Hey, guys! ALMOST TWENTY REVIEWS LAST CHAPTER!? OH MY GOSH, GUYS, I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH! THANK YOU ALL SO SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOOOOOOOO MUCH! I'm glad you all enjoy this story! I'm having too much fun writing it, haha. :D Enjoy chapter 9! :D

As soon as Hiccup hit the water, he started sinking. He kicked his feet desperately, but with only one working leg and a prosthetic, it wasn't easy. He reached down, trying to undo the straps to his metal leg so he didn't get dragged down, but his hands were shaking too much. He couldn't see properly. The edges of his vision darkened due to lack of oxygen.

He couldn't get to the surface. He wouldn't be able to, even if he somehow managed to undo the straps to his prosthetic. He wouldn't be strong enough to swim to the surface. His legs and arms felt like jelly, and just keeping his eyes open was hard enough.

He started swallowing water automatically, just because it was his natural instinct, and he found he couldn't stop. He coughed, but it only made it worse. He was losing air fast, and there was no way for him to get more. Whenever he swallowed water, there was a sickly burning feeling the back of his throat, and no amount of coughing helped. He couldn't breathe. He swallowed more water than he wished to think about. He was choking, suffocating, drowning…

Dying.

He tried not to panic, but it happened anyways without his permission. He was going to fail his friends. He was going to die. Die, him, in a few moments if he didn't somehow get to the surface.

His eyes closed without his permission.

…

"HICCUP!" Astrid screamed as soon as she watched Dagur throw him overboard. She tried to get to him. She did, but she wasn't fast enough. She tried getting to him and stopping Dagur, but she was too late.

Now, she was really going to kill Dagur.

After she saved Hiccup, of course.

Stormfly and the other dragons fired at the catapults, and as soon as there was an opening, Astrid took it. "Cover us!" Astrid hollered to her friends, and they did as she had asked without much of a second thought, keeping the Berserkers occupied on them and not her.

Hiccup still didn't resurface, and that was what was most terrifying. Astrid shut her eyes briefly, and Stormfly flew straight into the ocean, underneath the waves.

She opened her eyes again and tried to locate Hiccup, but Stormfly was already on it. She shot downwards, towards the sinking dragon rider. Astrid saw him clearly, despite the darkness of the water: he was beyond pale, his eyes closed, his body still.

He wasn't moving.

"Hiccup!" she screamed, even though her air was running out and her voice sounded like a pathetic gurgle in the water. She reached out, grabbed him, hauled him on Stormfly's back, and patted the dragon to take them up again.

Stormfly got the message, and she darted back to the surface. Astrid gasped for breath, making a silent promise to never take advantage of air again. She hugged Hiccup tightly, his head on her shoulder, his arms hanging limply at his sides. Her happiness vanished when she realized he still wasn't moving. In fact, she couldn't even feel his chest rising and falling.

No. He had to be breathing. She wasn't going to believe otherwise.

"Guys, come on!" she shouted. "We have to get out of here!"

"Dagur still has the Dragon Eye!" Snotlout yelled back. "We can't leave without it! I'm going in to get it!"

Without waiting for a response, Hookfang dove downwards. The Nightmare breathed fire on the ship, knocking Dagur over in the process. The Dragon Eye rolled on the deck, and just before Snotlout had a chance to grab it, Dagur snatched it into his grip again.

"HA!" Dagur laughed, waving the Dragon Eye over his head in triumph. "I win! I ALWAYS win! HAHAHAHAA!"

As he was still cackling, the Terrible Terror lunged at him, grabbed the Dragon Eye, and shot back into the air. Dagur's laughing cut off abruptly. "NO!" he shouted at the dragon ."GIVE THAT BACK!"

In response, the dragon stuck his tongue out and handed the Dragon Eye to Snotlout. Snotlout then turned and flew off, followed by Scar.

"I WILL GET MY REVENGE, YOU HEAR ME!?" Dagur screamed. "YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF ME! THE DRAGON EYE IS MINE, AND I. WILL. HAVE IT!"

The riders weren't listening to him at that point, too far away to hear him screeching at them. Astrid was shaking Hiccup desperately, putting her ear against his chest.

"Is he alright!?" Snotlout demanded.

"No!" Astrid cried. "He isn't breathing!" She put her fingers at the pulse point on Hiccup's neck, and then put her ear over his chest again. "I can't hear his heart!"

That was all she had to say before the others panicked.

"There!" Snotlout shouted desperately. "A sea stack! Land on it!"

They didn't need to be told a second time. Their dragons landed on the sea stack in an orderly fashion, and Astrid stumbled off Stormfly's back, laying Hiccup on the ground in front of her. The others crowded around them, looking panicked.

"What do we do!?" Fishlegs panicked. "I don't know what to do!"

Ruffnut and Tuffnut, for possibly the first time in their lives, looked horrified.

Astrid didn't know what to do. She had seen other people do it once or twice when someone had drowned and swallowed too much water, but she didn't know how to go along with it. She knew Hiccup had water where his air was supposed to be, and she also knew that if he was going to breathe, he needed his lungs cleared.

She'd seen it done before, she didn't know how to do it, but that wasn't going to stop her. If she had a chance at saving Hiccup's life, she was going to take it.

So, she put her hands over Hiccup's chest and pushed down repeatedly as she tried to get her friend to breathe again. The whole time, she was sobbing, desperately trying to hold her tears back even though they fell anyway. If there was one thing that terrified her, it was losing Hiccup. Not so much him being sick or hurt, as long as he recovered and wasn't in pain, but losing him would just be too much

"Come on, Hiccup," she pleaded through her tears. "Come, on, please, breathe," she chanted between pushes. "Hiccup, please, breathe…"

She couldn't lose him.

She couldn't lose him.