The chaps are divided in two parts, the first is in the present (five years into the future since the prologue) and the second part is going to explain the stuff that happened in those five years since Hiccup left Berk.

I made drawings of Camicazi as she appears in this story and her dragons, it's in my DA page, the link is on my profile.

Enjoy and Review! :D

Chapter 1

New beginnings

"Here it is, bud." Hiccup said and Toothless crooned in response. "This is Berk." The now young man whispered more to himself than to his best friend. "Five years have passed, and this place is still beautiful. I wonder how my father is doing. He is probably still strong and, well, stoic. I wonder if he misses me, bud. And Gobber as well. Sometimes I wish I had said goodbye back then."

They flew under the cover of the night, hidden by the darkness. It was probably around midnight, and the moon was in its new phase, which only made the night even darker. The breeze was icy cold, just like always, however it wasn't uncomfortable for either Hiccup or Toothless.

The young man looked down, the village was just like it had always been, almost like it was frozen in time. But he wondered if things had changed much since his departure. Hiccup usually didn't think much about the small village he had grown up in, though he thought about his father and Gobber once in a while. He also didn't come to Berk very often. But today was special. It had been exactly five years since he had decided to leave.

"Do you think my father resents me for running away? He probably doesn't even want to see me anymore. Maybe he even hates me, and the other teens are most likely ashamed of me…" He trailed off with sadness in his voice. A soft croon came from beneath him and he felt Toothless soothing him from his sorrow. Hiccup hadn't regretted his choice. It was the right thing to do, or at least, that is what he told himself.

The truth was that a little part of him was still somehow attached to this village. Maybe it was because what was left of his family was there and alive, and he wondered how they were. Or maybe it was just because of his past, the first 15 years of his life was spent there, after all. Sometimes he thought that if the people he knew from there were dead then he wouldn't feel so connected to this place. Whatever the reason was he shrugged it off and petted Toothless on his neck, getting the dragon's attention.

"Okay, bud, too many memories for one night, right? Let's go back home."

The Night Fury screeched with happiness and turned around in a dramatic way. They flew a little bit, doing tricks, and turns and just enjoying themselves, the sky was a special place for them both, their safe haven, where no one could get to or hurt them. No one was better or faster than them up in the sky. They were stronger together than they could have ever dreamed to be when they were apart.

And it is because of the feeling of strength and freedom that made them love to fly at night, trying new stuff. Sometimes, Hiccup would just free fall until he was very close to the ground, getting back into Toothless's saddle in the last possible moment before hitting the ground. Or they'd fly side by side as well with the new flying gear he made for himself. Sometimes they'd fly around sea stacks; he even tried to jump over a few of them. The greater the danger, the more interesting the maneuver was, and for them, no challenge was too big or risky. The adrenaline rush was simply amazing and made it all even more appealing.

However, it was a long way home, so they stopped on a very small island later that night, in order to rest and regain their strength to fly the next day.

Meanwhile, on Berk, the day was just beginning. Some fishermen were just returning, some were sailing, and others were preparing to sell what they had caught. The bread making Vikings were starting their breads and soon the whole village was wide awake and doing their jobs.

Gobber entered his forge, his empty forge, and sighed deeply. How he missed his scrawny little apprentice coming in early each morning. It took him a few years before he could accept another apprentice, and even so, no one seemed to be half as good as Hiccup was.

Hiccup was smart and patient, he could craft wonderful weaponry and contraptions that Gobber would probably never understand. He still kept a few of his sketches in the back of the forge, where Hiccup used to be when he wasn't making any weapons. He never really understood what the boy had meant to do with those sketches, but he kept them anyway just to have something from him.

The blacksmith was so lost in thought that he barely noticed Fishlegs enter and begin doing his routine, starting with sharpening the weapons costumers left the other day. The young man greeted his mentor, though he was not heard.

"No, Fishlegs." Gobber scolded "That's not the way you're supposed to do that, I told you the right way to angle the sword to get it nicely sharpened. How many times do I have to teach you the same thing?"

"Sorry, Gobber, I thought it was right."

"But it is not. I only had to show it once for…" The old warrior stopped himself in midsentence.

"I know that, Gobber, you already told me. But you know what, I'm not Hiccup. He's gone, deal with it." It may sound harsh, and actually it was, but Fishlegs had had enough.

He was never the perfect Viking like Snotlout, though he wasn't nearly as bullied as Hiccup was because he was big, bulky and strong. However, Fishlegs wasn't very coordinated and good at sports like the other Viking teens, so he felt a little out of place, thus, he was inclined to help Gobber at the forge. He thought it'd be something easy, after all, Hiccup used to do it. His hopes were soon crushed when he was yelled at countless times a day as Goober compared him to the scrawny boy, and how he was better than him. That was actually the reason why Gobber had never kept an apprentice for more than a week, in fact, Fishlegs was doing quite well, managing almost two months until now.

The blacksmith turned to look away at his apprentice's outburst. He knew he was right, though it hurt nonetheless.

"I-I'm sorry, Gobber, I didn't mean it like that…"

"Yes, you did, lad. But I don't blame you for it. It's been five years already, I know I have to stop comparing you to him, and it's not actually fair, I mean, Hiccup used to sit in the corner of the forge watching me work when he was old enough to be left here. Since Stoick was always too busy being a chief and Valka died in a dragon raid when he was still a baby. I got attached to him over the years and showed him how to make everything up when he was barely out of his diapers." Gobber let out in a sad voice. "Just keep sharpening the right way I showed you, I'll be back soon."

Fishlegs nodded at him as he turned and left to clear his head. He stopped at the cliff and looked over the horizon, just ocean as far as the eyes could see. The breeze burst in his face and he was about to go back to his work when he saw boats coming closer, he was not alarmed because he saw the Berk crest on them. It was probably Stoick and his men returning from another quest. He decided to greet them and went down to the docks just in time.

"So, did you find it this time?"

"Not even close." Said a very angry Stoick "That devil is extremely hard to find and is more slippery than anything I have ever seen, it's hard to get a trail of it, making that thing almost impossible to find, but I will for sure, mark my words."

Gobber sighed sadly as he helped his old friend get off of the ship that had just docked. They began walking in the direction of the village, away from the docks.

"Stoick, maybe it's time to let go." It was hard for the blacksmith to say it, for it was not something he wanted to do either. But time passed and he saw that this quest was turning his brother in arms into someone he was barely recognizing anymore.

The red haired man stopped and turned to his old friend with eyes cold as ice. His voice came out deep and raspy.

"Never. That devil took what was most precious to me. The only thing I had left that was more important than anything else I had. I'm going to find it, and I'm going to kill it."

Flashback 1

"HICCUP!" Astrid's voice echoed through the trees "Hiccup, Where are you? Get your ass back here right this instant! I'm not mad anymore but I'm about to be again. Everyone is waiting to see your final exam!" She kept shouting, and then, she got worried, he wasn't stupid to deliberately hide, right? "I was kidding about the vanishing thing, really! I'd like to kill the dragon, but I can wait a little longer, I mean it! You admitting I'm better was enough!"

Her yells had no answer, nothing but the quietness of the forest. Astrid had been looking for Hiccup for about two hours now, and she knew he used to come around this place; she did almost catch him once. He was supposed to enter the arena at least seven hours ago, and now the sun had nearly set. Sure he had this weird habit of disappearing for long periods of time, but it was never like this and never from something so important.

At first, the people only thought he was a bit nervous and anxious to kill his first dragon. A few hours later, people started to ask if they had actually seen the boy, it turned out, the last time anyone saw him was the night before. And then Stoick started to get worried, as well as Gobber, though they tried not to show it. A few hours later, she began worrying herself, and that was when she decided to look for him somewhere near the place she lost track of him in the woods.

Astrid was about to give up and turn back when she spotted a hole on the ground. Getting closer, the hole turned out to be a cove; a beautiful, relaxing and kinda eerie cove. Curious, she decided to go down there, through a narrow rocky trail. She was surprised to find a shield trapped between two rocks. Getting down, the girl soon passed through it, not really paying attention to why that object was there. She looked around, the place was empty.

"Nice place to be, though." She spoke to no one in particular. "Maybe I could just lay here and relax once in a while. Maybe this is the place Hiccup goes when he disappears."

Then, something caught her attention. The girl kneeled down and carefully grabbed a small black thing from the forest floor. She analyzed it for a moment. It took a few seconds to realize it was a scale, a dragon scale. But she had never seen a dragon so dark before. Her mind tried to go from cover to cover of the Dragon manual she had only read once. She was sure there was no dragon with black scales in there.

She looked for more of them, maybe she could find one of a different color and just go with the theory that this one in particular happened to be from a dragon that had a part of its body in black. It was rare, but she had seen a Monstrous Nightmare with red, yellow and a bit of black once.

However, she only found a few more of the pure pitch-black scales and something that made her freeze. Her hand trembled as she carefully reached it out to grab something else from the ground. A torn up piece of light green fabric, stained with dark red blood. Astrid gulped as she realized it was exactly the same kind of fabric from the shirts Hiccup wore every day.

She quickly covered her mouth, she wasn't going to yell, she just had to do it, maybe to contain a yelp from coming out. But nothing came. She was just too surprised and terrified. Her eyes soon found something else to add to her terror; a small trail of blood on a rock. She imagined the worst scenario possible, even though she didn't want to picture it.

It was Hiccup's, she knew that, for sure. And now it was all falling into place. She remembered the boy saying he had hit a Night Fury, the Vikings most feared dragon. No one knew what it looked like, but if she had to guess, she'd say it was a dark color, since it was so hard to see one at night. Maybe, even as dark as the scales she just found.

And if he really did hit the beast, there was a possibility it was recovering and waiting for the right moment to strike at the first victim it could find, which had happened to be a small ordinary boy wearing a light green shirt. Maybe, the beast killed him, mercilessly and just flew away, leaving behind only a few fallen scales, traces of blood from a probably desperate boy trying to flee, and a torn up piece of cloth also stained with blood. Astrid was horrified.

Tears slowly wet her eyes. Sure, Hiccup was not Astrid's favorite person, but she never hated him, she never mocked him or bullied him like the others did. In fact, she didn't really like the way they used to do that to the poor clumsy boy. So she just ignored him. And yes, he pissed her off sometimes, but he was a fellow Viking and Hooligan in the end. And now, he was gone.

She blamed herself; because the truth was that a small part of her (a really tiny part, but a part nonetheless) had actually wished that he'd just vanish. She did indeed. An irritating phrase was rumbling in her mind, almost piercing through her ears and echoing in a provocative way "Be careful what you wish for".

Her mouth was agape, but she couldn't make any word come out, and even if she could, she wouldn't know what to say. Hiccup was dead by now, and it was her fault for wishing it. For pushing him away. For being envious.

She pulled herself together and ran back to the village. She had to tell Stoick. As Astrid got closer and closer to the village, her pace began to slow. It was going to be hard to tell the Chief that he lost his heir, but she had to do so.

"Oh hey, Astrid, did you find Hiccup?" Gobber asked. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out of it. She inhaled deeply and gathered the courage she needed, then, she looked at Stoic, right beside Gobber.

"No." She finally found her voice. "I only found this."

Her shaking hands showed Stoick and Gobber what she was holding, which was the torn up bloody piece of shirt she found and some pitch-black dragon scales. Both men immediately recognized the fabric. Stoick grabbed Astrid's shoulder, and she could see the despair in the Chief's eyes.

"Where did you find it?"

Astrid showed them the cove. They stood there, terrified and with no reaction. Mouths agape. Stoick then asked them to leave him alone for a moment. It wasn't like the girl could stand being there any longer. Gobber gulped and turned away with difficulty, trying to hide a tear escaping stubbornly through his eyes. She soon returned to the village, still feeling guilty, and the blacksmith trudged off around the trees of the forest, struggling to go back to that forge he knew would be empty and lonely.

And for the first time in so many years, Stoick cried. He hadn't done that since his beloved wife had been taken away during a dragon raid. He didn't care, though, if a strong man didn't cry, for he had lost his son, his only son. Hiccup was dead, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was killed by a black-scaled monster, probably, the offspring of lightning and death itself. There was only one thing left for him to do, which was hunt down and kill the beast with his own hands.

Please don't forget to leave a review on you way out, I love reading them! They make me soooo happy!

Itban Fuyu