Staring down at him in numb shock and disbelief, Hiccup scanned the rubble of the nightmare creature who had once taken so much delight in tormenting him. But no measure of relief came with his demise. Instead, a wave of sorrow swept over him as he thought he finally understood what Hadrian was.
In some way, he had belonged to the deepest essence of Hiccup's being. All the broken pieces of himself that Hiccup had buried, all those bits that terrified his own mind, all accumulated into one beast, a deranged creature born out of everything he knew he wasn't supposed to do or feel. An entity made of desires and emotions and all the longings Hiccup could never admit to anyone – not even himself.
And if he was one of many demons, Hiccup thought, then they were the most personal kind. Shrapnel of the soul. But then, did that make them soulless?
Hiccup turned his head to looks back at the shattered form of Scrimshaw, knowing at once whose portrait he had seen carved into his chest. It had been Haymitch's young bride.
Like Scrimshaw with the tiny etching just over his heart, Hadrian had carried his close too. Hidden within.
And just as Hadrian had changed, so had Hiccup.
It was the only thing that made sense.
Hiccup felt something warm slide down his cheek.
Frowning, Hiccup lifted one dust-caked hand and pressed his fingers to the place where Hadrian had touched his a moment before.
Hiccup lowered his hand and saw a smear of crimson.
Blood.
Back in the real world. Things have taken an unexpected turn.
The sky had ripped open. The clouds slowly bled into a deep violet-to-black and slowly drifted to hover above Hiccup. The driving wind howled through the night. An unhuman howl echoed through. The air inside and out whipped around him violently, like a vortex. Swirling in the sky, if it could still be called the sky, lightning ripped through, and struck the forest area too close to Stoick and the others.
"What's happening?!" Fishlegs cries.
Everyone could hear the fire before they see it. Fire was all around them, full of rage and chaos and destruction. The smoke in the air was so thick, they started choking on it. The heat was singeing the air right off their arms. The billows of smoke, fluffy and grey, belched from the trees and drifted toward the sky. The winds howled, but wait, there was a voice.
"No!"
It wailed across the village, rattling everyone to the core.
"No, Hiccup." Astrid whimpered.
"Stoick! Look!" Gobber suddenly yelled.
The flames raced toward Hiccup, and became transparent. Hiccup's body started to lift off the ground, the wind whipping his hair every which way, a painful agitated look on his face. But he wasn't moving, as if he were still dreaming, unaware of the destruction around him.
His arms hung, dangling down, his legs limp and teeth grit. He was becoming moist with sweat and tears streaming down his face.
The sky was empty, absolutely black. The smoke covered everything – the trees, the sky.
The ground beneath suddenly begins to tremble. Little pebbles and loose grains of dirt skip and slide across the grass. Below, the screams of villagers could be heard. There was a sudden surge and it smacked everyone back into the treelines. Stoick and Gobber cracking the trunks close the breakage.
Astrid pushes herself on shaky arms and shakes her head to rid it of splinters. She looks back and sees the charred remains of where they stood just mere moments ago. Nothing remains but a pile of scorched debris and a gaping crater directly underneath Hiccup.
Suddenly Hiccup screams; a raw, and primal roar of fury.
Lightning strikes the village, and every instinct in Astrid screams to run, but she can't look away, at the village and Hiccup. Besides, running means leaving Stoick and Gobber behind, and she won't do that. A feeder's base shrivels away and tipping over, crushes two of the villagers running toward the Great Hall. Horror trembles through everyone as the fire, as if alive, strafes the closer wagons and people with its furious bite.
People are burning, throwing themselves on the ground and beating at the flames, but the beast just keeps spewing and chewing at anything that moves. Citizens race up the roads from the Square, pushing and shoving to gain a better position over one another. Some are crying. Yelling. Screaming. The crush of people move in mindless panic. Those who hesitate or turn against the mob are flung to the side or trampled beneath pounding feet.
"Gobber!" Stoick's voice suddenly rings out. "Help me take care of the village, you kids focus on putting out the fire!" he orders.
Astrid turns to him. "We're not leaving him!" she screams.
"He'll be fine!" Grandmamma shouts over the chaos. "I'll watch him! The Pentagram will keep him stationary! Go!"
After a moment's hesitation, the kids mount their dragons and follow Stoick down to the village.
With a careful hand, Hiccup wound the satin ribbon slowly around one trembling wrist.
Its softness helped to calm him, if only for a moment.
He avoided looking down as he moved forward through the wreckage, the bits and pieces, the empty limbs strewn across the floor. Making his way to the wall of flowers, he did his best to block out the sound of shards popping and crunching beneath the soles of his boot and prostatic leg.
He stopped at a section of interlacing iron and vines uninterrupted by any archway. Reaching out, he clasped the empty air next to one of the iron bars, and as he did so, a matching ornate door handle materialized in his fist.
Hiccup twisted the handle and the door swung outward.
As he'd suspected, the world outside the rose garden held the muted gray landscape of the woodlands. Trees, black and dead, stood innumerable before a glowing violet horizon. Leaden and tattered, the clouds hung low in the slate-colored sky, while the interlocking boughs of the trees created a webwork of shadow patterns over the ash-coated ground.
Within the dense forest, Hiccup could discern two rows of old-fashioned lampposts, their holders lit with violet flames. He stepped out of the gardened drawn by the flickering of their otherworldly light, his boot and foot sinking into the spongy ash. On either side of him, through the network of trees, he could also see a line of familiar houses, though their structures were far recognizable now.
The foundations beneath supported mere frames, the facades themselves in crumbling ruin. Doors and windows lacked panes and wood, giving the homes the appearance of blackened skulls, their vacant entrances like slack-jawed mouth gaping in shock.
With the fountain at his back, Hiccup did not have to guess to know where he was.
It made sense.
The neighborhood Hadrian showed him had a mirrored-image dreamworld counterpart.
A twilight version of reality, Hiccup thought, remembering the words Grandmamma had read aloud from the book describing Jolene's domain.
And Hadrian . . . in the moment before he'd shattered apart, hadn't he told him that Jolene was "home"?
Hiccup choked back a sob as he remembered the way his head shattered in two, how he had protected him. Hiccup swallowed it down, not allowing himself to grieve for him.
No. don't think about it Hiccup. Not now. It won't help.
He doesn't know what's going on with the others. All he can do is hope they're okay. They have to be.
Hiccup glanced in the direction of the house he had seen in his dreams. Through the thick cluster of trees, he could determine only the vague outlines of the homes farther down the street. He moved onward, trying to ignore the sharp sting of the scratch that marred his cheek. But the pain, like the thought of what the wound meant, would not relent.
Hadrian . . .
The way he touched Hiccup had seemed so gentle, like a caress. But he now knew that he'd inflicted the cut on purpose.
It had been his last act of protection. His final warning.
Hiccup stopped, refusing to let his thoughts stray in that direction. He knew better than to let the things that occurred in this world take root in his mind and grow. If he allowed that, he risked forgetting what was real, forgetting that what he'd had was real.
A burst of wind slipped past as Hiccup continued to make his way down the desolate street. It was the first breeze he had felt since leaving the garden. Cool and brisk, it carried with it a familiar scent. Coconut vanilla.
Ahead, the solemn structure of Jolene's house loomed into view, a darker twin of its real-world equivalent, its façade in complete reverse. Unlike the other houses, which all looked as if they'd been blown through from the inside out by well-thrown explosives, Jolene's house, though distorted, seemed to be intact.
The now-blackened windows gave the mansion a wounded look. And the stained-glass front door, no longer golden hued, hung slanted in its frame. A deep violet glow emanated from its colored panes, reminding Hiccup of the purple chamber from the dream, the room where he had left Hadrian with his promise.
The most obvious defragment of all, however, was the crack that zigzagged from the crown of the structure down to its very base, effectively splitting the crown of the structure down to its very base, effectively splitting the house into two. One side, the right side, stood straight, bricks and windows in solid order. But the left side tilted downward, the second-story window askew, like a sorrowful eye.
Hiccup stopped between a pair of trees that occupied the very place where the front sidewalk should have been. He looked up, seeking the bedroom window through the tangle of limbs, and saw a tall shadow slide by. It passed quickly, but he knew its shape anywhere.
"Jolene," he hissed, and hurried onto the sloping porch. But as soon as he touched the doorknob, an unexpected sound caused him to pull back.
Music. Piano music. It came muffled through the door, the lullaby drifting out in lingering tones.
Hiccup set his hand on the doorknob again. As he did so, he felt the metal twitch beneath his fingertips. He heard a sliding back, followed by the slunk of the heavy metal deadbolt. Then the door drifted slowly and silently open, moving inward on its own.
A screen of pure darkness greeted him.
Like the house itself, the blackness that pulsated within seemed somehow alive, made of the same substance he had seen churning on the ceiling of Haymitch's hospital room. It was the same murk that had stolen out of thin air to wrap its way around Hadrian during the battle, pulling him into its depths.
Hiccup listened as the piano music continued to flow forth. From beyond the sheet of darkness. He hesitated, wondering if following the music through the black miasma was exactly what Lilith wanted him to do. Lifting a hand to hamsa at his throat, Hiccup wrapped his fist around the amulet.
Even if this was a trap, he thought, what other choice did he have?
He stepped into the house.
As he moved through the doorway, he felt the blanket of shadows engulf him. Black smoke tendrils slithered over him. Like tentacles, they wrapped their way around his arms and wrist. He felt them pull him inward.
The darkness smudged his surroundings into nothing as the piano music became garbled in his ears. Though it grew louder for an instant, closer, the notes themselves began to tremble and shudder. They warbled and echoed, almost as though he'd been plunged far underwater.
Then as suddenly as they had taken hold, the shadows released him.
Like a thick fog, they receded from Hiccup, leaving him standing in the foyer of the house, a few clinging wisps slithering over his shoulders and arms.
Glancing down, he found himself wearing a tunic of pure ebony, his gritted and ash-caked clothes, along with his father's jacket, having vanished. A pair of black boots took the place of his old ones.
Wham! The earsplitting crack of the door slamming shut behind him made Hiccup swing around. He watched the lock's brass thumb latch itself to one side, the deadbolt sliding into place once more.
Hiccup backed away from the door, layers of stiff fabric rustling around his legs.
Unlike his usual green tunic, this one was short-sleeve and a black band encircled his left arm while a crimson red sash hugged his waist. Black gloves with red wristbands and open finger-holes stretched up to his elbows ending in a soft point. Gold bands crossed across his chest in an X where a gold medallion clung to the intersection. Black pants clung to his legs and seeped into black buckled boots.
He did not have to strain to remember where he had seen it before. It had been worn by the evil Hiccup his vision.
His true evil self.
Hiccup's hand sprang to his cheek, the silken satin ends of his mothers' ribbon, still tied to his wrist, brushing against his arm. He touched the scratch Hadrian had left, realizing that it too, had appeared on the body.
A sudden clang of piano keys made him jump.
"No, no," came a woman's soft voice from somewhere behind him. "Not a C there. How about a D instead?"
The music began again, and Hiccup turned to face the reversed interior of the house. White sheets covered all the furniture. Black draperies hung from the windows. Above, weak violet light flickered from a flame-lit chandelier with no chain. It hovered over his head, suspended by an invisible force, the crystal prisms and pendalogues jagged and broken.
To his right, the stairs that led up through the rest of the house looked loose and dilapidated. Glancing to his left, he saw that the doors to the parlor were closed. Through the long slit that separated the wooden panels, however, he could just make out the edge of the piano as well as someone sitting at its bench.
The floor creaked beneath him as he drew nearer to the doors.
He heard the melody stutter, stop, and start again.
This time, a woman's soft humming accompanied the haunting tune.
Hiccup crept closer and closer pausing only when he saw a flash of light from the corner of his eye. His attention snapped to the painting on the wall. It hung above the sheeted hallway table that held the model of a schooner, now bedecked with black sails. For a moment, the painting within the gilded frame appeared to be nothing more than a canvas of pure black. Another flash, however, revealed otherwise. A bolt of lightning contained within the square frame flickered to illuminate an old-fashioned ship as it tossed about on choppy nighttime waters. The fierce waves in the painting rolled and swelled, the whole tumultuous scene fluttering in and out of sight as the lighting continued to flare in the background. It lit the tar-colored underbellies of the clouds as well as the ship itself, which seemed as small as a toy amid the storm-tossed seas.
Hiccup caught the name Grampus across the ship's stern during one long barrage of lightning strikes.
Then the humming from within the parlor changed to singing, and his attention returned once more to the pair of sliding pocket doors. Quickly he slipped to stand just in front of the drawn panels, peeking through the slim space in between.
He saw a pair of elegant hands wandering over the white keys as the music rose and fell, every note melding with the woman's wispy voice to create a liquid sound.
"Come my sweet lover,
I'll take thee away,
Into a land of enchantment.
Come my dear lover,
The time's come to stay
Here in my garden of
Shadows."
Inside the ornate and orderly room, and eerily familiar scene unfolded before him. The old-fashioned decorations and stately piano, the woman's elegant violet evening gown, the glittering comb in her hair – it all matched what had played in his dream the night he'd found his mother. And the comb. It was identical to the one he'd found in the box beneath the stairs in Jolene's home.
"Follow sweet over,
I'll show thee the way,
Through all the pain and the sorrow.
Weep not my lover,
For life is this way
Murdering beauty and passions."
Hiccup pressed his palms to the wooden doors. He leaned in, bringing his eye even closer to the slit.
"Hush now dear lover,
It must be this way
To weary of life and deceptions.
Rest now sweet lover,
For soon we'll away.
Into the calm,
And the quiet."
All at once, the music stopped. The woman at the piano snapped her head toward Hiccup, her brown eyes lit from within by fear and surprise.
Hiccup's breath caught in his throat.
The woman scooted to the edge of the piano seat. She placed a hand on the keyboard cover and tensed, as though preparing to throw it down.
When their eyes met through the crack, however, the woman's trepidation fell away in an instant, replaced with a soft smile of relief and even gladness. Her face was one Hiccup had seen before, and a pinch of hatred itched at his chest.
"Hello there," Jolene said, speaking to Hiccup through the gap. "It's okay. You can come in. I shouldn't play so late. Did I wake you, darling? Do you want to hear the rest of our song? It's almost finished. Here let me sing you the last verse."
Hiccup frowned, realizing he'd heard this voice speak these same words once before. Along with the song, they'd played in this exact order in the woodlands in the dreamworld.
When the woman swiveled toward the piano again, Hiccup began to understand that whatever he was witnessing, it wasn't happening in real time. Like the vision of Haymitch in the hospital, he was seeing a moment from the past being replayed.
Just like . . . just like a memory.
Jolene's lips parted as she lifted her hands to the keys. Once more, music swelled, filling the room.
"Come my sweet lover,
I'll take thee away.
Into a land of enchantment.
Come my dear lover,
The times come to play
Here in my garden of
Shadows."
The final notes, deep and resonant, reverberated through the door, sending a barely perceptible vibration through Hiccup's hands. For several long seconds, Jolene remained still, staring at the keys as though they had done something she hadn't expected them to.
"I don't know," she said, half mumbling to herself. "Do you think that last part's too sad? Here, let me play you the whole thing, and you tell me what you think."
The song began again.
Hooking his fingers in the brass grooves set into the doors, Hiccup tried to pull them apart. They refused to budge, however, so he spread his feet, angling for a better grip, and then tugged again.
All at once, the wooden panels flew open with a bang. The piano music halted.
Jolene was gone.
The room now stood empty and wrecked, the furniture toppled and strewn about. The tattered curtains, pulled free from their decorative tassel ropes, hung limp over the tall black-paned windows. The overturned piano bench lay on its side, reams of loose sheet music spilling from under its hinged lid.
Black notes, all hand drawn, dotted the thin lines of musical staves, their corresponding lyrics written beneath in a looping and elegant hand.
Behind the piano, scattered and broken picture frames lined the built-in shelves, though none of the frames, save for one, actually held any images or photos. Like the windows, the frames had all been blacked out, except for the picture that sat in the very middle of the center shelf in an oval frame. It was a portrait of Jolene, a larger copy of the drawing he had found at her house.
Except the more he looked at this picture, the more it seemed to change.
Going to the shelves, Hiccup took the frame between both hands. He held the life-size oval portrait out in front of him, studying the contours of the woman's face as they shifted and morphed, as though the portrait's subject couldn't seem to decide how she wanted to look.
Then the image began to dissolve, eaten through by another. In its place, Hiccup's own face appeared, complete with the angry red slit that now marked his right cheek. Hiccup took in a sharp breath as details of the room's dilapidated interior – the doorway, the hall, and the chandelier – began to fill in around his reflection until it became evident that in place of a picture frame, he now held a mirror.
"Memories." Came a melodious voice from behind him. "They are cobwebs of the mind."
Hiccup whirled, dropping the mirror, which shattered with a deafening crash as it hit the floor, shards flying out to scatter across the wood.
The owner of the voice stood just outside the parlor entry, her lithe and luminous veil-swathed figure framed by the wide doorway. Hiccup had not seen her there in the mirror.
"You can try and sweep them away," Lilith went on, her dark lips moving behind the translucent screen of gauzy fabric. "But it seems as if some trace always remains."
Hiccup watched her without budging, a numbness spreading its way through him, causing his skin to prickle and his entire body to hum with a terror that had not quite clicked within his brain yet.
"You – you don't have a reflection," he murmured.
"Though it would appear as if you have two," Lilith replied, smiling a small, close-lied smile. "At least in my mind."
Hiccup swallowed. Knowing Lilith meant Hadrian, he forced out his next words. "You killed him."
"He chose his own fate."
"You killed him." Hiccup said, taking a step toward the doorway, a step toward the demon, "and now I'm here to avenge him and every other man you deceived!"
"I would welcome you to fight all you like," Lilith said, and strode forward as well, passing through the doorway and into the parlor.
Distracted by the odd clicking noise Lilith's feet made when they came in contact with the hardwood floors, Hiccup glanced down. Bird's feet, he realized with horror as he laid eyes on the enormous scaly black talons that peeked out from beneath the hem of the demon's gossamer robes. A realization drifting through his mind, back to what Hadrian said that one night, "A succubus may take a form of a beautiful young girl but closer inspection may reveal deformities upon their bodies, such as bird-like claws or serpentine tails."
"But the fact is," Lilith went on, "love to me is all just a cruel game. And you must understand, I never lose."
Hiccup looked up again to see that the closer Lilith came, then more gaunt and inhuman she began to appear through the transparent barrio of her veil. With every step toward him, the white flesh of Lilith's cheeks sank father inward to reveal the contours of her skull, her lips shriveling back to expose rows of tiny needle-thin teeth. Her nose dissolved into a hole while her eyes, hollowing, became sunken pits lit by two distant pinpricks of light.
Hiccup staggered back, his leg catching on the overturned piano bench. He fell, sprawling on his side, and landed among the broken shards of mirror, which winked at him, reflecting light from the foyer's floating chandelier. But the glow trapped within those shards was not violet, but a warm ember.
And in the closest shard, one that lay nearest to his hand, there was something else, too. A face.
Hiccup met the familiar girl's startled gaze and the girl paused for an instant, her blonde bangs of her braided hair draped forward around her features as if, somewhere on the reality side of the mirror, she was bending or stooping to pick something up. Just when Hiccup realized it was Astrid, a large black talon slammed over the shard, crushing it.
Hiccup looked up to see the hideous thing that was Lilith looming over him.
Lifting a hand to the veils that covered her face, her skin no longer milky smooth but chalk white and tightly stretched, the creature pulled free the gauze with clawed fingers. Her ebony hair tumbled around her now racklike shoulders. Scraggly and thin, it began to fall out in stringy clumps.
Hiccup pushed himself backward, scrambling over the glass-sprinkled floorboards. When his spine met with the base of the bookshelves, he grasped at his throat for the hamsa.
Lilith laughed, a sound that was altogether girlish.
"You think your silly talisman will save you?" the demon asked, her eyes flicking to Hiccup's clenched fist, her fingers moving to hover just over the hand that held the amulet.
Hiccup made no move, even though his heart thundered in his chest. For a moment, he feared that the thing standing before him, this gruesome creature, more ghoul now than woman, would snatch the necklace free with her skeletal finger, toss it aside, and rip into him with her awful teeth.
Instead, Lilith's hand began to quiver, her outstretched fingers stopping just short of Hiccup. Then, like paper caught by a wayward flame, they began to wither and flake. A flicker of pain crossed her now-monstrous features as her hand began to crumple, her fingers curling back on themselves before dissolving into ash.
Those twin points of light widened as they continued to bore into Hiccup. Vines of blackness climbed up Lilith's neck and jawbone, her cheeks and forehead appearing like black reeds on her pasty complexion.
"It won't," the demon said, her voice no longer sensuous or girlish, but deep-throated and low, like that of a beast that had somehow learned to speak. "I don't have to touch you to destroy you. I have . . . other means for that."
As she dragged back her clawed bird's feet, the train of Lilith's white garments whispered against the floor. Hiccup stared as the demon made her way through the parlor doorway, where someone else now stood – a man.
Lilith went around him, her hand, rejuvenated and once more white and flawless, passing across his chest. Smiling, her dark beauty having returned, Lilith glanced over her shoulder at Hiccup.
"With him with me, I'll be unbelievably powerful, don't you think, Stoick?" she said to the man. "Knock him out. And then, before he comes to, before he awakens and realizes what's become of him, I want you to place him in my old quarters. I think you know where I mean."
With that, Lilith disappeared around the corner, leaving Hiccup with an evil double of his father. It was the very same man who had he'd said goodbye to before he stepped through the dimensions.
Hiccup pushed himself to his feet, bits of mirror glass that had stuck to his legs and tunic tumbling to the floor around him.
Quickly he drew forth one of the two swords he wore on his belt.
The wink of silver flashed cold as he aimed the blade straight at Hiccup.
In addition to being without his chef helmet, evil Stoick's slicked-back hair gleamed in the subdued light of the foyer chandelier. Its violet glow cast hard shadows across his already stern and unsmiling face. His eyes, black and dead, remained fixed on Hiccup.
Instead of the fear that Hiccup had expected to feel at the sight of an evil version of his father, Hiccup only felt rage and fury infect his veins like black poison.
Hiccup watched him as he swept the blade through the air in a clean and threatening stork that made him flinch and caused the thin strip of metal to sing. Lowering the cutlass, Stoick aimed the blade toward the floor and, thrusting it downward, embedded the sword between the floorboards. There, the tarnished hilt swayed as he took several steps backward into the foyer hallway. Drawing the second blade from its sheath, he gestured with it to the first.
"Pick it up," he said.
Hiccup's hands balled into fists at his side, a knee-jerk reaction to his command. "No."
"You'll pick it up," he said, assuming a stance of defense, his knees bent, blade aimed at Hiccup once again, his free arm behind him, held level with his chest. "or you won't. Either way, we fight."
"I don't want to fight you," Hiccup said. And it was the truth, though mostly because Hiccup kept reminding himself of Hadrian's words, about things in the dreamworld.
"Don't trust anything you see."
Though Hiccup's palms itched to grab the sword – the only means he could see to protect himself – the last thing Hiccup wanted to do was give in to his demand. The idea of him thinking he was Hiccup's real father sent a fresh wave of heart through his veins.
Instead, Hiccup took a deep breath and raised his hand. In a flash of light, a dagger appeared in Hiccup's hand, his finger coiling around the hilt. He opened his eyes and snarled.
"Interesting choice." Stoick said.
Hiccup didn't reply, instead, he aimed his blade at the evil double. Hiccup raised his weapon and rushed him. As the double raised his blade, Hiccup at the last minute dropped and slid between the entity's legs, slicing on the right leg at the Achilles tendon. He didn't bleed, but Hiccup hadn't expected him to.
As the double wobbled to the floor, Hiccup pushed to his feet and immediately whirled and drove the blade straight between his evil father's shoudlerblades. The thing wailed, but what was more rewarding was the look of surprise and momentary confusion that came over his stoic face. Smiling darkly, Hiccup yanked the blade out and flipping the blade, he slammed the hilt into the side of the evil twin's head.
He fell to the side, sprawling, but the grip on the sword still firm. Hiccup sprang forward and crashed onto the double, his elbow smashing into his stomach. Hiccup straddled its hips and readied the blade of his knife.
"How could you do this to your father?" the evil twin asks.
"You, are not my father." Hiccup seethed, and with anger blazing, he drove the knife into the evil double's heart area.
When it wasn't enough, Hiccup snarled and pulled the blade out, then slashing it down again, over and over. There was no blood, and it only made Hiccup want to stab him more until finally it did seep through the fabric and splatter on his face.
As he brought down his hand for a sixth impale, the Stoick twin's hand sprang up and grabbed Hiccup's wrist. Hiccup sneered as he felt the evil twin grab the front of his tunic and flip him over, sending Hiccup crashing into the puddle of shards from the mirror. He hissed in pain as he felt the searing pain of the wound.
As he pushed himself on numb arms, he felt a hand coil around his ankle and drag him close.
"Get the hell off me!" Hiccup screamed, and twisted at the waist, sending a fierce kick into evil Stoick's side. To Hiccup's pleasure, his aim landed true, and under the fabric of his tunic, he felt the part of his torso cave in with an audible crunch. He roared at Hiccup, more out of rage than pain. As he goes to launch on Hiccup, he brings his foot again and slams it at the twin's face.
The instant it back's off to shake its head, Hiccup's hand gropes the floor for the biggest shard from the mirror. As Stoick dives again, howling in fury, Hiccup twists and drives the shard deep into the twin's shoulder, and withdraws. The twin sneers and goes again.
As he pounces again, Hiccup raised the shard, the heat of his own blood searing his palm as he felt it soaking into the ribbon. Once twin Stoick was over him, Hiccup holds him by the collar of his tunic as Hiccup continually stabs in the evil double's side, whether it was his shoulder, armpit or torso. Stoick pulls back once more, and when he rushes Hiccup, Hiccup brings his hands up, griping the shard, and it penetrates the twin's heart area.
His body slacks and Hiccup rolls to get him off. He pushes to his feet and gazes at the apparition as his eyes become the empty sockets of a dead demon. Slowly his body disintegrates into ash and seeps into the floor. The shard falling once again to the floor with a quiet clink.
Breathing deeply, Hiccup turns away from the demon, but falters. He briefly loses his balance, feeling slightly lightheaded as he reaches the doorway of the foyer. He holds his head as the adrenaline finishes its course through his veins.
He's not real, he keep thinking to himself. Dad's back home. Safe.
Regaining his composure, Hiccup takes a deep breath and pushes himself off the doorway and drives himself to walk through the narrow hall he knew opened into the kitchen.
Once he was through the narrow bottleneck squeeze of the hallway, though, Hiccup paused, startled and bewildered to find that they were not in a kitchen at all but outside, on a long and wide stone balcony.
Fierce winds gusted around him, coming first from one direction and then another, whipping Hiccup's hair into a frenzy, tugging at his red cape this way and that. The violet ribbon fluttered in his peripheral vision.
To his left, a line of stone faces carved into the side of the house watched the storm with indifferent eyes. Green men, Hiccup thought, remembering them from the say he had seen the protector gargoyles on the facades of the houses in the neighborhood Hadrian showed him.
On his other side, a row of stone columns supported the floor above.
Through them, he saw a streak of lightning slice the sky in two, the ultraviolet spear of light illuminating the crooked line of black rock cliffs below that overlooked a white and rolling sea. And there, standing on the brick of the farthest bluff . . .
"Jolene." Hiccup sneered.
Hiccup bolted for stone walkway, but he was instantly cut short as someone had caught him from behind. Hooking around his waist with one strong arm, he held the blade of his sword to Hiccup's throat with the other.
"You won't be able to reach her." He hissed in Hiccup's ear.
Hiccup wrenched his elbow up and then jammed it into his stomach. Gobber took the blow with a grunt but did not release him.
"Let me go!" Hiccup yelled. Taking the hilt of a sword that he conjured from black wisps, between both hands, Hiccup plunged the tip downward straight in and through the bridge of his foot.
He released him at once. Hiccup stumbled away from him and father down the stone walkway. Evil Gobber limped after him, though his gait seemed to grow steadier with every footfall. It made Hiccup think about what had happened to Hadrian at the battle in the village, when Jolene gad turned his own blades against him, running him through with both. Even though Hiccup had been sure he was dead, Hadrian had remained unconscious for only a few seconds and then awoke to yank the swords of his own chest.
The memory reminded him there was nothing he could do to stop the demons she sent out.
But perhaps, he thought, glancing at the sightless eyes of one of the nearby green men, there was a way to distract him, to keep him busy while he found a way to the cliffs, to Jolene.
Hiccup went to the wall and placed his hand on one of the stone men's faces. He pictured his eyes blinking in his mind, and it was no more than a split second before they did.
"Fight." Hiccup whispered to the stone man, who immediately began to twist his head from side to side, causing the stone around him to crumple and fall away in chunks, revealing strong shoulders and a muscled torso, as though the rest of his body had merely been trapped within the wall. "Fight in my place." Hiccup said.
Hiccup did not wait to see what would happen when the gargoyle freed himself completely from the stone. Instead he hurried down to the next green man, and the next, whispering the same word to each of them. He looked back only when he reached the end of the balcony and a short set of stone steps, which led up to a massive and windowless wooden door marked with a large shield-shaped family crest.
The golems, free from the wall, which now bore a row of body-shaped crater, surrounded the evil double of Gobber.
Each of them, seven in total, held either a club or a spear clenched in gritty fists. Some of them even bent down to pick up the larger stone chunks of fallen wall.
Dropping his sword, Hiccup kicked it across the balcony floor in their direction before at last turning back to the door. He pressed down on the lever handle and pushed against the wood, face-to-face with the coat of arms, which bore in its center a pair of outspread dragon's wings, in the middle of which blazed scrolling word Usher.
Hiccups rushed into an open and dimly lit hallway. Whirling, he shoved the door shut behind him. It banged into place, its echo reverberating around him, ricocheting into the high vaulted ceiling.
Even through the thick layers of stone and wood, Hiccup could still hear the shouting of his name, calling out to him just before the sharp and unrelenting barrage of clanking and crashing ensued.
Hiccup slowed his steps. He spun in a quick circle, taking in his surroundings. The hallway was too long and the ceiling too high to be the dream house.
Scanning the walls, he could find no windows.
Old-fashioned threadbare tapestries depicting medieval knights, nobles, and ladies hung in their place over the decorative purple-and-gold-papered walls.
A plush Persian carpet runner ran the length of the floor beneath his feet, while tall curio cabinets full of strange artifacts like gold scarabs, foreign ankhs, and bleached animal skulls lined the walls on either side of him. Long hallway tables holding stacks of ancient books sat outside several set of closed double doors along with heavy high-backed chairs, the arms of which bore the carved images of crouching sphinxes.
Golden candelabra shaped like women in flowing gowns adorned the walls, the low and steady light they offered between their outstretched hands providing minimal relief from the darkness that saturated everything.
Somehow he'd been transported somehow else, to some type of antiquated mansion or castle.
Disoriented, Hiccup thought about making another door like he had in the garden. Picturing the cliffs in his mind's eyes, with Jolene standing on the verge of the jutting precipice, he held one hand out in front of him. The ends of his bloodstained ribbon dangled loose from his outstretched wrist.
He waited, but nothing happened.
Hiccup held his arm steady, willing a door to materialize, like it had for Hadrian in the woodlands, like it had for him on the Rose Garden. There was no response to his intention, tough, not even a ripple in the air. His hand, as well as the space before him, remained empty.
He glance around again and noticed that there, at the end of the hall, one of the walls ended at a staircase.
Hiccup ran toward it, and as he sprinted down the passage, the eyes of the figures in the tapestries followed. In his peripheral vision, he saw the heads of the faceless candelabra women turn to watch him pass. Hiccup ignored their stares, placing a hand on the grand banister of the staircase, the polished wood shining liquid black in the low gleam of the flickering tapers.
Hesitating for only an instant, already knowing he had no other choice, that he couldn't go back the way he'd come, Hiccup took the steps, rushing to the short landing and then up around the second flight to the level above. As long as he kept moving, he thought as he climbed, as long as Jolene stayed foremost in his mind, he would reach her no matter which direction he went. The dreamworld would take him there. He had to believe that. He had to believe that.
And if he couldn't find a way down to the cliffs yet, at least he might be able to locate a vantage point – a window or balcony from which he could spot Jolene again and try to get his attention.
When he reached the next floor, Hiccup hurried into the center of another hall, similar to the one he'd left below. He rushed, keeping his aim on one of the many gigantic ebony pairs of double doors. Hiccup scanned the surface of the door wildly. Shuddering, the doors knocked in their frames before suddenly flying apart with a deafening bang, thrown open by a gust of tempest wind that now surged against him.
The empty room within, reversed like the foyer and parlor had been, was one Hiccup knew. Hadrian's . . .
Except for two solid black windows, everything else seemed just as he remembered from the dream.
Once of the windows, the one through which he had seen Hadrian sitting near in the armchair, had been flung wide.
The driving wind howled through the casement in an unceasing drone, gusting through the room and past Hiccup, moaning as it entered the hall behind him.
Looking up, he noticed a thin crack running vertically all the way across the ceiling and down the wall, separating the room into two and disappearing into the floor. As he stepped over the threshold, he glanced around to find himself alone, with no indication that anyone had been in the room a moment before.
He stood beneath a chandelier with candles. Their flame shape sputtered, trying to stay lit. The nonworking fireplace instead held an assortment of glass bottles and dried and dusty reddish-purple roses. Books lined the shelves of a bookcase in perfect order. The closet door stood open, its sliding door folded back to reveal the empty hanging bars.
As Hiccup moved farther in, the plaster overhead began to crumble along the crack and fall like pebbles. He pressed forward, drawn to the open window, through which he could hear the crashing of nearby waves. He stopped in front of the open sash and peered out into the desolate expanse of the dreamworld.
There, in the distance, on the cliff's ledge, stood a veiled figure, her black hair windswept and wild.
Hiccup pulled himself into the window frame. Straddling the ledge, he was about to climb out onto the top metal platform when a low feminine voice made him pause.
"You do surprise me."
Already knowing who he would find, Hiccup checked ahead.
"I do not as yet know how you passed through the boundary between our worlds," the voice continued. "And I certainly did not expect you would come this far. But I am impressed by your resolve."
Reluctantly, Lilith glanced over her shoulder to Hiccup.
Her face, again beautiful and covered by sheer veils, held a serene expression as she watched Hiccup steadily with two large and unblinking eyes.
"Pity, tough, to think that you came all this way and have endured so much for nothing," she said. "Because I can promise that I will not let you go."
"You don't know me."
"I do," she said, "far better than she ever could. Well enough to know that you are at home here."
"This is not my home." Hiccup scowled. "You are not my home."
"I beg to differ."
Hiccup pulled himself through the window and onto the platform. He climbed down the ladder. Reaching the last rung of the metal ladder, he dropped down to where the rocks flattened. All round stood the countless ruins of ancient stone structures, the sills of their hollow casement windows filled with ash.
"I know what you've done – and what you tried to do," Hiccup said. "The things you showed me about them . . . and what you've tried to tell me all this time. You may have thought I believed you, but I don't."
"If anything, I'm the victim here." Lilith said. "Everything you do causes me pain. Torture me with a smile, burning me with your flame."
"A little danger's never stopped you before." Hiccup snarled.
He claws his hand and feels the hilt of another sword vapor into his palm.
"You can stab my heart a million times." Lilith spoke, approaching Hiccup, a smile perking at her lips. "I'll still lick up the blood and smile."
Hiccup swung around to face the cliffs. Even though he wanted to charge, he knew he wouldn't be able to surprise her. Soon, all Hiccup could hear was the roaring waves and the hiss of the whipping winds.
As he approached the place where the rocks extended outward over the churning waters, the bluff tapering like a pointed finger, Hiccup slowed. He ventured out carefully onto the overhang, his feet crunching over the craggy terrain that was going ever narrower. The wind surged stronger still, growing more and more agitated, the gales lashing at him, lifting Hiccup's hair in a maddening dance. He came to where she stood staring out across the ash-white waters, less than a foot from the cliff's edge, stopping only when he reached her side.
Far below, the waves leaped at the rocks, hungrily licking at the flat face of the cliff.
Hiccup wanted to strike, he knew he did, but something prevented him. His fingers were somehow stiffened shut, clasped around the hilt of the sword. Something was holding him back.
"You're too good to let go, Hiccup." Lilith softly spoke.
"You only want to use me." Hiccup retorted, gripping the sword. "Just like all the others."
"But you're special," Lilith said. He felt the brush of Lilith's knuckles against his jaw. His eyes fluttered shut and his lips quivered. She was ice cold. "All those other boys mean nothing."
He felt a rush of warmth course through him, a relief as pure and sweet as spring rain. His hand twitched until it pried open, releasing the sword. It didn't even hit the floor as it dissipated in a murk of black wisps.
"Stay with me." She whispered.
Lilith drew closer, tilting her head up. Hiccup had just enough time to take in a breath, to blink, to part his lips before she took them with her own.
Time froze. His heart ceased to beat. A tremble ignited as it ran through then length of his body, his sense becoming amplified.
He surrendered to her.
His heart pounded in his chest, his thoughts shattering into senseless fragments. He felt her palms press to his biceps as they kissed. Her lips moving in a hypnotic, erotic dance. Urgent. Gentle. So slow.
Sweet, soft demolition.
At the same time, Hiccup felt his skin starting to shrivel like a drying flower wilting in the summer's heat.
Suddenly, Jolene jerked. She became rigid, and Hiccup coldly smiled through the kiss. She jerked back, but Hiccup held her there, but kept them at a distance where the both of them could see the hilt of Hiccup's dagger as it had impaled her diaphragm. Dark red blood oozed down the blade to the hilt, and seeped down her stomach, permeating her gossamer gown.
She looked to him with shock, then ever so quickly twisted with anger – with hate.
"You're," Hiccup scarcely more than breathed. "Dead to me."
Jolene snarled, and her face quickly contorted into the face of a rabid animal. She moved so fast. Before Hiccup could register the glare of hatred, she jerked him to one side.
Hiccup felt his feet part from the rocks.
Weightlessness took hold of him as he swung out and over the ledge of the cliff.
As she let him go.
The wind whistled its high and lonely song in his ears.
He fell away into the oblivion of the storm until he could no longer see the cliff – could no longer see her.
Only the slip of the violet ribbon as it untraveled from his wrist, floating up and away from him and out of sight forever.
Where he knew he should've found nothing, blackness, Hiccup instead discovered a chamber in the catacombs.
Immediately his focus settled on the source of the humming, a shrouded figure who lay faceup on the lid of a horizontal tomb.
Positioned in the center of the room, the coffin-shaped crypt sat atop a set of stairs stationed directly below a blue stained-glass skylight embedded in the stone ceiling. Moonlight, sheer and diaphanous, poured through the sapphire panes. It bathed the slender body that lay concealed beneath a snow-white sheet in dappled patterns.
The melody drew Hiccup farther, beckoning him like a siren's song into the room.
Something crunched under his foot, but he ignored it, too distracted by the array of broken and empty-eyed demons faces that seemed to watch him from their perches on the rows of shelves lining the narrow chamber's four walls.
Suddenly realizing where he stood, Hiccup froze.
He was back. Back in the blue marble crypt that held the sarcophagus with the stone woman lying on top.
But unlike before, the lid the tomb was no longer ominously shifted open.
While the shrouded figure kept on humming, Hiccup glanced to the far corner of the room, to the place where he had first encountered the blue-haired demon who called himself Scrimshaw – the same demon he had seen in the vision of Haymitch's death.
The space he had once occupied was empty, cleared away to reveal the stone floor.
Lifting a hand to his collar, grasping the hamsa, Hiccup drew nearer to the tomb. He mounted the steps, and as he edged closer the the shrouded form, the woman's humming began to slow. He reached out a quivering hand and grabbed a portion of the stiff close to the figure's face. Keeping his other hand firmly clamped around the hamsa, he began to draw the sheet slowly away.
The figure beneath stopped humming.
Inch by inch, the sheet slipped free to reveal a boy dressed in a green tunic, the same one Hiccup always wore.
He uttered a clipped cry.
Brown hair lay in a halo around the boy's head. Wisps of featherlike hair framed an all-too-familiar face – his face.
Hiccup let go of the sheet. The covering continued to slide off the sarcophagus, the cloth pooling onto the stairs and tumbling over Hiccup's shoes. Inky splotches began to seep through the material of the tunic, the layers of clothing transforming to pure ebony.
Hiccup watched with mounting horror, unable to look away.
The boy lay prone on the lab, his still lips painted, his eyes closed. A slanted needle-thin scratch marred his right cheek, the cut a deep purple against his ashen skin. Bound to his stiff and pale hands by a violet ribbon, the same violet ribbon Hiccup had lost, the corpse held a bouquet of pristine white lilies. Their stifling perfume, now unleashed, filled the tomb, lacing the stagnant air with their choking fragrance.
A twin version of Hiccup's hamsa circled his double's sallow neck. It gleamed in the frosted moonlight until a blanket of loud cover passed over the skylight, turning the opal in the center of the charm dim and milky.
Hiccup took a step backward and stumbled down the stairs, nearly falling.
He whirled for the door but it was gone now, replaced by flat stone.
"What the . . ." he mumbled, the words reverberating around him.
Rushing to the wall, he beat his palms against the place where the door had stood wide open only moments before.
Trapped, he spun to face the interior of the tomb again, but the sudden motion caused the room to reel and tilt. Tossed off his feet, Hiccup slammed onto the cold stone that pressed into his back and shoulder blades like a slab of ice.
"No!" Hiccup shouted.
Reaching out, kicking his legs and thrashing, he found himself boxed in by close narrow walls of smooth marble.
"We could've been so happy." Jolene's voice rang out.
Hiccup looked up and saw her onyx eyes glaring down at him.
Slowly, another slab stone crawled over the opening.
"Jolene, no!" Hiccup screamed.
But the slab sealed shut with a heavy wrenching slam.
Contained within the narrow coffin-shape space, the sound of his cries, he knew, would pierce only his own ears.
The sarcophagus – he'd now become sealed within.