AN: Warning: There are mentions of death and several descriptions of human remains in this chapter.

Four months, he had been promised, for college credit on this excavation. In order to receive that credit without jeopardizing his grades, he would have to return no later than September 29th. That was already a month into the fall semester, and it would put Hiccup at a slight disadvantage, but he'd been disadvantaged before. He knew he could handle it - for him, it was just a matter of working hard to get caught up. Hiccup and Jack had already discussed this - when Hiccup returned, there wouldn't be much time for them to spend together.

Jack was an angel. His angel. His boyfriend had told him of course, he needed to get caught up in classes first, and would Hiccup like for him to set up a workspace in their room? So that he could have a comfortable, organized place to study? And Hiccup knew that Jack would muster the self-control to stay quiet and leave him to his schoolwork until he could relax. He had never met someone so accommodating in his life, even if the rest of the time Jack was a little shit.

Then again, Jack probably took heavily after his mother, who was literally the kindest woman in the world.

His own mother, however, was getting on his nerves. He was aware of the potential health risks with pulling all-nighters. He was aware that it was 2 am... But do you know what else he was aware of? How completely unused to a neverending sunny day he was after living in Pennsylvania for so long. The sun hadn't set since April. It's June. He was finding it difficult to get a regular sleep schedule going.

Besides...he couldn't help it. He was actually here...

His family had one journal from Hiccup III. Just one, from when he was 15. They assumed it was the first journal Hiccup had ever written, and it started with the day he found the Night Fury in the woods after shooting it down. It detailed his study of the dragon, from not liking eels to how he had picked up a large branch and attempted to draw a portrait of Hiccup with it - at least, that's what the Viking had speculated in his writing, noting that the dragon kept looking at him, then back to his scribbling, as though looking at a reference. The Haddock clan was the leading intelligence on the legendary Night Fury, because of Hiccup III's detailed records in the beginning of his book.

Hiccup III's journal ended with a harrowing story of crashing on Outcast Island with a member of his team of Riders, Snoutlout Jorgenson. His family never found any other journals from him after he filled the first one, but Hiccup knew there had to be more...right? He couldn't imagine, given his ancestor's apparent dedication to documenting his life and the discovery of dragons, that he'd leave his journaling on a cliffhanger like that. Maybe he had just kept that first journal out of sentiment and passed it down to his children because it was particularly special. It was the first time Hiccup met Toothless, after all. Other journals...well, maybe they got lost.

The rest of what they knew of Hiccup III's life was oral history. In his journal, Hiccup never mentioned his mother. As far as they could discern from his writing, his family consisted of himself and his father, Stoick the Vast. What they knew of Valka Haddock were bedtime stories - Valka disappeared, carried off by a dragon when Hiccup was only a baby. But Hiccup discovered a feral dragon rider living in the far northeast of the Archipelago; a woman who had tamed the king of dragons, the mighty Bewilderbeast. That woman turned out to be his long lost mother, fearful of returning to Berk, fearful that her family would reject her for her newfound love of dragons. After their reunion, Valka led Hiccup on a mission of justice after the villain Drago Bludvist murdered Stoick and returned to Berk to assist her son in his new role as Chief of Berk, Hiccup the Dragon Master.

As is the nature with oral history, Hiccup and his mother suspected the story had been changed and romanticized along the way. It had been 800 years, after all, and Valka had originally heard the story from her mother as a little girl, being tucked into bed and told the bedtime story of the mighty woman she was named for. Without a primary source like Hiccup's journal, they could never really be sure what was true and what was fiction.

"It's been 800 years, son," Valka had said to him. "If his other journals existed, it's very unlikely we'll ever find them."

"Mom..." Hiccup couldn't believe what he was hearing. His mother should know better than anyone that wasn't true! "I know you don't believe that. I definitely don't believe it. Those journals are out there. We're discovering the lost islands of the Barbaric Archipelago! How is it that we're only just excavating them now? Tell me- tell me how you've only just found the Bewilderbeast's lair when it's been 100 miles off the coast of Svalbard this whole time?"

"I'd say more like 300..."

"I-I know that! The point- I, ugh. You know as well as I do there's always more to learn. Look at the Kennewick man! A prehistoric, nearly complete skeleton found by accident. In a public park. I'm not giving up, Mom."

"...Fine, I know you're right, Hiccup... I just don't want you to get carried away and waste your internship looking for a book that might not even be on this island. You're here to clean and catalog artifacts and - hopefully - dragon bones. Okay?"

This conversation had happened on the ship on their way out to the excavation site. Hiccup had promised his mother he would do his job so he could appropriately get college credit. But...it was 2 am. Everyone else out here was used to sleeping in the sunlight. Hiccup would adjust, probably...but right now, his circadian rhythm was completely broken. He couldn't sleep, and he wasn't on the job...so here he was, out on the shore, peering into cloudy pillars of ice, occasionally kicking away a few layers of sand hoping to find something. This place had very likely gone undisturbed since the Viking age - the general vibe of the island was 'horror movie', and everyone was heavily bundled up to cope with the overwhelming cold. Hiccup couldn't imagine anyone wanting to try and explore this place just for the hell of it. Besides, judging by the artifacts in the caverns, someone had been living there, approximately 800 years ago, left in a hurry, and never returned; there was no sign of looting, no sign of anything having been disturbed.

Well, nothing was disturbed after the obvious battle that happened out here. The entire south, east, and west sides of the island were littered with rotting shipwrecks, destroyed traps, and remains... Most fascinating and exciting, a gargantuan mummified leviathan, which they could only assume was the Bewilderbeast itself, amidst the rubble, and, most distressing, human remains trapped in ice. Hiccup wasn't sure what was more horrifying - the bodies that were left open to the elements, shriveled (evidenced by the open cavities they rested in) and completely mummified, or the ones he could see trapped deep within the foggy pillars of ice, the ones perfectly preserved, looking like they had only just drawn their last breath. The only part that looked untouched was the north, and even that was littered with huge chunks of ice that had once been part of the mountain. Looked like some of it had melted away - most likely from cannon fire...or dragon fire. It was hard to tell. That was where Hiccup had decided to take his walk, where he wouldn't disturb the battlefield.

"Yep, totally trying not to disturb anything, that's me," he mumbled to himself, kicking the sand again and heaving a sigh. "Good ol' Hiccup, talking to himself, wandering around a historical site looking for a book as if I have any right to it. Like I could just take something if I found it. As if it would even be here." Maybe his mother was right...this could very well be a waste of time. He could wrap a scarf around his eyes and hope it helped him sleep if he really wanted to. He was a little tired, anyway...

Rolling his eyes, he found a protruding rock formation and hopped up on it, leaning back against the rocky wall of the mountain and looking out at the Greenland Sea in the distance. It was beautiful here, viewed from the north side. The mountain, the massive ice formation seeming to grow right out of the stone... Then, looking out, the open sea sparkling in the light of the midnight sun, no land in sight. Hiccup could almost understand why his ancestor Valka wanted to stay here with her dragons. It was breathtaking.

Or maybe he was short of breath because the air was just too cold for his lungs, and he needed to get back to the camp.

He hopped down from his little ledge to head back around to the east side, but his leg buckled when he landed and sent him sprawling onto the ground. "Ow! Fuck... Ugh... Stupid slippery ice, stupid uneven dirt, rock, island, stupid..." Hiccup muttered bitterly and nonsensically as he slowly pushed himself up, but something made him pause. Something he glimpsed in the corner of his eye. Something tucked under the rock ledge, in a little cavity in the stone. Something just barely out of reach of the elements, the opening of the cavity blocked by another rising lump of stone, like a perfect little hiding place in a pinch. Easy to access, but hard to see.

A fucking book.

"Oh. My. God."

AN: Regarding my claims of their location: Valka's Mountain, judging by the promotional map DreamWorks created for HTTYD 2 and RTTE, is about 70 miles southwest of the southernmost point of Svalbard, Norway. Unfortunately, the interactive map collaboration with Google no longer exists on the DreamWorks website, but you can still find screenshots.