Astrid is Furious, it felt so close, the thing she's worked so hard on getting just taken away in front of her own eyes. It just wasn't fair with the amount of sweat and blood she's put into training for dragon training, but how should she have known that Hiccup somehow got good out of nowhere, like She knew he was good at somethings, probably also way better than her at those, but Dragon Training and Combat wasn't one of them. The only thing that could somehow fix it was to find out what Hiccup was up to, he was pretty awkward well more than usual recently. The thing at Night in the Forge was strange and so was the random encounter back in the Forest. She decided to try to find where Hiccup went, maybe that would help her further. Blaming it on him for possibly cheating or training with someone just felt easier then admitting he got better than her. And after him Winning she had enough, so she took her Axe and Rushed into the Forest, even though Hiccup taking his right to Kill the Monstrous Nightmare was still a bit away she wanted to get something that could be useful from him before that. Hopefully confirming her Suspicions and allowing her to rightfully Kill the Nightmare instead.

The Forest was still foggy and wet from the Morning, a few sunrays got through the thick green, she retraced her steps until the point where she was training when she encountered Hiccup. She decided to go past the mossy rocks and through the ferns, her clothes got wet in the process from the haze on the leaves. As she went further, she ended up at a rocky cliff, looking further it was a cove with a clear lake and some foliage. It looked pretty impressive and Hard to find maybe if she'd be lucky Hiccup and whoever trains him might meet here, it seemed hidden well enough for that. She made her way down the rocky cliffside of the cove. She definitely made some noise while sliding down but thought It wouldn't matter as she was alone here. Because she would have noticed another Person. She decided to explore it a bit and find a spot where she would hide if she needed to. While doing that she heard some noise. It must have been some larger creature, but she wasn't sure what it was, hopefully just something harmless. She decided it was still a good idea to investigate it. But it didn't take long for a blackish dragon to emerge from the green. Adrenaline started rushing through her veins, this was a fight to the death. She never had seen one of those, like anywhere. She saw an opportunity in it, if she would slay this unknown dragon, it would mean she would not only have slayed her first dragon, but also done that before Hiccup could slay the Nightmare. She didn't even care about the right to slay the Nightmare anymore; sure, it was in front of the whole Village but also a common tradition. This was something really unique and better, Hiccup could win the Stupid Dragon training by Killing the Nightmare, and it works out for the both of them.

Her adrenaline rush made her act impulsively, just charging at the beast with her axe and a war cry. There was no known strategy for her to follow, so she had to improvise and just try to brute force her way. As she as about to slide her axe blades into the dragons flesh, something unexpected happened, it evaded her and she saw its tail moving into her direction, she wasn't able to react quickly and just froze up for a moment, she panicked, now she was just like her Uncle Finn, freezing out of fear in front of an dragon and dying as the result, maybe the Hofferson line was really Cursed, at least no one was here to wideness it this time, which meant that her Family name at least wouldn't be that pulled down through the dirt even more. As the tail Finally hit her everything went Black.

Slowly her eyes opened, slowly the cove faded into view. Was she dead? It didn't feel like being dead to her. The orangey, pinkish sunset reflected in the slow-moving waves of the lake, the shadows of the pines casting over a part of it. She remembered getting hit, apparently, she must have been out cold for a while, things didn't seem to add up for her. She remembered clearly Gobber saying in the first lesson of dragon training after Hiccup almost got killed by the Gronkle that "A Dragon always goes for the Kill", but why didn't this one? She decided to get up, even though her head still hurt, just laying here wouldn't solve anything for her. Maybe she could cool it down with a bit of water, and then head back home. While looking at the shimmering waves of the lake she noticed a metallic shine in the Water. She decided to grab the shining object, it turned out to be a partly rusty knife, with further inspection she noticed Hiccups initials on it, but it must have been in there for Weeks. There was no way it got that Rusty in a few Hours.

While looking at her reflection in the translucent water she noticed a mark on her forehead left from the attack. It was a bit bloody, but the wound seemed like it was mostly closed. While touching it out of curiosity, she noticed it was covered in a weird substance, it almost felt like dried saliva. Whatever it was, despite it kind of being pretty disgusting, it seemed to have helped closing the wound. How has it got there? She had no Idea but felt a need to find out to ease herself a bit. There wouldn't be any Animals that would just Lick a wound of an unconscious person, and even if there would not be that healing effect present. And it wasn't a Person, she would have found herself back in the Village or so if it was, which only leaves the dragon? But why would that thing Lick her instead of just eating her? And also, specifically just that wound, where the bleeding was. Dragons did kill people and not leave them laying around for hours while making sure their wounds healed, that happening just sounded ridiculous. It just couldn't be true. She should be dead, but she wasn't.

Then another thing got into her mind she never found Hiccup. She knew he did go here for training probably, even if how he managed to lose a dagger in a lake was a mystery to her. As he would have found her, and either tried to wake her or get help. But that also meant there wasn't anything she really could do about finding out if he cheated dragon training or not, maybe it didn't matter, maybe she'll just try to be a better loser and accept Hiccup winning even through is methods where vastly different then hers. Maybe she did let him winning, get way too much to her. She was just not used to people being better at something that's she's good at while doing it composedly different at the same time.

Now she just had to get back to the Village before it was Night. As she reached the edges of the forest it was almost dark, she decided to go grab a bite at the great hall and head home to rest. As she really needed that now.

Notes: Chapter 2-6 are all in a Mostly done shape, so they should all follow this Year still.