Author's Notes: So we're heading into the homestretch with only 3 chapters (in 2 installments) left (after this one). To reassure, I am currently working on the last story in this series and it will come out this summer.

I'll have a few more things to say in my author's notes before and after the final installment.

Onwards.

Chapter Eight: It Will Consume You

When Valha's voice finally penetrated into Hiccup's distracted mind, Hiccup felt like he'd been living on another world the whole time. Somewhere far from any geographical map, a place where monsters didn't exist and the temperature was always just right and painful decisions were somebody else's problem. It was a good place, a peaceful place – the one deep inside his mind, a childhood realm he often went to in his younger days to escape a reality where he had no friends, no respect, and no future. He sometimes thought up contraptions and devices there, and in that wonderful little world they always worked as they were supposed to. No misfires, no collateral damage, no constant failure.

No pain.

He didn't know how long he had retreated into his inner world, but not much had changed in the outer one. The Wyrm now ignored them completely, set in its path for Valha's village. The terrain remained bland and featureless sand, even after miles and miles of travel. Toothless kept right on the creature's tail, seemingly unconcerned with Hiccup's long silence.

"Dragon Rider," said Valha. "We have been following for some time now. Is it not time for a new plan?"

Hiccup glanced at her, hesitating. He had had a lot of time to think in his inner world. He had come to a decision, a very dangerous one. If he was wrong, they would all pay for it in short order. If he was right… well, he may still pay for it anyway.

"It is time for a new plan," agreed Hiccup. "Toothless, hit the speed and get us as far ahead of the Wyrm as you can without losing sight of it."

As predicted, Toothless went top speed, first closing on the giant worm and then passing it. The Wyrm continued its trek without concern as the dragon put distance between them, keeping a parallel course by monitoring the sand geysers kicked up by the monster.

"Are we flying ahead to warn my people?" asked Valha.

Hiccup took a deep breath before answering. This was the official start of his plan, and there would be no backing out after this. By the Gods, he better be right about this.

"Actually, no," he replied. "We're going to do something really stupid-crazy, something I excel at."

"I don't understand," Valha said, her tone slightly suspicious. She must have taken a hint at Hiccup's true intentions. She was about to get a lot more hints.

Hiccup kept an eye of the sand geysers behind them. They were almost out of sight, so he had Toothless slow down as he began to explain himself. He wanted Valha to hear all this before he went full-on stupid-crazy.

"You know what it means to be a dragon rider? It's a lot of work, because dragons aren't like horses or mules that have lived alongside humans for eons. It's a partnership, not a master-and-pet relationship. Toothless and I have logged in a ton of flying time, and we know each other's habits and tendencies inside and out. Yet… yet we still have our disagreements when we fly. Some days we just pull against each other all day long. It's irritating, but it's what happens when you partner with someone."

"What does this have to do with your plan?"

"Well, you see, today Toothless has been perfect. Well, more accurately, he's been perfect since I met you. Toothless has done absolutely everything I've wanted him to do, without arguing or complaining or doing his stubborn dragon routine. He's been perfect, and I've never had a perfect flight with him in my life. And that's the problem."

"How is perfection a problem?"

Behind them, the Wyrm had shrunk to the size of a harmless earthworm, but they needed more distance. When Hiccup started the next leg of his plan, it was going to happen fast.

"Perfection doesn't exist, Valha," said Hiccup. "The only place it exists is in my mind. Toothless and I work great together, but he's only perfect in my dreams. And there are other things that have felt wrong today. Take for example Lothar, who just got eaten by a giant worm without much ado. A Hyperion dying like that? It's perfectly possible, I suppose. Except I didn't see his barrier field fire up when he was getting sandblasted. I know Hyperions have those – I've just never seen them in action."

Valha had grown silent again, and there was a serious edge to the silence, as if Valha knew where this explanation was going and didn't like it.

"Lothar also sounded a little too much like my friend Nestor for a second there, as if the holes in his personality were being filled in from my memories. And isn't it a little too convenient that he finds us out here in the desert just in time to help us out? In fact, how is it that I keep running into every giant monster that exists in the world? I know the Gods hate me, I'm certain of that, but they don't hate me this much."

The geysers were almost too small to see against the dunes now. They had a good lead. Hiccup did the math and deduced it was about time for the turnaround. Do or die time.

Hiccup leaned forward and whispered his next order into his bud's ear. The dragon banked hard to the right, dropped altitude until they were brushing past the tops of the dunes, and positioned them head on to the Wyrm. Toothless took it all very calmly, even though they were now on a collision course and would run right smack into the Wyrm like a fly ramming a fish barrel.

"What is this?" Valha asked. She should've been on the edge of freaking out right now, but she still had that peaceful, airy quality that seemed so soothing before. Hiccup wondered if anything could disturb her, and the thought disturbed him instead.

The Wyrm had decided to stop ignoring them and was now heading right for them, putting on speed and lifting tons of sand into the air as it accelerated. Hiccup felt his heart pumping hard in his chest as he considered how much this plan of his was like a game of chicken where the loser became dinner… and one player had no chance of losing.

That is, if you thought the game was between Toothless and the Wyrm.

"You know what the clincher was? Your name. It was one of the first things you told me, yet it was the last clue I picked up on, because I was still a believer in coincidence until now. My dad doesn't talk about my mom much, but he did me the honor of telling me her name – Valhallarama. Quite a mouthful, which was why my dad's pet name for her was a lot shorter – Valha."

Screwing up his courage, Hiccup unbuckled his harness, swung his legs up and around, and reversed his position so that he was staring straight at Valha and not the oncoming horror before him. Toothless kept right on course as Hiccup engaged in a staring contest with his passenger. He half-expected to see someone different, someone with translucent skin or a corpse-like face or a mouth with rotting teeth. He expected to see something inhuman riding behind him, so convinced that Valha wasn't what she said she was. But the same peaceful face greeted him as before. She didn't act shocked or aghast or even surprised, maintaining her calm façade without any concern for survival. He couldn't pick up any incriminating clues from her serene visage, and that reinforced his suspicions all the more. No one was this calm in the face of death.

"I don't know how you got inside my head," said Hiccup. "I don't know how much of this is real. I don't know what game you're playing or why. But I'm done. If that means I'm about to be worm food thirty seconds from now, then I'm worm food. But I won't be going down its throat alone."

A bellow erupted from ahead, the Wyrm expressing a warning or a challenge as it came for its afternoon feeding. He could hear the creature's army of rushing legs pushing the Wyrm along, growing louder by the second. It already sounded too close, but Hiccup refused to look. This game had to end, and he was facing the one person who could end it.

Valha finally broke up her calm demeanor with a little patronizing smile, as if Hiccup's suicidal course was so very precious. "Isn't this what you wanted?" she said. "A monster to fight, a victim to save? Isn't this better than what you were dealing with before?"

"I'm a Viking, Valha, or whatever your real name is. We face life head on. We face pain head on."

"Noble, but sad. Are you sure you want to end all this fun and go back to your misery?"

The horrid clicking sound that signaled the Wyrm's arrival filled the air. A titanic shadow reared above him, blocking the sun and shading Hiccup for the first time in hours. Hiccup desperately tried not to picture the Wyrm towering over them, its maw wide and angled downward, ready to thrust forward and swallow the tiny prey that had eagerly come to it.

"END THIS!"

Valha shrugged and then nodded her head. "Why not? It's spoiled now, I fear."

The world darkened around Hiccup as the Wyrm descended upon them, the sand and sun disappearing behind a wall of slick flesh and thousands of pointed teeth lining the walls. Hiccup saw the light wink out as the opening in the creature's maw closed behind Toothless, Hiccup's courage snapping apart as he smelled the fetid wind within the creature, heard the gurgles of the monster's inner workings. Few Vikings had ever had the honor of getting swallowed whole by a living creature, and Hiccup fervently wished that he hadn't just joined their ranks.

Had he been wrong the whole time? Had he just willing flown them into a giant worm's digestive tract? Guess he was about to find out.

He sat there in the dark, waiting for Toothless to run into the sides of the monsters and get speared or ground up by its teeth, and he found the creature's breath was growing weaker, the reverberations of its movements lessening. He thought his body had to be growing numb, for he couldn't feel Toothless underneath him any longer, nor the motion and power of flight. There was no sensation of freefall, no sudden impact, no pain, no anything. He reached out to grab Valha, but she was no longer there. He felt downward to find Toothless – no dragon below him.

His mind sought any sensation at all, any pinpoint of light, any touch, but the world had vanished around him, replaced by an endless, soundless void. Panic welled up in him. If this was the alternative to getting eaten by a giant worm, he didn't think it was an improvement.

"Valha!" he called out. His voice sounded like it was coming from a long ways away, as if it wasn't his own voice. "Toothless! Anyone!"

"No need to yell," said Valha's voice in his ear. "I never went away."

The darkness gained definition, a faint glow that had no source turning the shadows into a cloudy mist. The mist had to be the source of the light, glowing like fog reflecting a lantern's luminance. He was literally in the clouds, floating as if one might swim in the ocean. Only he couldn't swim in this foggy realm; no substance to push against and propel him onward. He was stuck where he was in the dimly lit void.

Like a specter rising from a haunted grave, Valha came into view off to his right, floating in the same manner he was. She had no trouble moving about, hovering toward him and halting a few feet away. She was back to her normal calm demeanor, as if everything was the way it should be.

"Where's Toothless?" demanded Hiccup.

"Where we left him," she answered. "At your side, as always."

"I don't understand."

"You will, shortly. I will say, Dragon Rider, that I am impressed by your deduction. Few humans ever determine that they are playing my game. Most want the world to fit the version that lives in their head, and they accept it even with its flaws and contradictions. Instead, you rebelled against it. I find this interesting, and it has been a long time since anything has interested me. Well done – as a reward, I will let you return to your life unhindered."

"That's it? You're just going to let me go?"

"Yes." She started raising her hands as if she was ready to throw some magic around, but Hiccup waved at her to hold on for a moment.

"Wait, wait, wait. If you actually are impressed with me, how about answering some questions?" Hiccup wasn't sure if taking the assertive route was wise concerning the power Valha was exhibiting over him, but he didn't think he could make things worse.

She seemed amused by Hiccup's curiosity, and she lowered her hands. "I will let you have five questions. Ask them wisely, and I may answer them wisely."

"Okay, let's go with the obvious one: who are you?"

Valha chuckled lightly. "That is not as obvious as you think. Any explanation I gave you would be inadequate. I will say this: I have seen this world in many different states – on fire, covered in ice, dominated by mighty creatures who were not mighty enough to save themselves. I was here when your species came to be – I will be here when it comes to naught."

As mysterious as her answer had been, Hiccup decided to let it go at that. He might blow all his questions that way and still not know who, or what, Valha really was. "Why did you do this to me?"

"Do it to you? I gave you something you yearned for, a distraction from your thoughts. I felt your suffering from miles away. It's easy to sense such things in the Desolation. So few living things abide here. I sent you an invitation, and you answered. You came to me, if you recall."

"Yeah, I did, but under a false pretense."

"You wanted someone to save. I gave you that someone. I entered your mind and created a monster for you to fight, a quest to undertake. In the process, I felt more intrigued and entertained than I have in centuries. Win-win, wouldn't you say?"

No, he wouldn't say. "All this was because you were bored? That's a bit sadistic."

"Yes," said Valha plainly, completely unapologetic. "But understand that I have inhabited this desert for eons and it is rare when a visitor comes into my domain. You take your opportunities when they present themselves. You have two questions left."

Oops. Better keep the snark to a minimum. "I've never seen Valha before, so I know she didn't come from my head. Did she ever really exist?"

"She did, a long time ago. Her village did exist once, back when the Desolation had life. This was the form I choose to interact with you. She was the last human I had contact with, and her tale was a tragic one in the end, though not by my will. A tale for another time, perhaps."

"Another time?" he blurted out, instantly regretting his reflexive mouth. "Wait, I didn't mean to ask that…"

"Yes you did. You wonder if I intend to haunt you, or to insert my influence into your life. I assure you that I mean you no harm, Dragon Rider. After all, had I a cruel streak in me, I would have met you like this."

The dark-skinned girl and her white robes vanished in an instant, her replacement taking her place a second later. Hiccup's throat tried to collapse in on itself as he gasped in shock, and it took a conscious effort to calm down before he could breathe again, Hiccup squeezing his eyes tight and gritting his teeth and telling himself that she wasn't real, she wasn't really here, she was just another phantom conjured by a cruel entity.

"This person is in your head all the time," spoke not-Valha, only her voice had changed to match the new phantom hovering before him. "Every second of your life, you think of her. This image, this thought, rules you. If you let it, it will consume you."

"Stop it," demanded Hiccup, his words laced with thick anger. "No more questions. Send her away and then send me back!"

"She is gone," said the voice, back to the normal Valha voice. Hiccup peeked a look and saw Valha floating before him instead. The cruelty had been brief, but the pain had been incredibly fierce, like a hot poker through his heart.

"She is not gone from your thoughts, though. Only you have that power."

Still shaken, Hiccup watched Valha as she raised her hands to shoulder height, palm outward, and shoved them in his direction. They never touched him, but he felt a gentle push enfold around him, like getting caught in the ocean tide. Valha began to recede from him, as did the lighted mist that surrounded him, as this transparent force took him speeding away and into the darkness.

His last memory of the being that went by his mother's nickname should have been the serene smile on her face, almost motherly, as she sent him on his way. But that wasn't his final impression at all. Because just before she disappeared into a pinpoint in the darkness, he thought he saw her… change. Perhaps she had let up on her disguise too soon, or perhaps he managed to see through her façade for the merest flash of a second, but what he saw wasn't human at all.

Well, maybe parts of it were, amidst all the tentacles and eyes.

As disturbed as he was, Hiccup found himself very sleepy all of a sudden, his mind clouding over and his body drifting into pleasant numbness as he drifted into the darkness. By the time the darkness was total again, the faint ember of Valha's realm swallowed up in the distance, he was fast asleep.

He became aware of two things immediately – a funny accent, and the feeling of slippery warmth all over his face.

"He stirs, at last," said the accented voice. "Give him room, Toothless, lest you drown him in your happiness."

Hiccup came awake with his back complaining about the rock bed he'd been napping on and his mouth as dry as a bone. He opened his eyes to a bright world again, only his particular part was shaded by an enthusiastic dragon standing over him, looking at him with unrepentant joy and occasionally sliming Hiccup's face with his tongue.

Another shadow drew knew, this one belonging to Lothar, the dragon standing over him from the opposite direction and frowning. Hiccup could easily guess why Lothar was unhappy with him, but right now he was so relieved to see the Hyperion that he felt little guilt. But he was sure to get to feeling guilty eventually. It was part of his nature.

"Can you hear me, Dragon Rider?" asked Lothar.

"I'm awake, I'm awake," Hiccup replied, patting his stalwart companion's nose and getting his hand licked in the process.

Lothar's frown deepened, making him seem very Arc-like in his disapproval. It must be a Hyperion characteristic. "Zis is vhat happens vhen ze young do not heed zeir elders. You run off into ze Desolation like a man touched in ze head. Vhat did you expect to find, Dragon Rider?"

"Ah… very long story." Hiccup gently pushed Toothless away so he could stand up and stretch out his sore back. He then noticed that he was in the same gorge that he had found Valha, right near the dead end and the cave…

Hiccup rocked back on his heels when he noticed the absence of the all-important cave that started all this. The rock face that had housed it was solid and crack free, as if the cave had been erased from reality. Hiccup looked around to see if he'd been dragged to another gorge while he was asleep, but all the local landmarks matched up.

"Uh, Lothar, do you see a cave here?" Hiccup pointed where the opening used to be.

"Should I?" Lothar stared at the wall for a moment, then shook his head. "Nein, no cave to speak of."

"Did you ever see a cave here, bud?" asked Hiccup to Toothless. The dragon only stared at him as if he'd just asked a brilliantly dumb question. It probably was, at least to Toothless's perspective.

"There never was a cave, was there?" he said to no one in pArcticular.

"Are you okay, Dragon Rider?" asked Lothar. "You're acting haunted."

"I think I was haunted. How'd you find us, Lothar?"

The Skrill nodded his head Toothless's direction. "Your dragon. He never left your side, yet he led me right to you. He vas launching fireballs into ze sky every few minutes, a beacon for rescuers, no doubt."

"Yeah, I taught him that." Hiccup rubbed his pal's face in appreciation, the dragon happily accepting the attention. "It was back when he couldn't fly on his own. In case something ever happened to me and we needed help, he was to send up a fireball every few whiles. Never had to use it until now. These days, I just assume he'll fly off to get help… but there wasn't anywhere to fly off to, was there, bud?" Toothless shook his head, agreeing with Hiccup.

"You've very lucky, Dragon Rider, as I knew of zese rocks and came zis direction," scolded Lothar. "Vhen I returned to ze watering hole, you vere missing. I did see some footprints in ze sand leading out into ze Desolation, which made no sense as you vere vith dragon and had no need of valking, yet I followed them. But zey vere scrubbed avay by ze vind before long, and I had to expand my search. Zat vas vhen I spotted ze Night Fury's beacon."

"You saw the footprints? I guess that much was real." Hiccup looked up at the sky, expecting the sun to be fading and the blue having shifted to a purple or gray color. But it didn't seem to be that much later in the day. There was certainly plenty of daylight left. His battle with the Wyrm had gone on for hours, yet little time in real life had passed.

It had all been in his head. He knew this now. He remembered his first moments in Valha's presence, seeing her on a dais in front of a cave that Toothless didn't seem to be paying attention to. Then a numbing feeling whipped through him and suddenly Toothless could see her and the cave. Suddenly there was a monster to fight and a girl to save. That had to have been the moment when he lost consciousness, slumping to the ground in front of the real Toothless as his mind began to dream of a epic quest supplied by Valha. The whole time he'd been here, sleeping on the rocks.

A terrible thought occurred to him – what if he was still dreaming? True, the dream world had had too many inconsistencies, too many errors due to Valha's imperfect story-telling skills, to be believed for long, but maybe she was better at it than she let on. What if he was in a new dream, a new scenario, still entertaining Valha, still flying through her hoops like a trained dragon? Would he ever really know what was real?

Then his buddy nipped playfully at his hand and Hiccup decided this was probably the real world. Toothless acted way too much like his usual self, right down to the annoying habits.

"You vere tricked by a spirit, veren't you?" asked Lothar. He scrutinized the rocks around him, as if he expected them to come alive and attack them. "I know zis place. I feel ze emanations of old power here. It cannot influence a Hyperion – ve are too vise in ze mystic arts to fall for such tricks. But your mind is unused to such influence. Zat is vhy I varned you."

"I think I'm going to listen to you from now on," said Hiccup. "The thing is… I don't think she was a spirit. She was… something else."

Lothar's frown returned as he looked at Hiccup. "Describe zis 'somezing else.'"

Hiccup did as best he could, and it made Lothar's frown change to a distressed expression, which was not an improvement. "Zat makes it vorse, I fear. Zere are beings in ze cosmos of such power zat you do not ever want zeir attention on you. Perhaps she vas not lying vhen she said she vould let you be… but you can never be sure."

Hiccup didn't reply. He wasn't sure of a lot of things anymore – this just added to the list.

They returned to the watering hole just as the sun reached its daily zenith and was now heading downward to the horizon. Hiccup and Toothless drank their fill again and snacked on Lothar's special jerky as Lothar explained the general direction they'd be traveling. It made little sense to fly under the withering sun, and the mated pair of Skrills wouldn't return until sundown, giving them several hours more to rest before the journey out of the Desolation began.

They would go to the coastline, a place only slightly less barren than the desert but with far more vegetation and life to it. From there, they would proceed north until they reached the Mediterranean Sea. It would be a journey of many days, but Lothar agreed to it on account of his kinship with Arc. Once Hiccup was in safer territory, he would continue on his own journey.

Lothar spoke little of his search for the Artisan artifact, and what little he did say was disappointing. The artifact's residual power had faded too quickly, and the sands had covered it up too thoroughly. On the plus side, it meant it would be hard for anyone to find. On the negative side, it meant it was still out there, where anyone could find it.

Needing rest for the evening's flight, Lothar dozed in a corner of the cave while Hiccup and Toothless lounged near the front. Having been essentially asleep for a good while, Hiccup had no urge to nap again, not until they had put some distance between them and this desert. Toothless catnapped while keeping an eye out for the Skrills, in case they came back early.

He tried not to think about Astrid or about Valha's final words to him, and naturally he failed on both counts. He wasn't about to take advice from something as enigmatic and casually cruel as Valha, but he couldn't quite dismiss her entirely. Astrid was always there, if not directly in his thoughts then right below the surface, and he could feel his memory of her dragging on him like an anchor on his soul. The irony was that Valha's fictional adventure had made him stop thinking about his loss for a time, even if the choice of adventure left something to be desired.

What now, then? How could he make peace with losing Astrid? She wasn't just some girl he had fallen for. She'd been there for him through his stupid and smart moments, when the storms hit and the sun came out to play. He had felt complete with her. Better than that, he had felt it was okay to be who he was in a world that treated most guys like him like one treated itchy skin. How could he get over that? How would he ever get over that?

Part of him wanted to go back home, find a way to get back some semblance of normality, ask his dad how you went on after losing the love of your life. Home was the place he could heal and maybe learn to move on with his life.

Yet the other part of him, the Astrid part of him, was yelling for him to get off his sorry horse and remember why he joined up with Nestor and Arc in the first place. There was evil out there, evil that threatened everything. He still had friends out there, separated by ill circumstances.

Astrid would never forgive him if he didn't find them. Astrid would never forgive him if he abandoned who he was out of grief. And if they ever met in Valhalla, she would definitely kick his butt until eternity came to an end if he turned his back on everything he had fought for.

He thought about Nestor, the young man that had so dramatically entered his life not so long ago. Like Toothless, like Astrid, he had changed Hiccup's life so much that his old life felt like it belonged to somebody else. Nestor was out there somewhere, probably in trouble, his typical reward for coming to Hiccup's rescue.

He owed it to Astrid, to Nestor, and to himself, to keep fighting. It hurt, and he knew it would hurt for a long time to come, but it was yet another occupational hazard of being a Viking.

No… it was the occupational hazard of being a champion. Courage and perseverance didn't belong to Vikings alone.

He gave Toothless a loving pat, the dragon barely registering it as he dozed, then got up and went for his riding armor, which remained stuck in the sand in a different corner of the cave. He picked it up and took it back to his seat next to Toothless, examined it. Its myssteel finish was mostly unblemished, but it had accumulated a lot of sand over time. It needed some TLC if he was going to put it to use again.

He grabbed a rag from a saddle satchel and started cleaning off the grit. He took his time – he had a lot of it to kill.