I am delighted so many people like my story. Enjoy.

Unfortunately, I've got some bad news for everyone.

I received this message yesterday.

(remove the spaces to access the links)

ARTICLE 13 JUST GOT PASSED! #SAVE YOUR INTERNET

It was a 438 to 226 landslide vote. : / www . theverge 2018/9/12/17849868/eu-internet-copyright-reform-article-11-13-approved

They're voting on it one last time in JANUARY 2019, which gives us little time to change things around!

Youtubers Reaction to the end of Youtube? (End of Memes, Article 13,#SaveYourInternet)
: / youtu . be /YBphJanne1A

If you're European, you'll be denied any and all access to fandom content on the internet. Here's why. Articles 13 in particular forces every internet platform to filter all the contents we upload online, ending once and for all the internet culture. Which means you won't be able to upload any type of copyrighted material. Memes, gifs, youtubers, livestreaming, fan art, FAN FICTION, blogging, linking, parodies, all of it will be affected. You won't also be able to share, enjoy or download other's contents, because the use of links will be completely restricted or the content removed.

But not everything is lost yet!
Click here to find details to contact your MEP:

: /saveyourinternet .eu

Sign and share this petition:

: /www . change p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet

Also if you're outside of the EU, sign this petition:
: /www . change p/axel-voss-save-the-internet-reject-article-13-and-11?recruiter=839558037&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

What you can do now to save our internet, is to share this information with all of your family members and friends, and to ask to your MEP (the members of the European Parliament from your country) to vote NO at the next round, to vote against articles 13.

Spread the news. Sign the petitions. Protest (Peacefully). Call your MEPs. Do what you can to help stop this from passing in January!

The Dragon Pirate.

A few hours later, Hiccup landed Toothless back in the cove on Berk after quickly overflying the cove to see if there were any Vikings around - it was unlikely there would have been any, but it was good to check. Stoick had taken out the majority of the village warriors to the nest in Helheim's gate, leaving only a handful to protect the village and their island from their very human enemies like the Outcasts and the Berserkers, and they were more likely to be concentrating on defending the village and the harbour, and they wouldn't waste time loitering in the cove.

When they were sure there was no-one in the cove, Hiccup landed his dragon and immediately headed over to the small cave that was tucked away neatly behind a rocky outcropping and Toothless opened his mouth and mixed some of the flammable gases in his body to provide the young renegade Viking boy with the light he needed.

Hiccup had found the cave during his time training with Toothless and helping him fly again and he had used it as a ready-made warehouse for the flight harness and the prosthetic tail-fin as he'd developed the mechanism and made it more stable for Toothless to fly. Once he'd sorted out the issues, Hiccup had turned it over to housing the spare parts for the tail-fin, including the leather he used to mimic the natural skin of the Night Fury's only remaining organic tail-fin.

When the Vikings led by Stoick after being tipped off by "Miss Perfect" Astrid had stormed into the cove and took them both prisoner, Hiccup had been about to pack the spare parts he had spent some time fabricating whenever he had time to himself during the intervals between being with the dragon and being in the Kill Ring itself learning how to fight dragons, but he had been no-where near the caves' entrance when they'd arrived. When they had attacked they had been interested in subduing the Night Fury than going anywhere near the cave, and it was obvious that Astrid had found them on one of those days where he was no-where near it anyway, so everything inside was still safe. True, he had been worried the Vikings would have looked around the cove after Stoick had gotten the ships ready, but it looked like they hadn't and he was grateful for that.

Hiccup had spent the last few weeks stocking up on the parts and components for the mechanism he'd rigged up to help Toothless regain his ability to fly in preparation for when the pair of them actually left the island behind, but he had no idea how long they would last when he would have had access to a decent forge to make new ones. But he had estimated they would last for a good six months. That would have given him plenty of time to find a decent forge to make new ones, and maybe even find a way to make a stronger and robust tail-fin that would last longer.

When Hiccup had made the plans to leave Berk, he had wondered where he was going to go. All his life he had listened to Gobber who had once travelled far and wide, maybe as far as traders and merchants like Trader Johann himself and his imagination had been filled with stories and tales of people who were different from the Vikings.

There was the Roman Empire, of course, but everyone knew about them. Hiccup knew enough about the Romans to know they had a mighty empire that stretched across a large chunk of the world, and he knew that despite their lack of strength by Viking standards they were strong enough to conquer such a wide expanse of land and sea and maintain it with an iron fist.

But the chances were if he approached them they would more than likely try to either kill him or turn him into a gladiator. He had heard tales of Vikings who were captured in battle or were just in the wrong places at the wrong time being forced to fight to the death in arenas like the Kill Rings.

Hiccup shook his head, there would be plenty of time to think about where he was going to go next. Right now he had to gather everything out of this cave and get it to Toothless so he could work on the fin.

There was a wooden table piled with metal rods and leather sheets in the cave, and there were also a couple of journals that Hiccup had kept there which contained his research on dragons which was more comprehensive and detailed instead of that biased and stupid so-called Book of Dragons Fishlegs had read a dozen times already which only detailed what kind of things dragons could do in a fight rather than how they lived, how they could be approached, and how they could be trained.

Hiccup walked over to the table and mentally selected the tools he'd brought up and the components he'd need to fix the tail-fin after the leather had been damaged by the Queen's attack before he took them to Toothless. The Night Fury kept very still as he watched Hiccup slowly take off the damaged parts of the fin and check the rest of the mechanism. As he worked with practiced ease on the tail-fin, Hiccup mentally looked around the cove.

He would be sorry to leave this magical part of the island which, until the ambush, had probably only seen one or two Vikings visit before they left because there was very little here of interest. But he had known he would need to leave the cove at some point. When he was finished, he took Toothless on a quick test flight to check over the tail-fin and they were back an hour later, but the fin did not need to be worked on anymore to his relief.

After carefully packing the spare parts for the tail-fin and the harness into the saddlebags he'd gathered for their long trip, Hiccup's fingers touched the journal he knew contained every single one of his notes on dragons and dragon training. He picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully for a moment.

He had made the notes in the book to share his experiences with dragons, but now he was starting to wonder if he'd be better off if no-one ever found it. Hiccup shuddered at the thought of one of the Hairy Hooligans getting hold of the book (the chances were it would be destroyed once someone found out the basic details and consider it "blasphemous" for a Viking and a dragon becoming friendly), and the idea of someone like Astrid or Snotlout coming after him filled him with dread.

He had once liked Astrid but now he considered her to be nothing more than a snobby perfectionist with a scathing personality and a terrible temper that went off without her needing an excuse. Hiccup's eyes narrowed as he remembered how he had once fancied her when they had hit their teens, but she had never returned his affections. But when Snotlout had once cornered him after one of those stupid inventions had gotten out of control (not helped by the twins and their boss, which resulted in a few houses being virtually demolished) Hiccup had been upset when Astrid delivered a few punches, but it was understandable since the invention had damaged her own house. He had only found out about those little details later.

After that Hiccup had started taking a good long look at the other teens, and realised that there was no way he could fit in, and yet his natural stubbornness had made him just focus on killing dragons. He had decided to let the Vikings live the way they wanted, and if they broke their backs or tore a muscle, then so be it. Hiccup had destroyed the plans he had drawn up of the various pieces of machines designed to help the tribe and he had never looked back since.

He just could not believe he had wasted so much of his time and his energy trying to at least fit in with them. Snotlout had always hated him, and the other boy had always enjoyed using him as a punching bag while mocking him at the same time. In truth he was a younger version of his father, Spitelout, only the older Viking had a less large ego whereas Snotlout had an ego the size of an island.

The twins were borderline insane. They both loved seeing the village in flames, completely uncaring or unaware of what would happen in the aftermath, but as long as they had their fun they did not care. Hiccup had always believed the pair of them were thick, but it was not until he saw how Tuffnut acted in dragon training by going on about being "very much hurt" that he had more proof of how stupid they were.

But the 'nut twins made Hiccup pity the future of the Hooligan tribe. Okay, so perhaps he was being a little bit too harsh and the tribe would be okay in the long run, but Hiccup was not sure. As he'd grown up, there had been fewer and fewer teenagers who'd graduated from the dragon training Gobber taught at the Ring. It was either because when they graduated, many of them actually went out on the hunts for the nest Stoick organised and they were killed before they had children of their own, or they were too badly injured to actually have children themselves before they had the chance to truly fight against the dragons.

Many dragons were responsible for the deaths of many teenagers who had been just as good, or maybe a little bit better than even Astrid herself, over the years.

Thinking about Astrid made Hiccup think of her once more. Out of all the teens, Astrid was the type of girl people like Stoick wanted in the village. She was strong, she echoed all of the Viking's views without question. But despite all the mishaps, he had hoped to have at least Astrid's respect but after the way she had revealed Toothless' presence in the cove and what they were doing, Hiccup had come to realise that it wasn't worth it. But he could understand her point of view. Astrid was a Viking, born and raised and she hated dragons because she was expected to. She had trained for years to become the best, and she was probably above Snotlout in performance but he had never really bothered to find out.

The idea of her taking a dragon for her own, using this book or at least a bastardised version of dragon training, though knowing her it would probably be done in a brutal manner filled him with horror. It would be just like Astrid to be brutal in order to sort out the opposition and compete on a higher playing field. Hiccup remembered the near insane expression in Astrid's' face during dragon training, she saw the entire world as a giant Kill Ring where everybody else were opponents to fight against so she could win. She didn't care about who she hurt, but Hiccup had a feeling that in the future the girl would let her competitiveness spiral out of control and someone would be seriously maimed as a result, though he didn't know if it was going to be against a dragon or against another Viking. He didn't care either.

And then there was Fishlegs. Sure, he was as big as an adult and as strong. But he was no different from Hiccup himself; he was more intellectual and if the situation was different then Hiccup would not be alone in being seen as 'un-Viking-like' but it was different. Fishlegs and Hiccup had once been friends before the other boy ditched him when he began to grow and when the Ingermans' themselves made Fishlegs drop Hiccup and urged him to hang around with Snotlout and the others.

Pushing those thoughts out of his mind, Hiccup took the two journals and slipped them into the saddlebags. The bags were fairly narrow to help Toothless fly at his top speeds, but Hiccup had made sure they were large enough to hold everything he'd need for long flights. After packing the parts into the bags, Hiccup went back to the cave and he opened a small crate he kept in a darkened corner. Inside were a few small wooden logs topped with an iron dome. A few years ago, Hiccup had gotten a journal from a country named China and it contained a recipe for something called gunpowder which was like Greek Fire only when it exploded it could demolish a building or blow up a boat. Hiccup had needed time to find the right chemicals and minerals needed to make the gunpowder; he had a few ideas of how to make it more powerful, but he had held off.

Hiccup had tested the gunpowder during a stormy night, guessing that the explosion would be masked by the sound of the thunder. He had found an old tree a good distance from the village when his father was on one of his never-ending hunts, which was virtually dead with a large chunk of the trunk open and exposed, and he had fitted the bomb inside the hole before lighting it. The explosive had practically levelled the tree and blew a large amount of the lower half of the tree to pieces.

The sheer power of the gunpowder had been awe-inspiring and Hiccup had made a dozen plans of how to use it against the dragons. He had planned to make some kind of cannon similar to the diagrams he had seen in the Chinese book, but he had decided against it; at the time, he didn't want the weapon to cause three times more damage to Berk though now he had been disowned by Stoick he no longer gave a damn if he destroyed half of the island or not.

But he had made a few samples of gunpowder and he had kept them in his little room in the forge. Not even Gobber knew he had it, and he had made sure the teens didn't know; if they had, then the twins would almost certainly have broken into the forge, found the crate, and played with the gunpowder without even realising how dangerous it was and what the consequences would have been. All those two nut jobs would have cared about was the destruction caused in the village. For that reason he had taken steps to keep it under wraps after just testing it the once, and he had made sure the crate it was in was as fireproof as possible and he had brought it here to the cave because he had planned to take it with him on his travels since you never knew if you might need it.

But as he held the cylinder of wood in his hands which was filled with the mixture he had a new idea…

Flying out to the village was easy; the Night Fury's black hide without his battle whistle helped him and his rider fly quietly over the village. From above Hiccup could see the lights twinkling like stars from the night sky. It was beautiful from the air, but Hiccup reflected it was a pity the people there were nasty and brainless.

Hiccup had overflown the village several times before at night. He had wanted to gain more experience with handling the prosthetic and his dragon, but he had also wanted to see how the prosthetic handled the longer flights. He had needed to modify and tinker with the mechanism, of course, but it was more satisfying working on a prosthetic tail-fin than those stupid inventions he had cooked up in the past which had been designed to help the ungrateful villagers who had seen them fail the first time around and just condemn them overall instead of considering what a more finely tuned version could do.

Hiccup pushed those thoughts aside as he guided Toothless close to the Kill Ring. The dragon became tense as he could smell the distant scents and heard the distant sounds inside the cages as the dragons within tried desperately to get comfortable though they probably knew by that point it was hopeless, and he visibly sniffed the air around the arena and his ears were cocked as he heard the distant sounds that Hiccup himself could only dimly hear from their current height.

While he could hear those sounds from above, Hiccup wondered what he was smelling and he momentarily wished he had his Night Fury friend's sense of smell, but he could imagine what Toothless was picking up; the residual stench of Zippleback gas which one head of the two-headed dragon spewed out before it was ignited by the second head, the smell of the refuse in the cages which would only add to the dragons' general discomfort and would not be cleaned up until the dragon had been killed and the cage was vacant until the next occupant. It was all mixed with the rotten offal the Vikings fed to the dragons.

Toothless growled as he realised quickly what was down there and what happened there. Hiccup patted him sympathetically on the head, knowing that if the situation had been different then the Night Fury himself could be in there, though that was unlikely; Night Furies were known in the Book of Dragons as unholy and nothing was known about them. It had taken four Vikings just to subdue Toothless, there was no way Gobber could have handled him during training, and it was unlikely any other Viking could have gone toe to talon with him in the Kill Ring.

Hiccup sighed and he took the Night Fury around the arena in another circle, but this time he was checking on the weaknesses of the dome itself. Whispering a few words to the dragon, Hiccup took a few of the gunpowder charges out of the saddlebag and tied them as tightly to the struts as possible, as an idea came to mind.

When he was finished, Hiccup landed on the ground gently. Toothless crooned as Hiccup led him into the Kill Ring arena, and the Night Fury looked around the dome for a second before he looked around the stone walls and floor that lined the arena, before he began to growl threateningly when he picked up the scents of the dragons locked behind the massive gates around the Ring.

"Easy, bud," Hiccup whispered, his eyes darting from side to side as he looked around for anyone from the village, but so far he could not see anyone. "Right," he hissed at the dragon, "I'm going to check on the rest of the dragons in the Kill Ring, but I need you to stay here; there's no room for you in the outer ring corridor, besides I'll need you to stay here and keep guard when I need to let the dragons out."

The Night Fury warbled worriedly as he understood what Hiccup was planning to do, but Hiccup quickly left the Night Fury and headed out of the arena before walking around the base of the dome until he came across a heavy wooden door with two lit torches that had been treated - ironically - with saliva from a Monstrous Nightmare which burned for hours. Hiccup took one of the torches and he opened the door and he very slowly walked down the roughly hewn stone steps down into the compound before he came to a narrow roughly hewn stone corridor which occasionally was separated by wooden doors reinforced by metal struts. Hiccup knew they led to storage areas to do with the Kill Ring.

As he walked through the corridor, it was not long before Hiccup came across a massive reinforced door which was fixed in the wall with heavy bolts which had a narrow dark gap reinforced with thick bars a Viking could look in with safety. Hiccup didn't need to look through the gap, he knew what was inside it. Next to the door was a smaller door which was used to tip offal into the cage.

Gently, he rapped his knuckles on the door. But there was no sound following the echo, the cage was empty.

Hiccup walked on and went around the roughly hewn corridor to the next door, knowing where he was going.

When people looked at the Kill Ring, you just basically pictured it as a massive dome made up of metal struts and spikes to keep the dragons in while there was an arena on a lower level with cages containing dragons lining the wall. That was the problem with Vikings, they always believed that what they saw and experienced was all that there was to know.

But the Kill Ring was a lot more extensive than the Hooligans except the elders, the chief, the blacksmith, the cleaners and the feeders knew. When the Hooligans and the rest of the tribes fighting the dragons realised they would need to teach the later generations how to fight dragons, they had realised that the place would need to be reinforced, have cages which were strong enough to contain the dragons which were captured but would need little in the way of maintenance since by that point the Vikings had found out that iron, no matter how strongly it was forged, could be destroyed over time. Hiccup could understand the point; they had spent all that time and energy wrestling and forcing the captured dragon into the cage and it was able to break out due to sloppy maintenance, so what was the point of having cages made of metal when metal could be melted? Many dragons like the Monstrous Nightmare and the Deadly Nadder could blast extremely hot flame, so iron cages were out.

It had taken a while - Hiccup didn't know precisely how long it had taken the Vikings of any tribe to have come up with the idea - but eventually, someone must have said: "what 'bout the caves, and rock; why don't we hollow 'em out and shove the dragons in them?" And they did.

Hiccup had never worked out how long it had taken the Vikings to build, there was nothing in the archives on Berk though it was next to impossible to find anything since the archives were such a blasphemous mess with next to nothing in order, so Hiccup had not really bothered to look. He had, however, found crude designs of the Kill Ring.

It was basically a massive ring, bigger than what the Vikings saw on a daily basis since it was built underground. Every cave that was found was hollowed out with massive hammers and chisels while they wrenched the rocks out with massive chains. Hiccup could picture the scene; Vikings as large and as strong as his former father, hammering the rock walls of the caves and caverns, putting up struts of iron to make sure the ceiling didn't collapse on the heads of the workers.

The caves made it perfect for Hooligans to work with the rock. They would hollow out the caves, shape the rock into rooms and corridors that were suitable for housing the dragons and keeping them locked up. The holding pens themselves were flameproof and they were reinforced with metal with spikes lining the rock walls to give the dragons an unpleasant living experience.

When you got underground, you were basically in a massive circle hacked into the rock with the dome overhead but hidden by rock several feet thick. Caves and caverns were enlarged and hollowed out, reinforced by metal frames with massive bolts shoved into gouged out holes cut into the rock. The pens were large enough to house each dragon while there were small vents covered with grilles that provided basic ventilation for the dragons held inside the ring while the only way to feed and water the dragons came from chutes built into the doors and the walls.

The Vikings knew what they were doing, but it was pity that only a few Hooligans actually knew what was in the compound though Hiccup had a feeling it was assumed everyone knew what was in there, he doubted it; if the twins and Snotlout knew what was in the compound, then they would probably mess around down here and he'd be blamed for it, so he was quite happy it had never happened.

As the village blacksmith, Gobber was personally responsible for the upkeep of the Kill Ring's metal parts - the doors, the struts, the spikes, and the fittings in the pens that kept the dragons locked up, and as the blacksmith apprentice Hiccup himself had often found himself in the compound to help though truthfully he was not really necessary; Gobber always had others help him remove the doors because it required a lot of brute strength to remove the metal doors when they were damaged. The decision Gobber had made to take him to the Kill Ring to check over the holding pens had been, well, not very well received. Many of the Vikings on the council (his ex-father for one) believed that if he was down in the compound he would mess up and let the dragons out.

Ha! As if he was stupid enough to do something like that. Hiccup was many things and at the time he may have wanted to kill dragons, but he had wanted it to be on his own terms. Besides, how could he get inside one of the holding cells when it was likely the other Vikings would stop him? Why would he try to enter one and get himself killed?

Hiccup had made sure never to play games when he was in the Kill Ring. He wasn't willing to commit suicide anywhere near here as he grew up.

Hiccup was not suicidal enough to make such a stupid mistake.

Thinking about those spikes made Hiccup pause and sigh regrettably; he remembered how he had once believed in the dogma that all dragons were evil, emotionless beasts that deserved to be slaughtered and punished for three centuries of war. A few months ago, he would never have thought twice about shoving a dragon into one of those holding cages and letting them struggle to get comfortable without getting a terrible injury in turn.

But now he knew the truth, it made him physically sick just like it sickened him he was responsible for robbing Toothless of independent flight.

Sure, he knew if he hadn't then he would never have discovered the truth about dragons. He would still be in the shadow of his ex-father. He would still be in the middle of dragon war while trying, unsuccessfully, to find a way of killing a dragon. He would still have that stupid, brainless mindset every Viking had. He would still be trying to kill himself trying to earn respect from Stoick, from the villagers, but more importantly, respect for himself.

Hiccup sighed and carried on, and he came upon a massive metal door, and he took a deep breath as he approached it. This particular pen was more reinforced that some of the others. This pen was the one used to house dragons like the Monstrous Nightmares, but he knew that in the past it had held dragons like Timberjacks, the occasional Skrill, and some other really big and powerful dragons. He didn't touch the door to see if there was a dragon inside, he could hear the rough breathing from the Nightmare inside. He winced when he heard a pained growl coming from inside, and he guessed the dragon had accidentally lumbered into one of the spikes.

"Don't worry," he said to himself before he went on his way, "I'll set you free."

When Hiccup began to head back to Toothless, he had to duck out of sight when he heard the sound of a Viking talking to his friend in the distance but they were talking too quietly for him to hear them. Fortunately, they went on their way and they were soon out of sight. After waiting for a couple of minutes, Hiccup went back out and went back down into the arena. The moment the Night Fury saw him he bounded over, but Hiccup managed to stop him from knocking him over. "Not now, bud," Hiccup hissed quickly. "We have to free the dragons in the Kill Ring, and I've got an idea. We're going to set fire to the village itself. It will distract the Hooligans and give us the chance to blow up the dome covering the arena."

The dragon cocked his head. He understood what his rider was getting at, but he was worried they might get caught.

Hiccup saw his dragon's reaction and instantly calmed him down. "It's okay," he said as reassuringly as he could. "I have a plan."

Tethered to Toothless as the dragon's talons clung to the dome of the Kill Ring, Hiccup waited for big bangs in the village to occur. He had planted bombs all over the village, and on the dome of the Kill Ring. As time passed slowly, Hiccup urged the Night Fury towards the fuses he had left on the dome, and the dragon gently slid the string into his mouth and mixed the chemicals and gases to create the mix to light the fuses.

Once the dragon was finished, Hiccup had him quickly jump down and had the dragon race back down the ramp into the arena. The dragon had barely gone by the time the first of the bombs in the village exploded. Despite the distance, the bang was so loud Hiccup winced, and he smiled when he heard the sound of angry and panicky yells from the village-he could not make out the words, but he didn't care. He also didn't have the time to just loiter, so he rushed back down into the arena.

"Cover me, bud," he told the waiting Toothless as he began to open one of the cages.

Toothless growled when he figured out what his rider was about to do, but he had been listening to his human friend explain the plan, and the dragon agreed with Hiccup the cages had to be opened and the dragons freed. But that did not mean the Night Fury had to like any of this since he could tell that the dragons in this arena were powerful and dangerous enough to roast Hiccup alive.

The Night Fury prepared to defend himself and his rider; he flared his wings and ensured his teeth were on display while he prepared the chemicals and the gases in his body to fire. He planned to make sure the dragons who saw him knew that he would fight if necessary.

Meanwhile, Hiccup was carefully unlocking the doors to the pens and throwing off the locking bars before opening them up and letting the dragons who could barely believe their luck leave their cages.

Hiccup quickly scuttled back over to Toothless. He hadn't bothered trying to tame the dragons during the training sessions. If he had taken what he had found out from his time from Toothless, it would have drawn too much attention to himself though how was he supposed to know Astrid would notice his frequent absences and actually bother to find out what he was doing in the woods?

Making sure he had Toothless near him, Hiccup wondered when the bombs exploded overhead but meanwhile, he had to keep his eyes on the dragons in the arena. He knew they would remember him, and he was right. Their reactions were surprised when they saw that he was with a dragon, a Night Fury, but while the Terrible Terror, the Zppleback, the Gronckle, and the Nadder were nervous being in Toothless' presence because while they knew they could put up a good fight they knew it would not be easy to harm the Night Fury.

But the Monstrous Nightmare was too angry to care.

The dragon had been locked up in the holding pen for a month with the rest of his fellows. It had been trapped inside its cage, unable to sleep properly without be impaled by one of those dreadful spikes in the cage the Vikings believed stoked the fire of hatred the dragons felt for the Vikings though in truth the dragons, if the Queen had never existed, would not have given them a second thought but would have lashed out if the Vikings with their mentally of "kill first, ask questions later."

The Monstrous Nightmare's snout could still smell the disgusting stench of its own excrement, and it hadn't seen the sky in so long it had virtually forgotten what it looked like, particularly at night. The moment the dragon saw the boy and the Night Fury, he almost did not believe his own senses and he, like his fellow dragons were frozen in indecision.

Hiccup saw the indecision in the body language of the dragons and he felt relief though he doubted it would truly last.

The bombs finally went off with a rumble and the bright lights as the gunpowder exploded and pieces of the Kill Ring's dome which had stood above the area for decades suddenly rumble hesitantly as though the parts of it that had been demolished could not believe they had been loosened but then the supports and the struts had to obey the laws of gravity, and large chunks of the dome collapsed into the arena in a cloud of dust.

Understandably the dragons were startled, and they either shrieked or roared in surprise at the sounds of the explosions, and they jumped back in anger and panic as the rubble crashed to the rocky ground of the arena itself.

Jumping forwards, Hiccup managed to avoid the rubble and held up his hands, "No, it's okay," he cried out, wondering how long it be before those in the village arrived; he didn't know what the current state of the village was after the bombs had exploded, but with the racket this lot were making and the sound of the dragons roaring, it would not be long before the Vikings arrived and that the last thing they needed. "It's okay. You're free!"

The dragons were still panicky but it was not long before the dust cloud cleared up and they saw that the struts and the wide bars that had once covered over the arena had been demolished and now resembled a giant cracked egg.

Hiccup jumped onto Toothless' back and he guided the dragon into the air when he realised the dragons in the Ring were clearly seeing this miracle but they were too hesitant to leave because they probably thought it too good to be true, so he decided to give them incentive by leaping onto his dragon and flying the Night Fury out of the Ring to show them what they could do now.

Toothless had already cleared what was left of the still-standing dome of the Kill Ring by the time the villagers arrived; from the sky, Hiccup could see that the explosions had caused a lot of chaos, and the Vikings who were unprepared by the devastation were out of their depth and unsure of what to do. Hiccup carefully twisted the Night Fury around so then the Hooligans didn't see them. While he didn't care anymore if the Vikings down below saw him as a traitor, he didn't want them to see him either.

Hiccup could hear the villagers bellow angrily and he even caught talk of catapults or bolas to bring down the dragons again, but he knew it was hopeless. By the time they got their acts together and actually got their hands on weapons that could bring down a dragon, it would be too late.

"And now they're wondering why the dragons haven't snagged any food," Hiccup whispered to himself as Toothless gained a bit more altitude and flew away. In the night sky, he couldn't see any sign of the other dragons, and they weren't flying anywhere near Hiccup or Toothless, and he was relieved by that after seeing the belligerent attitude of the Monstrous Nightmare.

Still, he looked around and hoped to catch sight of the Nightmare's distinctive form, but it wasn't anywhere near him. Hiccup hoped that the dragons he had just freed had better lives than they had led as slaves to that Queen.

Looking back, Hiccup could still see the lights of Berk. For a long sad moment, Hiccup wondered if he would ever see those beautiful lights again. He would miss some of the island of course even if he would never miss the tribe itself. He would miss the forge with the little back room Gobber had given to him so he could work on his own ideas and where he could get a breath of fresh air from his ex-father and the teenagers. He would miss the cove and the woods more because it was truly beautiful, and in the time he had still been a part of the tribal community he had come to know the forest very well.

He would miss it, the island, not the tribe.

With a weary sigh, Hiccup turned his neck around so he was facing forwards again and he guided Toothless on, and he reflected on what he had just done. He had no idea when the rest of the tribe returned to the island and discovered what he'd just done, but even if they made the leap and realised he was behind it there would be nothing they could do. He wasn't worried about the dragons either, but he would keep an eye on the dragons to make sure they didn't do anything stupid, but Hiccup doubted they'd go that far.

But he had done it. He had freed the dragons easily, and now the dragons he had met during the training sessions were now free. Hiccup knew the Hairy Hooligans well enough to know they would definitely rebuild the dome with the material they had left, and it wouldn't take too long for them either in preparation for the next attack. Hiccup doubted the dragons would attack now the Queen was over since she had been the primary force that had driven the war in the first place. Sure, one or two dragons may seek out revenge against the Vikings, but Hiccup wasn't sure about that; he didn't know enough about the true nature of dragons, and just meeting a few Terrible Terrors and a Night Fury was not enough. He would need to spend more time with them to get an idea of what really lurked behind the total garbage of what the Vikings in the archipelago said and thought about dragons, but he had plenty of time to find out for himself.

Thinking about the way he'd just levelled the dome of Berk's Kill Ring and about the Vikings' attitude toward dragons reminded him of the other Kill Rings dotted about the various islands.

Hiccup shook his head. He was too tired to think of a game plan now, but his current attitude was now the war was over, the prisoners should be released though he knew the other Vikings would not agree with him.

Still, why should he care about them now? He'd had it thrown into his face all his life he was not one of them, so now he was disowned and his ex-father had cast him out what the rest of the archipelago and his former tribe thought about him was meaningless to him, and even if the other tribes learnt about his status as a dragon rider, what of it?

Hiccup sighed. He had just been disowned, he had taken the first steps to stopping the cruelty to dragons which had lasted for so long, but he was too tired and he needed time to rest. He needed to prepare for his future, but if he really wanted to see the world he would need to sort out the mess caused by the Dragon War. It would be a hard job, but he was sure he could do it.

The biggest problem he had on his mind was actually getting through the different territories and actually get to the Kill Rings themselves to do it. Hiccup guessed it would be a long time before he could leave the archipelago, but was sure he could handle it.

Hiccup pushed those thoughts to the side and concentrated on guiding the Night Fury through the sky, but he leaned forward and whispered, "We're going to free the dragons, bud," he said clearly to the dragon as he spoke about his long-term plans. "We're going to free the dragons, and we're then going to get out of here."

The Night Fury warbled as they sped off into the night sky. Both of them knew the job they had was going to be long and difficult, but as Hiccup settled on the dragons' back, he had a sudden inspiration and he gently urged the dragon on.

Please tell me what you think, and I'm sorry about having to post the Article 13 message.