he had time to think about this all logically, but the first sundown had already long since passed. He needed every moment from now on to find Astrid. So although he felt it was probably the wrong thing to agree, he suspected he'd feel much the same if he didn't agree. "Okay, Cami, fine," he said, relenting. "You can-"

Before he'd even finished the sentence, he looked up to see Camicazi already perched on Stormfly's back. Not only that, but in the same motion she'd somehow managed to remove Astrid's axe from the tree, and now she held it aloft in demonstration of her skill. Shaking his head at her dexterity, he mounted up himself. "If you start slipping or need a break, you can always ride with Toothless and me," he said, knowing she was still a very new flier. All Cami did was throw him a disparaging look, which made him chuckle to himself. Cami wasn't the sort of Viking who liked to admit that something might be difficult for her. She was going to ride that dragon, or die trying. "Fair enough. Come on, bud!" he said. He nudged Toothless into the sky, and Stormfly, knowing they were going to find her missing rider, followed suit. They'd barely cleared the trees when Hiccup remembered something. "Wait! We should send a Terror Mail to the other Riders!" he called out. They might need a rescue if this all went south on them.

To his surprise, Cami answered breezily, "Already on it!"

"Really?" he asked in disbelief. "When?"

Hours later, Gustav Larson, captain of the A-Team, was wondering what the Thor was wrong with him. "Why in the name of all the-" he yawned hugely, "gods, did we put ourselves on dawn patrol for the day after a feast, Fanghook?" he grumpily asked his dragon. Fanghook snorted in sleepy agreement. It was very early - although the sky had brightened, even on this eastern side of the island the sun had not yet crested the horizon.

"Whatd'ya say we make this quick, huh?" Gustav mumbled. Fanghook grumbled and sped up slightly, curving around a sea stack. Gustav gave a cursory glance at the small rocky beach below. Since it was technically navigable, it was part of the regular patrol route, but between the jagged undersea rocks offshore and the long, overland trek to the village, no one actually used the little spit of land. This morning it appeared abandoned as always.

Gustav yawned and tried to spur Fanghook on to the next patrol checkpoint. Instead, the dragon turned and dived straight for the little deserted beach. "Fanghook!" Gustav shrieked. "What are you doing?"

Fanghook huffed and landed hard on the beach. The force nearly jolted Gustav clear out of the saddle. "Hey! What was that for?" he demanded of his dragon. "I'm supposed to be in charge here! You can't just decide when- OW!" Fanghook had struck Gustav in the chest with his long snout, knocking the boy back several feet. Gustav rubbed the spot on his front and glared at Fanghook. "What the Thor's gotten into you?" he said angrily.

Fanghook looked down at his claws. Gustav nodded in agreement. "Yeah that's right, you should be sorry! Because you work for Gustav Larson, greatest dragon trainer in the whole wo-" Fanghook huffed, shooting a puff of smoke right into his rider's face and causing Gustav to break off in a fit of coughs. Then before Gustav had recovered his breath, Fanghook jabbed a foreclaw at something right at Gustav's feet. The boy looked down through streaming eyes. Was that what he thought it was?

"A Night Fury scale," he said in puzzlement. He picked up the shiny black disc. When had Hiccup been here? No one had seen Hiccup since he'd disappeared from the betrothal celebration early last night. Hoark, who had come to present his congratulations to the couple, had said Hiccup had left to go use the privy, but he'd never returned from there. Not long after, both that Bog-Burglar girl and the marriage contract had vanished from the hall as well, although no one had seen where they got to. The chiefs were absolutely livid. If Gustav was the one to find the missing heirs, there would probably be some fantastic award in store for him! Maybe Stoick would even disown Hiccup and make him the leader of the Dragon Riders instead?

"Hiccup?" Gustav called out. "Toothless?" No reply came. He began to walk along the beach, although he knew there was nothing more to see; the beach was barely longer than Fanghook from nose to tail-tip. At the opposite end, close to where the pebbles of the beach gave way to muddy dirt and then trees beyond, Gustav found another scale. "Hiccup, I know you're here!" he shouted again. Still nothing.

"All right, I don't know he's here," Gustav admitted to Fanghook. "He might not even have come here at all last night. These scales could have been here for ages."

Fanghook huffed, then pushed past Gustav to nose at something in the mud. Gustav saw that there was a footprint there- a dragon print! They were still close enough to the shore that tide would have washed the print away, so Toothless had to have been there at least more recently than the last high tide.

"Great job, Fanghook!" Gustav said. He wedged his way between the dragon and the print to get a better view. "Once the chief sees this…wait." He squinted at the track in the mud. "That's not a Night Fury track," he said, to both himself and the dragon. "It's a… Zippleback? No, a Nadder track." Gustav frowned, then blinked in surprise. "So Astrid was here too, Fanghook!" Gustav had noticed Astrid hadn't attended the feast (but not because he'd been waiting for her luminous presence to float through the doors and fall gracefully into his arms. No, not that). But she hadn't shown up all night. And Hiccup had left while he knew everyone else was busy… was it possible that they'd met up here?

"Why would Hiccup and Astrid come to this beach?" Gustav pondered aloud. "In the middle of the night? And…alone?" His mind supplied an explanation, but he squelched it immediately. Astrid wouldn't pick someone like Hiccup when she had Gustav to choose from! Trying to come up with another explanation, he told his dragon, "Look around for signs of a struggle, Fanghook. They might be in trouble!" Obediently, the Nightmare started searching the beach for anything else out of the ordinary. Gustav headed through the narrow band of trees that bordered the beach to emerge into a small clearing. Here, he found actual Night Fury tracks as well as more from the Nadder. The tracks looked like the dragons had been walking calmly, though, and there was no scuffed earth like there would be if the dragons had been in a fight. Gustav also couldn't see any signs of arrows, catapults, or traps. One of the bigger trees had been recently cut by an axe, but that alone wasn't concerning. He was well aware of Astrid's habit of using trees for target practice.

No, all together it really looked like wherever Astrid and Hiccup had gone, they'd left voluntarily. And there was no way to know which way they had gone, or why. But Gustav knew one thing for sure: the Chief was NOT going to like this. "You think if I tell Stoick that his son is missing that he won't kill me immediately?" he asked Fanghook, voice breaking. Fanghook glanced sideways at his rider and then quickly away again. Gustav didn't take that as a good sign.

So much for getting on the Chief's good side, he thought. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to figure out a way to avoid delivering this report in person. Then inspiration struck. "You know what, Fanghook?" he asked. "As leader of the A-team, I'm declaring this out of our jurisdiction." He reached into his saddlebags to pull out paper and charcoal. "We should get the Riders to handle this one."

"GOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING DRAGON'S EDGE! It's Tuff, and-"

"Ruff!"

"And Chicken!"

"In the morning!"

Heather jerked upright in her bed, jolted out of sleep. When she realized what had woken her, she flopped straight back down onto her pillow with a groan. Those muttonheads, she thought.

"Today's weather forecast will be-"

"Freezing cold," Heather muttered, in sync with whichever twin it was disturbing everyone's peace. She closed her eyes again in a vain attempt to ignore the racket. Would they just stop already?

"For today's announcements, we'd like to inform everyone of the tragic loss of our fearless leader, Hiccup Haddock III-"

"He's not dead, you idiot, he's on Berk!"

"Did I say he was dead, Ruff? I said he was lost-"

"And I said he's on Berk, ergo, we know where he is, ergo, he is not lost!"

A flurry of knocks pounded on Heather's door, destroying any last hope she had of getting back to sleep. Furious, she jumped up and whipped the door open. Snotlout stood there, looking every bit as angry as she was.

"Heather," he said, before she could say a word, "I just wanted you to know that when Ruff and Tuff die this morning that I was the one that finished them off. I wanted someone to know so my heroic deed doesn't go unrewarded."

She blinked, then rolled her eyes. "Want any help?"

He grinned and nodded toward Hookfang waiting nearby. Heather grabbed her double-bladed axe and jumped on the Nightmare's back after him. She was glad that Snotlout's anger at the twins distracted him from trying to flirt… and also glad the ride was very, very short.

The twins seemed absolutely oblivious to their approach. Tuffnut was holding Chicken up to the Thunder-ear, who was squawking at the top of her lungs. The sound was truly horrendous. Far below, Heather saw Fishlegs tumble out of his hut and hop on Meatlug's back, obviously on the same mission as they were to shut the twins up.

A long, drawn-out bawk, and the chicken mercifully stopped screaming. "And that's it for Morning Songs with Chicken! Tune in next time to hear Chicken sing a morning song!" Tuff announced happily. "Now, let's see what Terror mails came in last- GAHH!"

Heather bit back a scream of her own as Hookfang plowed into Tuffnut at speed. The terror mails and Chicken flew through the air, the bird luckily landing right in Ruffnut's arms. Heather barely had time to wonder if Tuffnut was okay when from somewhere under Hookfang she heard the customary cry, "Oh I'm hurt, I am very much hurt!" She promptly decided there was nothing to worry about.

Somehow, Ruff ignored the chicken, the dragon, and her brother's predicament. Instead, she gave Heather and Snotlout a wide smile. "Hey guys! Nice of you to join our morning program-" she was cut off as Snotlout tackled her to the ground, Chicken flying from her arms once again. This time, Fishlegs and Meatlug arrived just in time to catch the chicken safely. He gave Heather a puzzled look, but Heather was a bit preoccupied. Mainly with making sure Ruffnut didn't actually die at Snotlout's hands. He was raining blows down on Ruff, each smack punctuated by an angry yell.

"If you" -smack- "muttonheads" -smack- "don't let" -smack- "me sleep" -smack- "I'm going to" -smack- "throw you" -smack- "off the cliff!"

Heather dismounted Hookfang and walked over to the tussling pair, trying to make sure things didn't get too out of hand. Fishlegs came up next to her. He covered a yawn, saying, "Just another morning in the great beyond, huh?"

"And feed you" -smack- "to a school" -smack- "of Scauldrons!"

Heather sighed. "Uh huh," she told Fishlegs. She bent to pick up one of the fallen terror mails. Seeing it was addressed to the whole group, she glanced at the contents, then stared. Her heart began to pound in her throat. She read the letter more carefully, making sure she hadn't missed anything.

Fishlegs nudged her shoulder. "Heather?" She ignored him, still trying to concentrate on the letter. "Are you okay? What's wrong?" the large Viking asked. Her shock must have shown on her face. But if this was true…

"Shut up all of you!" she yelled. Surprised, Fishlegs snatched his hand back and Ruffnut and Snotlout stopped their fight, fists raised. Somehow, Ruffnut now had Snotlout pinned to the ground and had been hitting him back, apparently for the fun of it. Heather jerked her head at Hookfang, who released Tuffnut. The others all made questioning noises. "This is… it's from Gustav," she began. The tension immediately left the other Riders.

"Pssh, Gustav. What does that little toe-rag want?" Snotlout scoffed. Ruff and Tuff, already bored, turned to pick up the other scattered letters.

"It's not about him!" Heather protested. "It's, um, well, it's about Astrid."

"Astrid!" Snotlout interrupted. "If that pint-sized wanna-be me thinks he has any chance with her at all, I'll-"

Heather cuffed him on the back of the head. "Will you be quiet for 5 seconds? I told you it wasn't about Gustav! It's about Astrid, and, um, Hiccup."

"What's wrong?" Fishlegs asked at once. "Are they okay?"

"It says," Heather started, swallowed, and continued, "It says they've run away."

"What?" exclaimed Snotlout and Fishlegs together. Fishlegs continued, "They wouldn't do that!"

"Right!" Snotlout agreed. "I mean, Astrid and Hiccup? Please!"

"Wait, you mean they ran away together? As in, together-together?" Fishlegs said, eyes widening.

"It doesn't say that!" Heather interjected hurriedly. Although now that they'd brought it up, Heather couldn't help wondering. It wouldn't be like them to shirk their duties like that, but knowing how they felt about one another… well, Heather didn't have a better explanation for why the two Rider leaders would suddenly abandon them. "It does look like they left voluntarily, though, and togeth- well, at the same time," she continued. "Toothless and Stormfly are gone too. Gustav says they were safe on Berk all day, and then Hiccup left the evening feast and didn't return, and the next morning Gustav and Fanghook found Night Fury scales and Nadder tracks on the far side of the island. No one's seen either of them since."

"Well that's a shame," Ruffnut said unexpectedly. Heather hadn't thought she was even listening. "Hiccup's going to miss his own wedding. More wedding food for us though!"

"His own what?" Heather and Fishlegs exclaimed in unison. Ruffnut waved the letter in her hand.

"It's right here! An official royal wedding invitation from Stoick!" Heather tried to snatch the paper out of Ruffnut's hand, but the other girl danced away and began to read in a pompous, deep voice. "You, the Dragon Riders, are hereby invited to witness the union ceremony of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, heir to the Hooligan Tribe of Berk, and Camicazi Bertha Braaten, heir to the Bog-Burglar Tribe of Bog-Burglar Island. This union will forever seal the bond between our two esteemed tribes. The ceremony will take place on Thorsday next, reception to follow." She rolled up the parchment. "I'm in! Who else?"

This time when Heather grabbed for the letter she managed to wrench it from Ruffnut's grasp. She'd barely started to unroll it though, when Tuffnut said, "Wait, what? I don't believe this!"

"I know!" Fishlegs said. "Hiccup's betrothed? Camicazi didn't say anything about-"

"His middle name is Horrendous?"

"That's what you got out of that?" Heather demanded. Snotlout rolled his eyes and Tuffnut shrugged.

"What was I supposed to get?" he asked, apparently confused.

"What were you- the wedding!" Fishlegs exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air.

"But there's not going to be a wedding," Tuffnut said reasonably.

"What?" Heather demanded.

"There's not going to be a wedding" Tuffnut repeated, looking at the final letter in his hands.

"Well, no, because he and Astrid," Snotlout put as much scorn into the name as he could, "ditched us and ran off into the sunset!"

"No, not because of that," Tuffnut said, flapping a hand in dismissal. "It's just not going to happen."

"What do you mean? How do you know?" Fishlegs asked. Tuffnut struck a dramatic pose, hand clutching the letter over his heart.

"I can just tell that the ill-fated winds blow foul over this fair union," he said dramatically. Then he dropped the pose and shrugged. "Also, that Bog-Burglar girl stole the marriage contract."

"WHAT?" Heather and Snotlout exclaimed. Fishlegs's jaw dropped.

"She wrote us a letter, here," Tuffnut said, waving the paper in his hands like Ruffnut had done. This time, Heather was fast enough to snatch it on the first try.

She scanned the letter from Camicazi, mind buzzing more and more with every line. "She says she and Hiccup are not going through with, um," Heather decided against reading the exact words Camicazi had used aloud. "with the union. She stole the contract and she and Hiccup are," Heather faltered, confused.

Fishlegs interrupted, "Are what? Oh, they could get in soooo much trouble! Don't they know the consequences for interfering with a union? A royal union? That could be considered treason!"

Heather gulped. She knew the penalties for treason. "She says they're on the run from the chiefs. She says not to tell them what she did, but she wants us to try to convince them that they don't need a marriage contract for this treaty to work out. Even if we have to 'drop them in our volcano.'"

Identical grins of diabolical evil appeared on the twins' faces. "Oh, we thought this day would never come," Ruffnut said, rubbing her hands together. "She wants us to," Tuff joined her for this next part, "Loki Stoick!"

The two of them drew off to the side, apparently comparing plans. Meanwhile, Fishlegs frowned in confusion. "But wait," he said. "I thought Hiccup and Astrid had run away. When did he have time to run away, come back, steal a marriage contract, and go on the run again with Camicazi?"

Heather has been wondering that too. "And why would Stoick say the wedding was on Thorsday if the marriage contract is gone?"

"Or if the groom ran off with another woman?" Snotlout added, slightly grumpily.

"Stop acting like it says they eloped! We don't know why they ran away!" Heather snapped.

Snotlout crossed his arms and met her stare defiantly. "Oh yeah? Why else would they just 'run away' right after Hiccup was betrothed to someone else?" he asked. "If they're not," he turned his back to them, mimed hugging himself, and made kissy noises that made Fishlegs wince. Snotlout turned around again and said, "You know."

"But Hiccup and Astrid would never just leave!" Fishlegs interjected. "And Camicazi says she and Hiccup left because they needed to lie low. Doesn't it make more sense that he left with Cami for an actual reason?"

"And Astrid and Stormfly just vanished, did they?" Snotlout shot back, voice rising.

"Well how am I supposed to know?" Fishlegs exclaimed.

"I've got it!" Tuffnut shouted. Everyone looked at him. With a flourish, he pulled out a piece of paper from Thor knows where. "This is how we pull the ultimate Loki on Stoick!"

Snotlout and Fishlegs rounded on Tuffnut with angry yells. Ruffnut joined in, but she was yelling about how her Loki plan was way better than Tuffnut's. Heather looked from the quarreling Riders to the three conflicting letters in her hands.

"Enough!" she yelled. The other four Riders looked at her. "We need to figure this out. Grab your gear, guys; we're going to Berk."

Astrid woke slowly, dizzily, as if she fought her way back to consciousness through molasses. Even her eyelids ached as she tried to force them open. When she finally managed it, though, she realized she could have spared herself the effort; the blindfold that had plagued her since she'd been kidnapped was still there. Wriggling painfully, she found that her arms and legs were still bound as well. One thing seemed to have changed, at least. For the first time in - hours, days, weeks? - she seemed to be alone. That must mean that they'd finally arrived to wherever these scum had been taking her.

Astrid listened, hard, to her surroundings. No raspy breathing, no clink of armor. No disgusting smell from these dung-eaters who Astrid was sure had never taken a bath in their lives. She really must be unguarded, then. She decided against calling out to make sure; although she wasn't gagged, her throat was already raw from screaming. Instead, she carefully tried to raise herself to a sitting position. Everything hurt. Her muscles protested every movement, both from the beating they'd given her when she was first captured and from the cramps of simply being tied up for far too long. Gritting her teeth, she tried to force back the pain in her limbs and torso. Her throbbing head was harder to ignore -what had they drugged her with? - but eventually she managed to sit up with her feet out in front of her. A wave of dizziness made her lean back to find a crumbly, damp rock wall behind her. Once the nausea passed, she sniffed deeply. The air was damp, cool, and musty. She was in a cave, then. Most likely, an underground cell.

Great, she thought sarcastically.

She sat there for some time, taking stock of her injuries like any trained warrior. With her hands tied behind her back, it was hard to determine the exact sources of her pain, but she came up with at least one broken rib, a black eye, a split lip, and what she sincerely hoped weren't internal injuries to her abdomen. In addition to the cuts and bruises, of course. Plus the after-effects of whatever they'd used to knock her out, which made her head swim and her stomach uneasy. Or was she just hungry? She had no idea how long it had been since she'd last eaten.

Altogether, she was in no state for a breakout. Even breathing was something of a chore at the moment. On the other hand, whoever had grabbed her also knew that she had to be feeling lousy right now. Just the fact that they hadn't posted a guard on her said that they didn't expect an escape attempt yet. Now would be the best time to catch them by surprise.

Astrid smiled in spite of herself. The element of surprise, she thought. One of Hiccup's favorite tactics.

Hiccup. She'd been carefully trying not to think about Hiccup at all. Warriors didn't let anything get in the way of their duty - not injuries, and certainly not something as trivial as feelings. She had way too many feelings about Hiccup right now, most of them as painful as her bruises. She couldn't afford to dwell on them if she wanted to get out of here alive. So she shoved all those thoughts aside, firmly, telling herself that she could work out her feelings about Hiccup after she was free.

And at least he's going to help me get out of here, Astrid thought, smiling a little. She listened for a minute longer to make sure there really was no one else there, then carefully twisted her legs up until she could reach her boot. It took longer than she would ever admit to get her body to cooperate, but she decided to blame that on her bonds. All she had to do was reach the dagger she stored there and then she could loose her hands and feet, at least. Hiccup had made her the Gronkle iron weapon for last Snoggletog. It was only fitting that even when he wasn't here, he was protecting her.

Her hands closed around an empty sheath. What in Odin's name? Astrid searched frantically, feeling her other boot and the dirt floor around her. The dagger wasn't there! But she always kept it on her… Oh, son of a troll. She sat back against the rock wall with a groan of frustration. She remembered. She'd used the dagger - last night? She didn't know how many hours had passed while she was unconscious - to cut Stormfly's cinch and make it look like it had torn by accident. It had been her last-minute idea to give her an excuse to come to Berk with Hiccup. Unfortunately, in the process the dagger had gotten smeared with the leather oil she used to keep Stormfly's saddle clean and supple. She hadn't had time to clean it properly on the Edge, so she'd simply stuffed the dagger into her saddlebag. It was probably still there, leagues away and thwarting her chance at freedom.

She closed her eyes behind the blindfold, blinking back tears that were as much pain as rage. Her tortured body hadn't appreciated her desperate search for the dagger. Astrid knew she might still escape if she found a sharp rock or something in her cave cell, but she would wait for now. She was tired. She was hungry. She was beaten, bruised, and drugged. But most of all, she was alone. Alone, on a strange island filled with enemies, without even Hiccup's token to keep him close.

She'd never appreciated the oblivion of sleep more as unconsciousness claimed her once again