Chapter 1: Metamorphosis

"Okay, but I hit a Night Fury" Those had been Hiccup's words. "It went down, just off Raven Point. Let's get a search party out there, before..."

Astrid Hofferson slipped between the trees, moving with the silent grace of a warrior several years her senior. It was almost trivial for her to follow the Haddock heir without being heard, the boy had no battle sense whatsoever.

She wondered why she was bothering to tail him. It was extremely unlikely that the boy had managed to bring down the elusive Night Fury, but something about his pleas to his father had sounded so earnest, so sincere, that for a moment she almost believed him. It had been several years since Hiccup had last claimed to have brought down the most enigmatic of dragons, and after that incident Stoick had impressed into his son that untruthful boasting was not a good habit for future chiefs to get into. She highly doubted Hiccup would have gone back to his old ways.

Regardless, if by the will of the Norns, he had somehow managed to down a Night Fury, there was no way she was going to let the future chief of Berk face the beast alone.

Hiccup's head was buried in his omnipresent notebook as he walked, muttering to himself as he scribbled on the page with a charcoal pencil.

Astrid darted from her hiding place, crouched behind a dense patch of foliage, and pressed her back against the trunk of a pine tree. Hiccup didn't even glance up from his book. It's amazing, she thought, he's barely even paying attention to his surroundings. You wouldn't think he was hunting the most dangerous dragon ever to plague Berk.

Hiccup snapped the book shut with a sigh of frustration. "Oh, the gods hate me," He moaned. "Some people lose their knife or their mug. No, not me. I manage to lose an entire dragon!?" He angrily smacked at a low lying branch, and it whipped back at him, striking him in the face.

Astrid shook her head, suppressing a sigh. She didn't hate him, not really. She could tell that he didn't do what he did out of malice, just incompetence. It was better for everyone involved if he was kept away from anything important until he grew into something resembling a man.

She shifted to get a better view, and froze at the same moment he did, hand slowly reaching for the handle of her axe. Just in front of Hiccup, a deep trough was carved into the ground, as if a large object had been dragged through the soil. The track disappeared over a small ridge. Finally, Hiccup demonstrated some common sense and dropped to his hands and knees, crawling up to the edge of the ridge, while Astrid darted for the cover of a boulder on top of the ridge.

Hiccup suddenly let out a surprised gasp and she shifted her axe into a ready position before peeking out from her hiding place.

Lying in a crater formed by its impact, with bolas wrapped around its body, was a dragon. The beast's scales were like shards of obsidian; its colouring was unmistakable, against the night sky it would be completely invisible.

By the gods! she thought, He actually managed it!

Hiccup fumbled around in his jacket and pulled out a dagger, nearly dropping the blade in the process. Seemingly gathering what little courage he possessed, Hiccup scrambled over the peak of the ridge and into the depression where the Night Fury had come to rest. He momentarily pressed his back against a nearby boulder, then approached the downed beast.

Astrid shifted herself into a ready position, her muscles tense and ready to spring. She wouldn't deny the chief's son the honour of killing his first dragon, but if he needed her help, she'd be there to provide it.

"Oh, wow. I did it. Oh, I did it!" He sounded as doubtful of his achievement as she'd been. "This fixes everything! Yes! I have brought down this mighty beast!" He placed his foot on the dragon's upper foreleg. The Night Fury flinched, jerking its leg. Astrid nearly leapt from her hiding place, then remembered that the dragon was still restrained by the bolas wrapped around it.

Her fist tightened around the handle of her axe, knuckles turning white. So, it's still alive.

Hiccup recovered from his shock and warily reapproached the dragon, holding the knife out before him.

The dragon let out an unnatural moan. She didn't know if it was one of pain, sorrow, or some other, alien emotion.

Hiccup took several deep breaths, flipping the dagger over in his hands and preparing to strike. The point of the blade pointed downwards towards the underside of the dragon's neck. Astrid nodded approvingly, one or two swift strikes and the menace would be dead.

"I'm going to kill you, dragon." Hiccup began, his voice gaining in confidence. "I'm gonna cut out your heart and take it to my father. I'm a Viking. I am a VIKING!"

Not the most inspiring battle cry, she thought, but he can work on that.

Hiccup raised the dagger above his head. Astrid held her breath.

He stared down at the dragon for a long moment. He lowered the knife.

"I did this," he murmured dejectedly, turning away from the dragon.

Yes you did, Astrid thought angrily. Now finish the job! She didn't pretend to understand what went on in Hiccup head most of the time, but she decided he wasn't leaving these woods until that dragon was dead.

She was about to step out from hiding when he suddenly turned and dropped to his knees beside the Night Fury. She shifted, trying to get a view on what Hiccup was doing.

The Night Fury was free before she could even react.

In a single motion, the dragon threw off its bonds and leapt to its paws. In the process it grabbed Hiccup and pressed him up against the boulder he had hid behind moments earlier.

Astrid froze, her axe half-raised. The dragon had Hiccup's neck between two of its claws and was staring down at him intensely. There was no way she could get to him in time. She had no doubt the dragon would sense her as soon as she moved, and would have ample time to finish off Hiccup before turning to deal with her.

She forced herself not to look away as the Night Fury reared up, preparing its fires.

Suddenly, it shook its head and closed its mouth, choking off the building flames. The dragon blinked, and its eyes began to glow a brilliant, shimmering, emerald green. From between the eyes the light spread backwards, shining mutedly through the scales along its spine.

The dragon looked down for a beat, then leaned forwards and gently touched the tip of its nose to the centre of Hiccup's forehead. The light shining through its scales flared brightly, then vanished, leaving only a barely perceptible shimmer in the Night Fury's eyes. In the same moment, Hiccup cried out once then went limp beneath the Dragon's claws.

A chill ran down Astrid's spine. Something about that light, the way it had seemingly appeared from nowhere unsettled her. What did it just do to Hiccup?

The dragon stepped back and studied Hiccup closely, obviously looking for something. Then, without warning, it spun around and leapt into the air, flying away to the west like it was being pursued by Fenrir himself.

Astrid stayed where she was, adrenaline still coursing through her body. Hiccup moved unconsciously, his head falling such that he looked towards her. Astrid gasped. At the centre of his forehead, at the exact point the dragon had touched him, was a patch of pitch black skin. The dark patch was visibly expanding, discolouring the skin around it. Hiccup shifted again, and as the light played across his face, she saw that what she had originally taken to be a single dark patch was in fact split into overlapping segments. With a sense of dread, she realised what they were; dragon scales.

Transfixed in horror, Astrid watched as the patch of scales began to spread. His hair fell out in clumps as the scales spread upwards, past his hairline. At the same time, his head began to morph, it grew in size and flattened, becoming large and spade-shaped. His eyes more than doubled in size and migrated towards the side of his head, while his nose melted into the flesh around it, leaving a pair of slitted nostrils. His mouth widened into the deadly maw of a dragon, and the skin of his jaws rippled as his teeth grew into razor-sharp fangs.

As the wave of scales spread to his torso, his arms morphed, becoming short and stocky, the dextrous fingers of a smith transforming into powerful claws. Alongside these changes, a new pair of limbs sprouted from his shoulders, bursting through his ruined tunic. The thick leading edge of the wings grew out first, followed by the fingers that gave them shape. For a moment they looked like a pair of misshapen hands growing from his back, then the wing membrane filled in between the fingers.

As the scales spread lower, his chest began to swell with new muscles, tearing his clothing to shreds. A large pair of fins sprouted from his hips as legs warped to match his new forelegs. The last change was his tail. It pushed out from the base of his spine, writhing back and forth like a snake until it made up almost a third of his body-length. Finally, another set of fins unfurled almost gracefully from the tip of the tail.

At last, all was still.

Astrid slowly rose from her crouch, staring down from the ridge in shock and disbelief. Lying on the ground before her, where the heir to the chiefdom of Berk had been a few minutes earlier was a Night Fury.

Cautiously, she slid down the bank and approached the dragon, axe at the ready. Now that she was closer, she could see that he wasn't identical to the beast that transformed him. His body appeared to be less muscular, and his limbs seemed slightly longer than they should be, proportionally. If she didn't know better, she would almost have described this Night Fury as lanky.

Astrid gritted her teeth. In front of her was her people's greatest enemy, her instincts told her what she had to do. She raised her axe. She'd let one Night Fury escape already, there was no way she would let a second one get away.

She couldn't do it. Until a few short minutes ago this had been Hiccup. For all she knew his mind might still be in there. He may have been the village nuisance, but by his blood alone, he was owed her respect, and her life in battle should it be asked for. So, she couldn't, no, she wouldn't kill him while there was a chance that the Hiccup she knew lived on in this dragon's body.

The Night Fury that replaced Hiccup groaned. Astrid started. He's waking up!

She span around. If she was wrong about him, she did not want to be nearby when the dragon woke up. She looked back, hesitating. If this wasn't Hiccup, she'd never get another chance like this. If it took off, she knew she'd never see it again.

The dragon groaned again, its eyes twitched beneath their scaly black lids.

Muttering a prayer to the gods, Astrid ran for the cover of the trees.

The first thing Hiccup realised was that he wasn't dead. Then he noticed that he wasn't in pain either. He paused, why was he expecting to be hurt? His mind felt strangely slow and fuzzy, and he had to struggle to recall what had happened before he passed out.

He remembered finding the downed Night Fury in the woods. He'd been about to kill it, when he'd met its intelligent gaze, and seen the fear and understanding in its eyes. Then it had lowered its head, accepting its death and accepting him as its executioner. In that moment he'd discovered that killing a defenseless, intelligent creature wasn't in his being. So he'd set the Night Fury free, and as soon as the ropes holding it loosened, it had pounced on him. He'd seen the glow of the Night Fury's fire building in it's throat, and thought that was it. Then it seemingly changed its mind and touched its muzzle to his head. Then... nothing. He remembered brief, indistinct flashes of light, filled with alien sensations, then he was waking up again.

What did it do to me? he wondered. He'd never heard of a dragon being able to render someone unconscious by touch, but, then again, nobody had ever shot down a Night Fury before.

Deciding his memories weren't going to help, Hiccup opened his eyes, then shut them an instant later as the light from the unnaturally bright sky stabbed at his retinas. He rolled over onto his front and tried again, he had to blink a few times, but eventually his vision swam into focus. The sun had barely risen above the horizon when he'd set out to search for the Night Fury, now the forest was lit by the bright midday sun.

He tried to stand up, but his body didn't move the way he expected, and he fell flat on his stomach, winding himself. Taking several deep breaths, Hiccup managed to push himself up onto all fours, and look around. He was still in the gully where he'd found the crashed Night Fury, the remains of his bolas were lying on the ground a short distance away, but there was no sign of the Dragon. Well, there goes my only chance of getting a date, he thought morosely.

He turned his head from side to side, still unable to shake the feeling that his body wasn't moving correctly. At the extremes of his neck's motion he noticed a strange sensation of something rubbing at the space between his shoulder blades. As he considered this, he suddenly became aware of two things that seemed to be above and behind his shoulders. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the new sensations. Almost of their own accord, he felt unfamiliar muscles in his chest and back twitch, and the things on his back moved.

Hiccup's eyes shot open and he looked down, straight at his black-scaled paws.

An incoherent cry escaped Hiccup's lips as he recoiled. He winced in pain as he overbalanced and fell backwards, landing awkwardly on his new appendages. Gasping for breath, almost hyperventilating, he clamped his eyes closed and rolled back onto his front. He forced himself to take several deep breaths, then slowly opened his eyes. Again he saw the hideous visage of a pair of scaled paws where his hands should have been. His spindly arms had become short and thick, his fingers replaced with claws as black as the scales that covered his arms. A dragon's claws.

"Oh gods, no," Hiccup murmured, but the only sound that escaped his lips was a low series of grunts and growls. He unconsciously flinched at the sound of his voice - the voice of a Night Fury.

Okay, I might have the arms of a Dragon, he reasoned desperately, and I apparently sound like one too, but that doesn't mean that I...

Then it clicked, the new limbs he could feel, behind his shoulders, they were wings. If he had wings, then- He spun around. As he turned, he noticed something long and black move at the edge of his vision. He had a tail. He was a dragon.

He'd thought the gods had hated him when he couldn't find the dragon he'd shot down. Now he realised that was too benevolent an action for the evil creatures his people worshipped as gods.

They're not your people any more, a small part of him whispered. A chill ran down his spine, if anybody from the village saw him like this, they'd kill him without a second thought. His father would murder his own son without ever knowing what he did.

A slight rustle of movement caught his attention, and he span around, heart thumping in his chest. The sound had come from behind a boulder on the peak of the ridge. Slowly, a blonde haired figure stood up from behind the rock, a vicious two-handed axe held at her side. Astrid.

"Hiccup?" She asked uncertainly.

Hiccup did the only thing he could; he turned and ran. Or at least he tried to. He managed a couple of steps before he tripped over his own feet and landed flat on his face. Heart still pounding in his ears, he frantically scrambled to his feet and tried to run again. After his second fall, he realised that things seemed to go better if he didn't focus too hard on how exactly his legs moved. He was hardly graceful, he frequently stumbled over raised roots, and his tail dragged along the ground behind him, smacking painfully into tree trunks as he turned. Even Bucket could have followed his tracks as he forced his way through the undergrowth, but he didn't care, all he could think of was the numerous ways that she knew to kill him.

Hiccup silently cursed. He tried to glance back, but his neck wouldn't let his head turn far enough to see behind him. Of all the people on Berk why did it have to be her, the deadliest teen on the island, if not the whole Loki-cursed archipelago, that found him? If she wasn't already in hot pursuit, she was probably running back to Berk to fetch a hunting party and do the job properly.

Hiccup was so intent on fleeing that he didn't see the drop coming until it was too late. He shoved through a curtain of low-hanging branches and suddenly the ground dropped away beneath his feet.

For the briefest instant, instinct kicked in, and Hiccup's wings opened, slowing his fall. For a moment, he was gliding smoothly through the air. Then he slid off to one side and dound himself tumbling through the air. He landed hard, ploughing a mirror image of the furrow in the forest above into the ground.

Hiccup lay still for moment, stunned by the impact. When, at last, his head stopped spinning he rolled right-side up and clambered to his feet. He flexed his legs, then, remembering that he now had more than four limbs, closed his eyes and concentrated on moving his tail and wings. He was briefly amazed that nothing was broken, then he reasoned that the Night Fury had survived its crash-landing in the forest with no obvious injuries, so he should easily be able to shake off the short drop from the cliffs.

Looking back up to where he'd fallen from, Hiccup strained his ears, listening for any signs of pursuit. He could hear a symphony of rustling leaves and bushes coming from the forest, and the sound of water gently lapping against something behind him, but no sounds of Astrid. At least something's finally going my way, he grumbled. A songbird suddenly burst into song, and Hiccup flinched, the bird sounded like it was right next to his ear. He glanced upwards, and his eyes zeroed in on a small Wren perched on a branch overhanging the cliff. He was amazed by the quality of his eyesight, he could almost pick out individual feathers on the bird's chest.

Well, it makes sense that Night Furies would have better senses than humans, he thought, glancing up at the sky. The sun was still low in the east, he couldn't have been unconscious for more than a quarter of an hour. Judging by how bright the sunlight had appeared, he'd assumed it must have been close to midday, now he realised that his eyes were much more sensitive to light than they had been.

Turning away from the cliffs, Hiccup surveyed his surroundings. He had landed in a roughly ovoid space, surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs. A small lake took up about two-thirds of the area, on the far shore, a small waterfall tumbled down the cliffs, refreshing the lake's waters. In a few places, hardy-looking shrubs sprang up from cracks in the walls and boulders that littered the ground, but for the most part the floor was carpeted in a layer of tough grass.

Hiccup took a deep breath, and suddenly his nose was assaulted with a thousand different scents. He could pick out the musty odour of the earth beneath his feet, and the stone walls that surrounded him, he could even identify the smell of the water in the lake, but a multitude of other scents drifted to him from the forest that he had no clue about. He blinked several times. Okay, going to have to get used to that, he thought, padding over to the shores of the lake.

He was expecting it, but it was still a shock to look down at the water and see a dragon staring back at him. He tilted his head from side to side and bared his teeth, examining his reflection from different angles. Several flaps extended from the back and sides of his head, the largest of which were just behind where he thought his ears were.

"Well, that explains another mystery" Hiccup remarked, trying not to flinch at the dragon-sounds coming from his mouth. Unfortunately, Hiccup's natural curiosity about his body could only carry him so far, and as he stood there studying his reflection, the severity of his situation began to dawn on him. He slowly raised a hand - or was it a paw now? - to his face, and watched as the Night Fury in the lake mirrored his actions. He closed his eyes as his paw travelled across the unfamiliar structure of his face. He lowered his paw and slumped to the ground with a depressed huff.

There was no denying it, somehow he'd been transformed into a dragon. He'd been forced in the body of his people's arch-enemy, with no knowledge of how to use his newfound wings and tail, or defend himself should his friends or - gods forbid - his father stumble across him.

Even if he knew how, could he fight his own people? They were Vikings, they faced down whole packs of much more skilled dragons than him on a regular basis, nothing he could do would make them retreat. If they found him it would be a fight to the death, he would either die, or be forced to kill everyone he had ever loved in order to escape.

Hiccup's life had always been hard, he didn't fool himself by pretending otherwise. Despite that, he'd always prided himself on taking what the Norns dealt him with dignity, and making the best of his situation. However, at that moment, lying in the forest, trapped in a body he didn't understand and unable to return home on fear of death, he did something he hadn't done in a long time;

he wept.

Norse Mythology:
The Norns - Norse version of The Fates from Greek mythology.
Fenrir - A monstrous wolf and son of Loki, foretold to kill Odin during Ragnarök.

Author's Notes:

Friendly greetings!

I'm glad to say that the few responses that I got to the prologue were all positive, and I hope that I can live up to your expectations with the rest of this story! Obviously, from this point on the story will be following Hiccup and Astrid, but we definitely haven't seen the last of our female Night Fury friend.

Now, to address the question that's probably on everyone's lips: 'Will Hiccup and Toothless be paired together?' The short answer to that question is yes, this story will eventually feature some 'Toothcup'. However, I haven't yet decided exactly what form their relationship will take and how much it will feature in this story. Also it's going to be a while before we see any development between the two, as given her current predicament, "Toothless" isn't particularly interested in romance at the moment.

My fanfic recommendation for you this time, is another Dragon!Hiccup story, and the second big inspiration for this story. It is 'Dimmadreki' by Cke1st. This story deviates from the 'norm' by pairing Hiccup with an OC female Night Fury, who isn't just a Mary Sue and has as an actual, complex character. IMHO, Cke1st pulls off the relationship between the two protagonists very well, and it's well worth a read.

Anyway, as always, thank you for reading, and whatever you thought of the story so far, please leave a review!

~Superbun

Next time: Hiccup and Astrid finally make contact!