Happy Christmas! (Hanukkah, Kawanzaa, Holidays, etc.)

As promised, here is chapter six before I take a little break for the holidays. I was really disappointed in the lack of response I recieved for the last chapter, so I hope to hear from a few more of you this time around. :) It's the holidays after all - giving and recieving and all that :)

I have a lot of comments at the end - stay tuned!

HORIZONS

Arc III : We Are Skuld

Chapter VI

Toothless peered upwards, his gaze trained on the horizon. His rider's mate was passed out beneath his wing, sound asleep finally, and the dragon was thankful for the reprieve. After practically pouncing on the girl who had shown admirable tenacity for being poisoned to the point of nearly dying, he'd managed to lick her wounds long enough to stave off the infection from wrecking anymore havoc on her already compromised immune system. Still, there was nothing he could do about the incessant coughing since she had breathed in the poisonous fumes of the very serpent that had practically wiped several decades off of his life from the stress of it all; his mortality had been the common focus of his thoughts for the last couple hours as the sun hovered in the sky, telling him it was close to midday.

He closed his eyes and sighed deeply, reaching out for that niggling sensation deep in the back of his mind. It had been wavering in and out of focus for some time now, and the ebony dragon could only assume that it was some sort of sign that Hiccup was eclipsing between consciousness and unconsciousness over and over again. The Night Fury's heart ached; he wanted so badly to find his brethren, the only family he had. He had to find his Hiccup. He had to save him.

He felt Astrid shift beneath his wing restlessly, and Toothless opened his eyes again. The exhaustion in his limbs was beginning to wane the longer he rested, although his joints were still stiff with exertion. He had had a hard few days, and that, combined with his age, had gotten the best of him.

Lifting his wing slightly, he gazed down at his hatchling's companion and nosed her closer to his body to keep her warm. His breath tousled her fur and he vaguely began to wonder what had happened to the Nadder that had become her companion. He vowed to look for her too, although he had grim expectations of her fate; she had taken a very hard hit to the chest when she and her rider had been taken down by the serpent the day before. Had he not been so distracted with his hatchling's reaction to it all, perhaps he would have been able to have seen where the blue and yellow dragon had landed.

Toothless swallowed the wave of guilt and lowered his wing again. For a moment, Toothless felt stripped of all that he had come to love. He was overwhelmed with the sudden grief, and although he fought to stave it off, he couldn't help but cry out in sorrow. His croon echoed mournfully throughout the pitiful expanse of barren trees covering the miserable breadth of land they had chosen to rest on, carrying on the wind.

An hour or so passed before he felt Astrid move beneath him again, slowly stirring from her agitated slumber. She combed her fingers through her hair as she fought to open her eyes, breathing in as deeply as she could manage as her knuckles clicked noisily. Distantly, she remembered how she had broken them on Snotlout's jaw shortly before she had left Berk for the unknown horizon; she frowned, wondering briefly as to what was happening back at home.

She cleared the sleep out of her eyes with the same hand before pulling herself up onto her side, wincing as the scab on her arm pulled painfully at the surrounding skin as she moved. Begrudgingly, she was somewhat thankful that the ebony dragon had taken it upon himself to keep her from killing herself, but it had still been disgusting. She'd only caved because of the desperation in his expression, and it was one she could rightfully concern herself with. Toothless couldn't leave the island without her, and despite all of her pride getting in the way of her wayward common sense, she knew that she was in no right condition to steer him.

Astrid got to her knees as the Night Fury pulled his wing from covering her body, watching her with concern from the corner of his eye. She was too prideful to accept help willingly and he kept any urges of helping her to himself, knowing that the appropriate time for that would come later. For now, he would simply allow her to fight this on her own; she was stronger than she looked despite her seeming fragility and obvious femininity. The journey had not been kind to her, and it showed as the noontime light threw her protruding cheekbones and sullen eyes into sharp relief.

Astrid sat back on her haunches, happy that her mind wasn't nearly as foggy as it had been earlier that morning. She could think now, and immediately her thoughts began to run rampant, circling around the events that had happened yesterday as well as the situation she had landed herself in today. She had zero supplies save the ones still strapped to Toothless' sides; turning her head, she realized that she had completely forgotten about the two small saddlebags and immediately started to dig through the one closest to her in hopes of rummaging up something that could help her at all.

She yanked out a spare jacket which she pulled on eagerly over her upper body. As she buttoned up the fur coat, she noticed a blood stain on the one side and swallowed uncomfortably, reminded of the boy who she wasn't currently able to save. She pinched the bridge of her nose tightly and squeezed her eyes shut as she buried her hand back into the bag, unwilling to continue the painful train of thought.

Next, her fingers brushed the leather bindings of a notebook, which she extracted very slowly. She placed the worn book carefully on her lap and delved into the bag again, withdrawing a pair of woolly socks as well as a small wrapping of dried fruits. She tore into the package and shoved a few of the rations into her mouth before stopping herself, staring guiltily down at the packet resting on the notebook in her lap. She took a few more before saving the other half and placing them back into the saddlebag for Hiccup, should she ever find him.

Using the seemingly dormant dragon as an anchor, Astrid pushed herself onto her feet and walked with far more vigour than she had earlier that morning to Toothless' opposite flank in order to empty the bag there was well. She found several other little supplies, including an empty water skin and a paring knife, before landing on a rolled up scroll crumpled at the bottom of the bag.

Intrigued, she brought her bounty over back to the other side of Toothless and opened the creased and wrinkled parchment, gasping when the stolen map from her Great Aunt's appeared beneath her fingers. She'd accused him of losing it some days ago and yet here it was, undamaged save the intricate charcoal additions dotting the western side of the map. Her eyes widened as she trailed the pad of her fingers across the various islands he had encountered on his travels, even going so far as to adding names to them.

She rolled the map back up gingerly and placed in back into the bag, forcing herself to gain some semblance of control again. The longer she waited and delayed, she knew, the less likely Hiccup was going to survive. She had an inkling that Toothless knew more about his situation than she did, and part of her wondered in their unlikely connection still existed between them. She glanced at the dragon's stormy expression and tried not to think about it.

She took another deep breath and tried to take stock of her current condition. As much as she wanted to relive the fact that she was Astrid Hofferson and nothing could stand in her way, she knew trying to do anything right now would only put both of them in danger. Chewing her lip, she knew she would have to bide her time and just wait a little bit longer. If she could garner just a little more strength before the sun went down, they could start their search of the surrounding islands on a blind hope of finding him still alive.

Stretching her arms and ignoring the snap in her fingers that constantly reminded her of her homeland, Astrid cracked open the leather bindings of Hiccup's notebook and slowly began to leaf through the brilliantly illustrated pages. Landscape after landscape stretched across the parchment, exemplifying many of the beautiful scenes he had come upon in his travels. Pines lightly dusted in snow dotted the corners as the rays of the rising sun took up the background, casting the mountainous horizons into wavering shadows that practically leapt off the page with their richness. Jutting crags of igneous rock sparkled in the daylight as a flawless rendition of Toothless laid sprawled beneath a giant spruce, basking in the intermittent light that filtered through the thick branches and snow covered needles that extended over the uppermost parts of the pages.

She rubbed her thumb against an errant sketch mark, blending the marring line in with the rest of the image. She realized that the notebooks she had stolen from him were lost now to the tides, having fallen along with all of her other gear when the serpent had destroyed the base of the volcano that they had taken refuge on nearly two days ago. The only thing she had left was her axe, which was resting at her side. Everything else was probably sitting somewhere at the bottom of the ocean; her food, her clothes, everything was gone.

Her breath hitched as she thought of her own dragon. She was no fool, and she had figured out the Nadder's grim fate without having to have seen it. She had heard the distinctive crunch of breaking limbs when the blue dragon had taken the brunt of the blow during the attack. She had seen the fruits of her lesions as Astrid had fallen to the ground; the Nadder's blood having stained her outer jacket now served as a beacon of a reminder in a pile to her left. Her emotions told her to burn it, but her common sense left it untouched until the evening when she would no doubt need to pull it on again.

She glanced back down at the notebook and flipped the page again and again, awed by the detail of every winter kissed scene described visually across the pages. The picturesque panoramas were eventually replaced by drawings of a completely different nature, however. She caught her breath in her throat as she gazed at a pair of dragons he had obviously encountered in his travels. The tallest was beautiful, magnificent even, whereas the other was a sickly looking blotchy thing, shaded deeply with charcoal. She leafed through the next few pieces and noticed that he had dedicated several pages to the baby dragon, which looked better and better with every sketch. Vaguely, she wondered about the circumstances that had brought them all together.

The sketches after these became few and far between, and much less detailed and refined. She reflected for a moment when she fell onto the blank parchment, turning back the leaf in order to take a better look at the final drawing. It looked like nothing but scribbles at first, but eventually she was able to make out a figure amidst the chaos on the page and quickly realized it was her. For a moment she wondered if the erratic roughness of the drawings had been a reflection of his own thoughts; she knew that he hadn't quite been in the greatest of places when she found him however long it was ago. She'd lost track of the days.

She closed the notebook and tucked it back into the saddlebag, rolling her shoulders to try and get out the kinks in her tired muscles. The motion started her into a coughing fit and she fought to try and keep it down, but the Night Fury beside her was already gazing back at her with barely shielded concern. She forced herself into breathing deeply as she gained control over her mutinous body, tightening her lips into a thin line. She locked gazes with Toothless and placed her gloved palm onto his withers, pressing firmly onto the scale covered skin.

"Hey," she croaked, her voice hoarse from coughing, "We'll find him."

Toothless maintained their locked stare, trying to gauge her condition. She was doing much better now that the poison wasn't affecting her blood stream directly, but the jaundiced pall of her features and the greenish tinge to her lips told him that she was still suffering from its effects. Her eyes weren't as glazed as they had been earlier, and the dragon couldn't help but admire the determination she had taken on in order to try and get over this ailment. She was remarkably obstinate, and the dragon knew from experience that this was a less than admirable trait, but occasionally it was something that could be applicably useful. And right now, as she tried so desperately to be the person she felt she needed to be, Toothless was somewhat grateful.

Without her, he wouldn't be able to move and she knew it. She also knew that if Hiccup was truly beyond the realms – as much as it hurt to admit – they would have to rely on each other in order to get back to safety. He didn't have particularly high hopes of her figuring out his tack anytime soon, but she had proven to be a quick study and Toothless supposed he could work with it.

After all, if they didn't make it to Hiccup in time, she would be the only option he had left.

Another hour passed, and Astrid finally felt strong enough to stand again. She was getting irritated with the sluggishness that was keeping her body from functioning at its fullest potential, but she was glad at least that she could think properly again. All of the deep breathing she had been trying to accomplish had only calmed her somewhat however, and when she fell into episodes of heavy coughing she tried to calm herself with fantasies of bringing that snake back to life just to throttle the soul out of it with her own bare hands all over again.

She pushed herself to her feet and blinked away the surge of pain that radiated all the way through her body, starting at her toes until it splayed throughout the base of her skull. She ground her teeth and began to walk slowly, trying to get the blood flowing back through her aching limbs yet again. Within minutes she was moving comfortably once more, pacing back and forth as the poison in her muscles eventually receded until she felt more or less normal again, save for the incessant laboured breathing that wouldn't go away. She was getting sick of sounding like one of the dying elderly every time she heaved.

Eventually Toothless stretched out his body and clambered onto his paws, gazing languidly at his improvised partner. She understood the gesture wordlessly and gathered the things she had taken from the saddlebags, placing them back into their respectful places. She pulled on the sullied jacket last of all before lugging her leg overtop of the Night Fury's shoulders and bending down to grasp the steering mechanism that controlled the black dragon's tail wing. They lifted off of the ground with a few heavy, laboured beats of his wings and Astrid watched as the ground all but disappeared beneath them.

She trusted Toothless to take them where they needed to go; after all, a dragon's senses were far superior to her own from what she could tell, and it wasn't like she could attribute much to their search anyway. Riding blind was one thing, but being bent double over her thigh as she was forced to adjust the pedal every five seconds was another. Besides steering, she was basically useless and in any other situation she would have been livid to be reduced to such a state.

For now though, she was happy to let Toothless take the lead.

They soared over several islands, and although Astrid's point of view was decidedly limited, she was able to take in a significant portion of the panorama. The destruction wreaked upon the beaches and coasts of the many small islets was substantial; the huge waves had wreaked havoc on the already wind worn patches of land, and errant shards of rock protruded like broken fingers from the ruined shorelines.

Toothless took a particularly sharp turn and Astrid was forced to compensate for it, sending her into a fit of hoarse coughs. Realizing his folly, the dragon balanced himself in the air and waited patiently for the girl to regain her focus; he kept reminding himself to be gentle, but his mind was Hel bent on finding his rider, not matter what the cost.

Astrid regained her composure after several shaking breaths and tried to concentrate again on what she was seeing. A part of her – the rational, battle steady side of her psyche – told her that there was no chance he could have held up in the jetsam. The hopeful side of her tried to argue half heartedly, but Astrid was running low on hope.

She squinted her eyes together as a recollection of memories flooded back to her in an instant. It felt like an age ago since she had left that little piece of parchment on the soup pot for the chieftain back when she wasn't sure Hiccup was going to make it. It was so hard, trying to take a page from her own tumultuous saga, and have faith in a boy who seemed to survive by the skin of his teeth no matter what the Norns threw at him.

But when the hits kept on coming at shorter and shorter intervals, would he still be able to withstand them?

She sighed, sparing one of her hands to brush her bangs from her eyes. The sun was starting to dip low in the sky, and she suspected that they would only have a few hours left to search before they would have to fall back for the night. By that point, they would be even less likely to find him. By that point, the only thing they might find is a corpse.

Shuddering at the thought, she let her mind drift back to the fate of her own faithful dragon, and her heart ached again. She gnawed at the inside of her cheek anxiously. She should be looking for her too. After coughing a few times, she tugged her rough, flaking lips between her teeth and set her mind on finding a smudge of blue and yellow on the islands, if only to distract herself.

Toothless jerked roughly again, sending Astrid into another bout of wheezing, but the Night Fury didn't wait this time until she recovered. Her eyes watered as she was forced to compensate, and Toothless took off like a shot in the opposite direction from where they had come, his eyes drawn into slits.

She held on for dear life, half nauseous and half choking as the ebony dragon raced like a bat out of Hel towards nowhere in particular. If she could have been able to breathe, Astrid imagined she would have been screaming, but she was too busy suffocating to even think properly, let alone screech obscenities at the Night Fury carrying her as if she were nothing more than a sack.

He pitched violently to the left, and Astrid scrambled to keep her grasp on the weather beaten saddle. It was like he was following some sort of scent in the air, and Astrid would have asked him if she hadn't been so busy trying to catch her breath as well as adjusting the clutch in order to keep up with his constant changes in direction.

Toothless flattened his wings to his side, chasing after the faintest of trails hanging in tatters on the wind. He wasn't sure if it was tangible; for all he knew of his fast escaping sanity, he very well could have been imagining it.

But of this he was sure of – he had breathed her scent before.

Hiccup moaned, spurred roughly to semi-consciousness. Something had nudged him in the face, but he had forgotten about it before it even registered.

He was on his back, and he didn't have the strength to open his eyes. Vaguely, he realized that he could feel his legs again, but like all of his muddled thoughts before this, these observations were quickly lost to the recesses of his mind.

Again, something gently prodded him on the forehead, and this time Hiccup's addled mind took some time to focus of the unwelcome feeling. Had he been in a more or less stable frame of mind, he would have registered the moist gust of breath against his temple or the roughness of the object bumping against his salt ravaged skin. But now, as he lay there, still soaking and delirious, Hiccup catalogued none of these things save for the throbbing pain that had taken over his body.

Something stomped loudly beside his ear and he was jostled slightly more forcefully this time, driving his head to loll to one side. Hiccup moaned again, grimacing as the pain from the unnecessary movement shot down through his spine towards his toes. The jolt spurred a string of phantom pains that racked the rest of his calf muscle as well as the muscles of his upper leg and bright lights danced behind his eyelids. His frown turned into a pained cringe and he twitched in contortion before sagging inertly, falling back into the void of unconsciousness once more.

He awoke again to a furious flurry of movement and noises that didn't sound even remotely human to his groggy, addled mind. He hissed as the racket got louder in his ears, the clamour tinny and uncomfortable. He couldn't concentrate long enough on the sounds of his surroundings to properly absorb them.

He felt something warm on his face – possibly on his cheeks – before he heard the voice that accompanied the gentle touch. His bangs were pushed away from his eyes and something was combed through his matted hair before returning to his face. They started travelling down his neck, his shoulders, before burrowing beneath his arm pits and hoisting his upwards.

Hiccup groaned as the motion jarred what could have been his left arm, but the pain was so encompassing that he couldn't pinpoint the actual source. He was set down almost as fast as he was lifted, which only made his anguish all the more frustrating. He felt the telltale signs of oblivion coming at him and was more than willing to succumb to the nothingness when he was jolted from his reverie, awoken by the silken tone of a familiar party in his ear.

"Hiccup!"

He'd nearly forgotten his own name until she had spoken it, and he tried to open his eyes. He only managed to reply with a whimper as her lower arm snaked between the small of his back and the sodden ground, joining with her other appendage that was just barely grazing the tattered clothing on his abdomen.

She pulled him slowly, eventually tugging him up so that his head and shoulders were more or less resting in her lap. From there, she pulled him towards her until she had made it onto her knees, but by that time his saviour was coughing so violently that she had to let go of him. He landed with a thud and blacked out shortly after the impact, sprawled limply at her knees.

Astrid panicked and quickly turned towards Toothless for help. The Night Fury had finally gotten past the very same white dragon she had seen drawn in Hiccup's sketch book earlier that day, but she couldn't have cared less about whatever dragon politics the two were arguing over. Upon seeing Astrid's alarmed expression, the smaller of the two quarrelling dragons raced over and curled around his hatchling defensively, nearly pushing Astrid straight onto the ground in the process.

Scrambling to her feet, Astrid tried to think of ways to make herself useful. She was feeling worse and worse by the minute and the sun was beginning to disappear, but at that moment she realized that she had to make a fire. Weakly, she unhooked her axe from her back and let it fall to the ground, rather than wasting energy on catching it and swinging it up around. She picked it up off of the sand and made her way towards the small forest behind her at once.

She felled two of the smaller trees and went to try and haul them back towards their makeshift encampment when an unfamiliar but instantly recognizable basic brown trotted up beside her and began to pull the fallen tree with his teeth. Surprised, but adapting quickly, Astrid started dragging the other shaft with considerably more difficulty until the russet coloured dragon came and took over.

Breathing heavily, Astrid caught up with the baby that she had seen in Hiccup's portraits, but didn't dwell too long on its appearance. She started to hack away at the trunk in order to make the wood smaller, and from the corner of her eye she could see that the younger dragon was doing the same by trouncing on the lumber with its forepaws. Eventually, and after several seemingly unrelenting coughing fits, Astrid managed to make the foundations of a fire to which the basic brown was more than eager to light.

As the fire continued to spread, Toothless rose from his protective crouch and beckoned Astrid over with a cock of his head. She complied without even thinking and together, they managed to drag Hiccup towards the fire without causing him too much obvious torture. Astrid immediately started stripping him of his tattered, damp clothing and threw it all into a pile before replacing it with some of her own. She shivered, but didn't otherwise show any signs of discomfort as she pushed herself up again in order to drive a few branches into the ground so that his clothes had something to dry on.

The snow dragoness had been watching from afar the entire time, unsure as to whether she should have interfered or not. The Night Fury wasn't willing to delve into details and her adopted hatchling had taken in upon himself to go and help in any way that he could. Admittedly, she was a sympathetic creature, but she was also old enough to know her place. She settled herself onto her belly and simply watched as the events before her unfolded.

She had felt the change in the winds when the creature had fallen and she wasn't sure how exactly the equilibrium would change, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that the pair, as well as their newest addition, had inadvertently released a hundred new problems with every intention of solving one. After all, how could something not happen after the defeat of a creature that had been lurking in the seas since the very dawning of time?

She placed her head on her paws, realizing that she and her hatchling would have to leave immediately if they wanted to get out before all Hel broke loose.

Thank you for reading! I hoped you enjoyed the chapter as well as the very omnious ending! Think of it this way; at least it wasn't a cliffhanger!

Thank you Sir Nick!

First off, if you haven't already checked it out, I released a series of drabbles the other day titled Shuffle, Shake and Shimmy since they were based on my iTunes shuffle. Leave me a review if you enjoyed them and let me know if you'd like to see any of them expanded - I might just consider it :)

Secondly, httyd-fanarts on deviantArt is having a bidding contest and I'm currently the highest bid author so far for a one-shot of the bidder's choice. Check it out if you're interested in bidding on any of the amazing artists feautured; there is only a few days left!

Lastly, I'm slowly starting to get all of my stories up onto dA. At this point I have totally resigned myself to the fact that while I have a grasp more or less on drawing, I am the worst at colouring in the history of colouring. I can't colour with pencil crayons, I can't colour with charcoal and digital painting is the bane of my existance. So, I was wondering: do any of you use Gimp as a way to colour digitally? If so, do you have any tips that you could offer me? I really want to get better but, unlike writing, art isn't something I'm naturally good at!

See you all in 2012! We're almost at the conclusion of Horizons! Can you believe it?

Brontë