Hey guys! So here's chapter 5...and yeah, unfortunately I'm not going to be able to do shout-outs this chapter, which makes me sad, because I love you guys so much and you all mean a lot to me, but I'm going to try and look at the computer screen as little as possible today and see if that doesn't help my migraines.

So I'm sorry, guys. :( But I love all of you so much and thank you SO SO SO SO SO SO SO much for all your continued support and reviews! It means a whole lot to me! :D So, even though I'm going to try and not look at the computer screen very much, I am going to try and post again, maybe later on in the afternoon or tonight. I've trained myself to type without looking at the computer screen, so writing the next chapter shouldn't be that difficult; I'm already about half-way through it, anyways. ;)

So, I love you all! :D Thanks for everything! Enjoy chapter 5! :D (Sorry for advance in the cliffhanger, LOL! :D)

(UPDATE): Okay, I got confused and actually posted the same chapter twice. SO THERE IS NO CHAPTER 6 YET, GUYS, I'M SORRY. :( Kinda sad, over a year of doing fanfiction and I screw up like that...XD

Hiccup and Astrid headed through the East tunnel as quickly as they dared. When the tunnel branched off in different directions, Astrid carved small Xs into the ice beside them to keep track of where they had gone.

"We have to be getting close," Hiccup said, slightly desperate, because they hadn't found anything yet and if they didn't find anything soon, they would run out of time, and there wouldn't be a Toothless to return to. "We have to be."

They went deeper and deeper into the cave, further and further downwards. The tunnel became more and more narrow, until they were practically squeezing themselves between a rock and a hard place, trying with all their might to get through. Stormfly had waited outside; there was no way she would be able to fit through when Astrid and Hiccup hardly could.

Finally, just when Hiccup thought they had gotten nowhere and had wasted all this time for no reason, he saw a light at the end of the tunnel - literally. "There!" Hiccup said excitedly. "I can see the end!"

"Good!" Astrid called back. "Now we just have to...get to it…"

Three minutes of frantic squeezing later, and Hiccup and Astrid tumbled into a clearing. The floor was a clear blue, made entirely out of ice, and a domed ceiling of the same likings was stretched over their heads. The clearing was ginormous; bigger than the Great Hall back on Berk.

Astrid gaped at it in shock. "How did we miss this the first time around?" she asked quietly.

"We weren't looking for it the first time we were here," said Hiccup, also looking around. This must have been it. This was where Bork had hidden the potato.

But where was it?

And then, he saw it; encased behind another, thinner layer of blue ice. Astrid saw it at the same moment he did, and she pointed forward.

"It does exist," Hiccup said, blinking away his surprise and, more importantly, insane relief. He could see the outline of a dagger - the dagger that had been thrown at Bork all those many, many years ago - embedded straight into the potato, unmoved and untouched since the potato had saved Bork's life.

Hiccup took one step forward.

Astrid grabbed his forearm and held him back. She said nothing; she simply jerked her head towards the ground urgently.

Hiccup looked, and he realized what she had seen. A dark, blurry shape was moving in unfrozen water beneath the layer of ice that formed the floor. Every now and then, it would stop, come closer to the ice, and then shrink back into the depths of the water.

Hiccup swallowed. "That must be the Doomfang," he said, and, as quick as a flash, pulled Bork's notebook from his satchel and flicked through it. "I don't see anything on it yet…wait, here it is." He stopped flipping through the pages and focused on the page in which was drawn a solid black dragon with long, saber-tooth fangs.

"The Doomfang," said Astrid. "It says it's hostile to vikings and extremely deadly."

"What I'm wondering," said Hiccup, "is how Bork managed to keep the Doomfang here. By the looks of what he wrote in his notebook, the Doomfang is an insanely lethal dragon, and Bork was no dragon trainer."

Hiccup, suddenly curious, folded the two pages together and looked at the new words formed on the page.

"It says," Hiccup read, "The Doomfang guarding the potato has been poisoned by the Venomous Vorpent, but I was hindered in my desire to give the dragon the antidote, for I feared what would happen should the dragon be allergic. The dragon, out of what I believed to be his free will, now guards the potato. He either guards it, or he is waiting for the right opportunity to snatch it.

"Due to the dragon's own poison, the Venomous Vorpent's venom is not lethal; however, I do not know whether or not the dragon suffers its effects.

"Be warned. The ice is thin. If the Doomfang does not crack it, you certainly could."

Hiccup looked all the way across the large clearing at the potato, and he sighed. "This," he said, "is not going to be easy." He turned to Astrid in question. "Which of the two of us is lighter?" he asked.

"I...I don't know," said Astrid, "but Hiccup, this is dangerous. We should go back and get Stormfly-"

"Stormfly can't fit through the tunnel, Astrid, you know that," said Hiccup. "Alright, if we don't know who logically should go, I'll go."

"Hiccup, no," Astrid said, "let me go-"

"No," Hiccup said firmly. "I could lose Toothless. I couldn't bear the thought of losing you and him so close together. You both mean...everything to me."

Astrid's eyes softened, but she didn't look particularly reassured. She held out her hand. "At least let me hold the notebook," she said. "The lighter you travel the better."

Hiccup nodded, pulled Bork's notebook out of the satchel, and handed it over. Once Astrid had it in her hands, he took in a breath and, as lightly as he could, stepped forward, onto the impossibly thin ice.

The ice was much thinner than he could have ever feared. The instant his good foot stepped down, he heard a small crack, and although the ice didn't give way, it still filled him with dread.

Behind him, Astrid had her fist up to her mouth, silently gnawing on her knuckle, too filled with adrenaline-like fear to speak.

The Doomfang hovered under the ice beneath Hiccup's feet, but Hiccup did his best to ignore it. He took another step forward. The ice crackled, threatening to collapse, but it didn't, and for that, Hiccup was thankful.

He took another step forward.

The ice crackled.

The black blur followed him in the water beneath the ice.

Another step.

Another small crack.

Another blur following him like an upside down ominous rain cloud.

He took another step.

It continued like this for far longer than he could have ever hoped, but finally, as he took his fifteenth (or it could have been thirtieth; he really didn't care) step, the ice didn't bend slightly beneath his weight or crack like an empty threat. Instead, he found himself standing on the opposite side of the clearing, back on solid ice.

"Yes!" he cheered, moving his false foot off the thin ice to join his real one. Astrid, beaming, gave him a thumbs-up from the other side of the ice cavern.

"But Hiccup," said Astrid, "this doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful! Because for Thor's sake, be careful! You don't know what kind of boobytrap Bork could have fixed up!"

Hiccup wasn't exactly listening. He was too busy pulling his knife out of his satchel and beginning the seemingly endless task of chiseling the potato out of its ice encasement.

He could hear the Doomfang moving in the water beneath them, but he honestly couldn't have cared less what that dragon did as long as he got the potato back to Dragon's Edge and to Toothless. It was his last chance at saving his best friend, and he was going to risk anything for it.

He stabbed the knife and twisted it in the ice; a large chunk gave way, and Hiccup dug it out. This continued on until finally, he reached his goal.

He dropped the knife and closed his fist around the potato, being careful not to cut himself on the dagger already embedded in it.

They had done it.

Somehow, they had done it.

"I got it!" he called to Astrid, who did a celebratory fist-pump. The first thing Hiccup did when he had the potato in his hands was pull the dagger out of it; it was hard, as the potato had been frozen for Thor only knows how many years, but after he managed it, he stuffed the dagger in his satchel and was about to do the same with the cure.

But he heard a cracking sound again, and froze, quite involuntarily.

The cracking was louder than it had been before, when Hiccup had walked across the thin ice leading to the opposite side of the cavern.

He looked down at the ice.

The ice was cracking now; and it was cracking rapidly from a large circle of smaller cracks branching out like a spider web in all directions.

The Doomfang was trying to break his way out from below.

Astrid's action was instantaneous. "Hiccup, run!" she shouted.

As if Hiccup really needed prompting on that. He took off as fast as he dared, running as far away from the large, growing cracks in the center of the cavern as he could. He had nearly made it to the other side when the Doomfang broke out of the ice.

The dragon was huge. Ginormous. Not as big as it could have been, but still, it was a good sized dragon. Two to three times the size of a Monstrous Nightmare and as black as the sky at night, with long, curved fangs like giant tusks curving from a nasty overbite that showed off pearly white teeth.

The dragon's build said fight, but its eyes were sad, almost longing, though Hiccup still had yet to discover exactly why.

The Doomfang locked eyes on them.

"Astrid, run!" Hiccup shouted, and he turned to follow her.

But as luck would have it, at the last minute, the ice beneath Hiccup suddenly became unstable, and he lost his balance.

It all happened so quickly.

One moment, they had been running, and everything had looked as though it would turn out alright in the end.

The next moment, Hiccup had tripped, and the potato had somehow flown from his grip.

The Doomfang swooped beneath it and opened his mouth.

The dragon's monstrous jaws closed around the precious cure.

And just like that, the tides turned.