35. what happened to Berk

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As wonderful as things were for Hiccup on Selardalr that's how terrible things were going for Stoick and everyone else on Berk. Some actually had the hindsight to wonder if they had deserved all of this.

The once proud village of the Hairy Hooligans that stood tall against any kind of adversity now stood in utter ruin; the place was nothing but a mere shell of what it once was. The houses had more holes in them than cheese, some were even outlined by the vicious scorch marks of dragons. Though, that description only applied to the handful of houses that were still standing, while the majority laid in heaps of broken, splintered, burnt wood and hay on the ground. The unfortunate families who those houses once belonged to had been forced to seek shelter from either family or neighbors, in the Great Hall, or in the Chief's house on the hill. Stoick didn't mind it, in fact he liked the company since his house had been painfully quiet ever since he had driven his son away. Even the forge, the Great Hall, and the chief's house themselves were heavily damaged, and they didn't provide as much shelter as was needed for the heavy snowstorms that came around. They had tried to get the holes patched up as best they could. But they had been forced to expend so much wood the forest that once lied behind the village was nearly gone, and somehow leaks still managed to get through. This combined with the utter devastation of their food stores left people sick and starving, and their numbers were slowly growing, while their morale was quickly shrinking.

There was no question in anyone's mind that the last eight years had been all but hell for them, and they always found themselves questioning how it got so bad so fast. The answer always came, though, in the form of a certain young man who nowadays had assumed Hiccup's role as the new pariah of the village:

Snotlout.

It was three years ago today that Snotlout had assumed the role of chief from his uncle Stoick, since Stoick was so broken from the loss of his son, he was unable to perform his chiefly duties, remaining in his damaged house the whole time. Outside of meals, he would just sit in the large chair in his house and stoke the fires to keep it as warm as possible before going to bed. The people had the utmost sympathy for him; the last time he had suffered this greatly was 23 years ago when his wife Valka had been taken away and eaten by the dragons. Snotlout though, wasn't too interested in his predecessor's emotional health, he had obtained the right that he figured was always meant to be and was meant to be his should anything happen to Hiccup. Deep down, Snotlout had always wanted that to happen, and his constant tormenting of Hiccup had reflected the jealousy he felt that his pathetic cousin was to be the new chief. Everyone figured that Snotlout would be the better option when given the choice between the two, but when it had actually come to that, they finally saw the immense lapse in judgment they had made.

Nobody believed it to be possible, but ever since Snotlout became the chief, his ego had actually gotten bigger and he became more and more self-absorbed. Now he expected people to do ridiculous things like bow in his presence and kiss the dirt he walked on. He became more worried about whether he had some blemish on his face than he did the actual good of the village and whined like a sorry little baby whenever he didn't get what he wanted. Even when chaos was erupting all over and the whole of their society was collapsing in on itself, he just sat there in his seat being waited on hand and foot.

And then of course came the greatest catastrophe ever to befall the Hairy Hooligans in their tribe's entire history: his marriage problems. Snotlout, once he hit the age of 18, had proposed to Astrid; being the pompous showboat he was, he figured there was no way she could refuse his hand in marriage. Imagine his surprise when she spat in his face and refused outright.

But Snotlout was nothing if not persistent, ever since he was a child, though anyone else could easily call it obnoxious. Either way, he asked again, and she said no.

He asked again, and she said no again.

And he asked once more, and she said no once more.

Astrid had always been repulsed by Snotlout, regardless of how highly anyone else saw him. The truth is, she had been thinking hard all those few years, ever since that day she had been confronted with the harsh reality of her actions. Somewhere along the lines of feeling horrible guilt, she had started to admire some of the smaller qualities of Hiccup, from his inventiveness to his stick-to-it attitude. From there she started to think he was a bit cute, and she did always like how gracious Hiccup was in the face of his constant failures. And at some point, she realized she had fallen in love with him, insisting that her heart belonged to Hiccup and Hiccup alone. She would lie awake several nights with thoughts of the boy in her head, imagining him as the man he might have become if they were not cruel enough to drive him away. How handsome he would be, how much he might have been capable of, and what they might have done together.

When Snotlout asked for the millionth time, this time even offering a marriage contract with all the wealth the Jorgenson clan had to offer as extra insurance, he was sure he had her. The damaged reputation of her family name caused by the incident with her uncle, 'Fearless' Finn Hofferson, and the Flightmare, an eerie dragon that appeared only during Arvindale's Fire, could pressure her parents into forcing her to accept. As impossible as it seemed that she could resist such perfection, he had the gall to think he could buy her affections.

Luckily for her, Astrid found the marriage contract and ripped it to pieces long before her parents ever saw it; she marched up to his front door and beat the living crud out of him, and swore she would sooner kiss a dragon than marry him, and again, she refused. She couldn't care less about the blemish on her family name brought forth by her uncle's infamous failure or the wealth and status that would come with uniting with the chief's family – she wanted to marry for love, and the only one she loved, well, she didn't even know if he was alive or not.

And by then he was at his breaking point. Patience wasn't a virtue among Vikings, after all.

He figured he had to earn her attention first, though why just his existence or his appearance alone wasn't admiration-worthy to her he would never know. He had grabbed one of the dragons they still kept locked up in the Kill Ring and dragged it into the village to beat it to death so Astrid could see how strong he was. Naturally, there was no way he could control the dragon, and before he could even get it to the village center it ended up tearing most of the houses to pieces and swiping a large amount of food before escaping. This first attempt was with the Nadder, and he'd tried again with the Zippleback, then the Gronkle, and even with the Terror, and each try ended up with the same result. Numerous Vikings stuck in the healer's hut with grievous wounds and burns, their food and supplies severely lowered, and him flat on his face with a thousand angry glares pointed in his direction.

About a year ago, by a unanimous vote from the village and the council of elders, Snotlout was removed from the position as chief, which had been a joyous day for the people despite the boatload of complaining that Snotlout had done that topped any amount he had done before. Stoick was put back in the position, although he was still a broken man, and so Gobber and the elders had to take care of things in his place and make decisions for him. The man could hardly think anymore, instead just sitting quietly during meetings and the like.

By the time Stoick had finally decided to get it together and suck it up for the good of the people, he was faced with a dilemma that he had no conceivable solution for. Berk was on its last legs, and it wasn't long before it and its people would be little more than a memory.

No one blamed Astrid for all of this, though; no one in their right mind would marry Snotlout. People had by now lost every shred of respect they ever had for the idiot, and were compelled to throw fish, eels and vegetables that had long since rotted at him every time he passed by. They had always figured that at some point he was going to do something stupid once he got to be chief, it's just they never expected it would end in Berk's utter annihilation. If anything it served as a hard lesson that a true leader wasn't determined by the size of his muscles or how much he had accomplished, but by where he intended to guide his people.

In fact, as Stoick and the people of Berk looked back, on the day Snotlout became chief, there really wasn't much applause at all for what was supposed to be a happy occasion at the time. On that day, all anyone could think about was Hiccup. Every word of spite they had ever said to him, every form of rejection they had presented to him, and every moment of isolation he suffered as a result.

If they had bothered to give him the luxury of kindness that he, in all his rights as a human being deserved, perhaps he would still be with them. Perhaps if they let him, he would eventually show some kind of proof that he was fit to take his father's place as Berk's leader. Nobody liked the idea of such a scrawny boy being chief, but he sure as heck could have done a better job leading a tribe than Snotlout; Hiccup was more of an intellectual than a brawler, he would at least know what he was doing or have some kind of plan, no matter how ill-conceived it might have been at the start.

In fact, when Gobber had gone to clean out Hiccup's old room in the forge where he worked on his things, they had found all sorts of intricate designs for everything from home improvements to manufacturing facilities to construction devices and village defenses. Some he had recognized as improved versions of those already built by his hand, and served a major part in Berk's protection, while others had yet to be made, and in the old smith's eyes they were nothing short of ingenious. Hiccup had left all sorts of notes as to how they were supposed to operate, breaking down every mechanism and giving the exact specifics of the parts needed and strategic locations to place the works at and how to make the most of each one. A fully functional machine or building made to apply proper control and ease life on Berk in some aspect of every kind could be found on one of the many papers littered throughout the room, with every possible calculation of expenses, time, and results made to full extent, and to think it all came from the mind of one fifteen-year old boy.

For someone that young to be able to think and produce such creations that could have saved so much time and just as many lives was absolutely astonishing, all the villagers had to agree. Sadly, even Gobber, as smart as he was and how skillfully he could craft a weapon, could not even begin to piece together the complicated blueprints with all their dimensions, footnotes, and equations that Hiccup had made. Every attempt to try was left with a splitting headache and a pile of rubble that could barely even pass for the work in the drawing. Such tragically wasted potential, they all thought, to lose the chance to build the tools and devices Hiccup had left for them that would easily solve so many of their everyday dilemmas and advance their village forward to a level of progress unseen by any in the archipelago. Such ideas would just as easily made them untouchable to the dragons, and they had so foolishly driven out the only one who could properly construct them.

They all wondered where Hiccup was now – if he was lucky he would have made it on to some distant land where he was living happily, if he was lucky. But most figured that was not the case. He was so small and helpless when he left, unable to use any weapon other than a flimsy dagger, everyone figured he had probably died of starvation out in the wilderness or went the path of his mother and got killed and eaten by dragons long ago. Every time he so much as set foot outside the house it spelled danger for him and usually someone else: there was little chance he was still alive by this point.

In uncontrollable anger at the possibility that the remainder of his family had been stolen by the dragons, Stoick redoubled his efforts to find the nest, pouring every second of his time into his hunt. The rest of the world seemed to fade away as he devoted himself to his vengeance, one that even Gobber and Gothi had no hope of bringing him out of. It wasn't until Astrid had proposed the brilliant idea to use one of the dragons they had captured in the raids – a Terrible Terror – to guide them to the nest, that he could finally relax somewhat. A Terror would be easy to manage and it would no doubt know where the nest was like any other dragon.

The idea seemed so simple, everyone wondered why they hadn't thought of it years ago; they took the Terror, bound it in painful, heavy chains and belts, and secured it to the mast of a ship packed with several Vikings all armed to the teeth. Stoick readied himself for war, taking small solace in the fact that he would earn revenge for his wife and son...

... Only to find that the entire voyage was in vain. The Terror had managed to guide them to the nest with some confused difficulty, as if searching for something that was no longer there. When they had arrived, they were shocked to find the island in complete disarray, a large chasm in the main face of an inactive volcano of sorts. It seemed that the nest had been all but abandoned for Thor knows for how long, as there were no dragons to be found anywhere. But what really confused people was the aged burning scent that filled the air, and what appeared to be ashes spilled on the rocks littered all over the area. They had even found remnants of what appeared to be the bones of something massive – they could only assume it was some kind of terrible dragon the likes of which Berk had never seen. Something had burned and perished here, and it wasn't until they saw a pile of dried blood on one of the rocks was the worst assumed.

It was really a bittersweet moment for the Hooligans to find that their longtime enemies had seemingly left of their own accord. There was some happiness, seeing as the beasts had finally gained the common sense to realize they were outmatched and flew away to some remote corner of the world, hopefully never to be seen again. The Hooligans made up excuses like this all they could to bolster themselves and at the same time stoking the fires of their egos even more. But really, for them, and for Stoick most of all, everything that came after felt empty.

Now there were no more dragons, just like there was no more Hiccup: they really did seem to go hand in hand. Both caused trouble no matter where they were, but that still provided a sense of normalcy for them, being no strangers to hard times. One of their oldest and most sacred traditions was gone now – that was really the bottom line, and everything that came after seemed so empty now.

Stoick himself just seemed to feel numb at the whole thing, not bothering with petty jokes or the like. With his family gone, revenge was all he had to keep himself going. Now, though, there was nothing to take revenge on, nothing to do with that anger he built up except to let it melt away drudgingly slowly. What was he supposed to do? What was his reason for living now?

He tried to find that answer in some way when he had gone on hunts for his son several times in the past since that day eight years ago, at least once every month, in the hopes of finding his son and bringing him home, but always came home empty handed, with not even so much as a scrap of tunic. He wanted to believe so desperately that the blood he found in that spot was some kind of trick, and had even gone into a full state of denial. The Hooligans truly began to fear for their chief's mental well-being, and it wasn't until three years ago after a full, harsh conversation between him and Gobber that Stoick had to swallow it down and accept it.

Hiccup was dead.

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TO BE CONTINUED~~