Chapter 1

Hiccup was awoken to the sound of roaring and screaming, making him swipe the sleep from his eyes and run towards the door. Clasping his clammy hands around the handle, he threw the door open, and the first thing he saw through the doorway made his eyes widen in fear.

A huge beast with horns and claws and teeth shot a column of flames straight towards him, and he hastily slammed the door closed to escape the creature with billowing wings.

"Dragons," he whispered.

For the second time that month, Berk was under attack.

Within seconds he was on the move, swinging open the charred door and running through the chaos. The sky was lit with fire, and ash stung his nose. Dragons were swooping in left and right, stolen food clutched between their talons.

He raced through the mix of leather and scales, getting pushed around and knocked over by huge Vikings shouting at him to stay out of the way.

"What are you doing here?!"

"Get inside!"

"What are you doing out?!"

"Get back inside!"

Hiccup ignored their remarks, and almost succeeded in running straight into the path of a fire spewing dragon. He was suddenly pulled back by his shirt and lifted off the ground by a huge hand, saving him from the molten hot dragon fire.

"Hiccup!" The owner of the large hand yelled, looking at the people around him, as if they were at fault for him being out, "What is he doing..? What are you doing out?! Get Inside!"

The huge man with large hands and a mane of red hair threw him towards the forge. The man was Stoick the Vast, Chief of the tribe, and Hiccup watched as he threw a nearby empty cart directly at a dragon flying away with a sheep.

Hiccup ran away as fast as he could, just about catching the raid report.

"What have we got?" The Chief asked.

"Gronckles, Nadders, Zipplebacks, oh, and Hoark saw a Monstrous Nightmare," one of the villagers replied.

As Hiccup ran towards the forge, the words rang in his brain.

Gronckles were fairly small dragons, but they made up for it with pure strength. A single Gronckle could take an entire house down just by flying into it, not to mention the fact that they spewed lava. Deadly Nadders were one of the most beautiful species, but their beauty came with poisoned tail spines and the hottest fire of any other dragon. Definitely the most mischievous dragon species was the Hideous Zippleback, they had two heads that worked together to create massive explosions. Monstrous Nightmares were only sought after by the toughest Vikings, not only because of their huge talons and mighty wings, but because they had this nasty habit of setting themselves on fire.

"Hoist the torches!" A man screamed, bringing Hiccup out of his thoughts.

The giant torches were lifted into the sky just as Hiccup entered the forge, where he was greeted by a two limbed Viking who acted as his mentor and only friend.

"Nice of you to join the party," Gobber exclaimed, waving at him with his hook, "I thought you'd been carried off."

"Oh, who me?" Hiccup responded sarcastically, putting on his apron and hoisting a hammer back onto the wall, "Come on, I'm way too muscular for their taste. They wouldn't know what to do with all this." he proceeded to flex his nonexistent muscles.

"Well, they need toothpicks don't they?"

Hiccup rolled his eyes and shuffled over to the window, throwing it open and picking up the ruined weapons set there by some Vikings. He lifted the weapons with struggle, placing them on the already hot coals and pumping the bellows to make the fire glow brighter.

As fast as he could, he fixed the bent edges of the swords and axes, handing them back out to their owners in somewhat usable shape. There were already new broken weapons laying on the windowsill, and as he moved to pick them up, he saw the other teens his age race by him.

Astrid, per usual, was leading the group. She was the fiercest Viking of their age, with braided blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. Fishlegs was the brain of the group, which was surprising since he was the only one of them who inherited the signature Viking plumpness. The twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut, were the biggest trouble makers on the island, and though they weren't born identical, it was almost impossible to tell them apart. Then there was Snotlout, who had the biggest ego of anyone else on the planet-which baffled Hiccup because he had incredibly ugly black hair and was shorter than he was-and he had made it his personal mission to make Hiccup's life absolutely miserable.

The teens were all filling up their buckets at the water barrel, and he watched as they ran around throwing water over any fire in sight. As Astrid put out a fire, a huge explosion landed just feet behind her, and yet she kept walking calmly forward, congregating with the other teens.

Hiccup watched, amazed as they ran back towards the water barrel, the explosion creating a blazing backdrop behind them. Though their efforts didn't really do anything to relieve the damage cast upon the village, he still thought that their job was way cooler than his.

He poked his head farther out the window, trying to see where they were going, but he was pulled out by a very familiar hook.

"Aw come on," he complained, hanging by his shirt for the second time that night, "let me out, please. I need to make my mark."

"Oh, you've made plenty of marks," Gobber said, setting him down, "all in the wrong places."

"Please, just two minutes, I'll kill a dragon, my life will get infinitely better, I might even get a date," he argued, gesturing with his hands.

Gobber scoffed, exasperated.

"You can't lift a hammer, you can't swing an ax, you can't even throw one of these," he lifted a bola, which was then snatched by a nearby Viking.

The Viking threw it into the air, bringing a Gronckle to the ground.

"Okay, fine, but this will throw it for me," Hiccup said, placing his hand on the bola launcher he designed.

The machine was activated the second his hand scraped the wood, a bola launching out of it. Hiccup lept back in fright, and Gobber yelped as he dodged the flying weapon. The bola flew behind him, narrowly missing one Viking and hitting the next in line on the head, knocking him out cold.

"See?" Gobber exclaimed, stalking towards him,"Now this right here is what I'm talking about."

Hiccup stuttered, "It was a mild calibration issue-"

"Hiccup, if you ever want to get out there to fight dragons, you need to stop all this," He said, gesturing to literally all of Hiccup.

"But you just pointed to all of me," he gestured to himself.

"Yes, that's it! Stop being all of you."

"Ohhh,"

"Oh, yes."

"You, sir, are playing a dangerous game," Hiccup said, pointing at Gobber, "keeping this much raw Vikingness contained? There will be consequences!"

"I'll take my chances," Gobber replied, handing Hiccup a sword, "sword. Sharpen. Now.

Hiccup held the sword with his elbows, struggling under its weight, before grumpily setting it on the sharpener. His hands moved the sword around by instinct, and he took a moment to revel in the familiar task. He twisted the sword from side to side until the edges were as pristine as they were when it was first made.

Blacksmithing seemed to be the only thing Hiccup was even remotely good at. His father had made him Gobber's apprentice when he had been getting into too much trouble when he was little. Hiccup also had suspicions that his father had made him start working in the forge because he didn't think he'd be much good for anything else. He made too many mistakes, too many broken houses, that his father decided he needed to become useful.

And useful did he become. It turned out, Hiccup was extremely adept at making tools. Since he was given the opportunity to mold his first knife, the village has never had better weapons. For years he loved making swords and axes and maces, until one day, even making the most intricate of designs onto weapons was just not enough for him. So, he started inventing new things, things that tended to cause a bit of damage.

Suddenly, a loud piercing noise shot through the air. A whistle Hiccup knew all too well. It was the calling card of the Night Fury.

Right on cue, yells filled the air.

"Night Fury!"

"Get down!"

A huge blast is shot out of nowhere, exploding a nearby catapult tower, and a dark shape could just be seen swooping over the flames. The Vikings on the tower jumped to escape, and Hiccup flinched as it crumbled to the ground. He watched as the whistle filled his ears again, and the dragon swooped back in to land another blow. 

The Night Fury was the most elusive and dangerous dragon species Vikings had ever heard of. It never stole food, never showed itself, and never missed a shot. Every time Hiccup heard the Night Fury whistle, a thrill ran through his body. No Viking alive had ever killed a Night Fury, that was why Hiccup was going to be the first.

"Man the fort, Hiccup," Hiccup heard Gobber say, "they need me out there."

Gobber waddled over to the Forge doorway, before thinking better of it and turning back to Hiccup.

"Stay. Put. There. You know what I mean," Gobber told Hiccup, before turning around and running into battle, yelling a battle cry.

Hiccup waited for a couple of seconds until Gobber was out of sight. Then he ran to get the bola launcher, which he had nicknamed the Mangler. He weaved through Vikings as he pushed the Mangler along, completely ignoring all of the villagers screaming at him to get back inside.

He kept running until he reached his destination, setting the Mangler down on a small cliff just outside of the village that was shrouded in darkness, allowing him to better see the stars. As fast as he could, he set the Mangler up, readying it to shoot.

The sky was littered with stars, and his eyes scanned through it. There was a roar that pierced the night, somehow the only thing to be heard despite the battle raging on in the village.

"Come on," he muttered to himself, "Give me something to shoot at, give me something to shoot at."

Suddenly, his eyes caught a shadow racing across the stars, leaving a familiar roar in its wake. He looked through the Sight and tracked the shadow across the sky. As he expected, the Night Fury whistle started to fill the sky, making electricity shoot down his spine.

A shot blasted from the dragon, hitting another catapult tower. Just as the shadow swooped over the wreckage, Hiccup let his shot fly. The second Hiccup pushed the lever, he was violently launched back, something he had not accounted for when designing the Mangler.

He had really got to start calculating all the side effects of his inventions.

For a moment he was airborne, before he hit the ground hard, tumbling backwards. He scrambled onto his hands and knees as fast as he could, and watched as the bola hit home. The dragon was knocked out of the sky, letting out a sickening scream as it fell somewhere near Raven Point.

"I hit it," Hiccup whispered, before jumping up and shouting for joy, "yes, I hit it! Did anybody see that?"

He turned around looking for witnesses, but then a growling sound from behind him.

"Except for you," he whimpered, a Monstrous Nightmare standing before him.

The dragon reared its head back, getting ready to strike. So, Hiccup did what did far more often than he wanted to. He ran.

He sprinted as fast as he could, screaming as the dragon shot streams of fire at him. The dragon chased him through half the village, while Hiccup searched for an escape. His eyes caught the pole of one of the torches, and he scrambled to get behind it.

Yet the dragon would not relent. Fire licked at the wood around him, making him squeeze his body closer together. When he heard the blast cease, he slowly turned to look behind the pole. Suddenly, the Chief came crashing out of nowhere, a blur of red hair and brown fur. He knocked the dragon's head away from Hiccup, and Hiccup wondered how he hadn't seen the dragon

Stoick stood face to face with the Nightmare, and he watched as the dragon spewed out a pathetically small stream of fire, the flames not even reaching his boots.

"You're all out," Stoick whispered, before running up and punching the dragon in the snout.

The Chief continued throwing out a flurry of punches, and the dragon's head snapped left and right, and up and down. He finally gave the Nightmare one last final kick, making the dragon let out a pathetic screech and lift itself off the ground.

Stoick huffed as it flew away, turning around to look at Hiccup.

The beam he was hiding behind suddenly fell over, burned through by the fire. Hiccup watched as the torch fell to the ground, wincing everytime it hit the ground as it rolled down the hill, leaving a path of fire and destruction in its wake.

"Sorry, Dad," Hiccup said to the Chief.

The sun was starting to come up, and dragons were flying away from the wrecked village, carrying sheep between their jaws and talons.

"Okay, but I hit a Night Fury," Hiccup said, turning back to Stoick.

His father angrily grabbed Hiccup by the shoulder, starting to parade him back to the house. It seemed the entire village had gathered to watch Hiccup try to explain his latest catastrophe, their eyes following him with disdain.

"It's not like the last few times, Dad," Hiccup tried to explain, "I mean I really actually hit it. You guys were busy, and I had a very clear shot. It went down somewhere off Raven Point. Let's get a search party-"

"Stop!" Stoick yelled, interrupting him, "Just stop. Everytime you step outside, disaster follows. Can you not see that I have bigger problems? Winter is almost here and I have an entire village to feed.

"Well, between you and me, the village could do with a little less feeding, don't you think?" Hiccup responded, making several people rub their bellies in offense.

"This isn't a joke, Hiccup," Stoick groaned, "why can't you follow the simplest orders?"

"I-I can't stop myself. I see a dragon, and I have to just kill it," he gestured with his hands, "it's who I am, Dad."

"Oh, you're many things, Hiccup. But a dragon killer is not one of them. Get back to the house. Make sure he gets there," the Chief said to Gobber, who walked up and hit Hiccup not so gently on the head, "I have to clean his mess up."

The people had started to disperse, but the other teens were still there as he walked by.

"Quite the performance," Tuffnut said, his twin laughing along with him.

"I've never seen anyone mess up that badly. That helped," Snotlout jeered.

"Thank you, thank you. I was trying," Hiccup responded sarcastically.

His spirits were lifted ever so slightly when Gobber hit Snotlout over the head, knocking him to the ground. But they were quickly brought back down again when Snotlout stood right back up, letting out an embarrassed laugh.

Hiccup and Gobber walked in silence towards his house, which was located on top of a very high hill. There had been many days when Hiccup fell through the doorway completely out of breath because he was running up the hill to get home. He wished he could say that he wasn't usually running from something, or someone.

"I really did hit one," Hiccup tried to explain as they neared the house, yellow and orange painting the horizon.

"Sure Hiccup," Gobber responded gently.

"He never listens."

"It runs in the family."

"And when he does, it's with this disappointed scowl, like someone skimped on the meat in his sandwich," he started imitating his father's voice, gesturing with his arms, "'Excuse me, barmaid. I'm afraid you brought me the wrong offspring. I ordered an extra-large boy with beefy arms, extra guts and glory on the side. This here, this is a talking fishbone,'" he finished dejectedly.

"You're thinking about this all wrong," Gobber said, trying to cheer him up, "It's not so much what you look like, it's what's inside that he can't stand."

Hiccup gave him a look of bewilderment, did Gobber really think that that would help?

"Thank you for summing that up," Hiccup deadpanned, turning to open the door.

"Look, the point is," Gobber stopped him, "stop trying so hard to be something you're not."

"I just want to be one of you guys," Hiccup responded with sorrow and pain filling his voice, before he turned and walked through the door.

Hiccup stood in the house for a second, letting himself wallow in self-pity, before ordering his legs to move. Instead of going up to his room like he was supposed to, he quickly grabbed his sketch book and a pencil, stumbling out of the back door and racing out into the forest.

* * *

Hiccup walked through the mist-covered forest, holding a hastily drawn map in his sketchbook. He had drawn the trajectory of the dragon being shot over the village to Raven Point, and x's now littered the map of where he had searched.

He looked up from the book, letting out a defeated sigh. In his anger, he scribbled all over the page in frustration, before sticking the pencil in the book and snapping it shut.  Hiccup had been searching for the Night Fury for hours, yet he couldn't find a single trace of the dragon.

"Oh, the gods hate me," he said to himself, sticking his book in his vest, "some people lose their knife or their mug. Not me, I manage to lose an entire dragon."

He reached his hand out to swipe a tree branch out of his way, but the branch flung itself right back at Hiccup, making him yelp as it hit his eye. He gave the branch a disdainful look, but suddenly froze at what he saw.

An entire tree was split in half, and there was a huge path dug into the earth that went up and past Hiccup's view. It was as if something huge had dug through the woods. Or, something crashed.

Hiccup cautiously made his way down the hill, crawling up over to where the path ended. When he looked over the edge, he saw down below there was a huge black mass, with a wing like a bat's stuck in the air.

He gasped, ducking down by pure instinct.

His heart was beating in his ears, and he took a deep breath before slowly sticking his head back up over the dirt. The dragon was unmoving, but Hiccup nervously grabbed his knife out of his belt anyways. He scrambled down the ledge, being as silent as possible, before hiding behind a boulder.

Once he determined that the animal was indeed dead, he stepped out from behind the boulder.

"Oh, wow. I did it," Hiccup whispered, "oh, I did it. This-This fixes everything. Yes, I have brought down this mighty beast-" Hiccup had set his foot on the dragon's leg in accomplishment, but then the reptile let out a bellow and knocked Hiccup off of him.

Hiccup let out a small scream as he fell back into the boulder. He held his knife out in front of him, and with his entire body shaking, he slowly approached the dragon.

The dragon was breathing in heavy pants when his eyes suddenly snapped open, locking with Hiccups. The familiar thrill rocketed through his entire body, stronger than ever before.

The Night Fury wasn't dead, and that meant that Hiccup had to kill it himself.

Hiccup looked away from the dragon, his hands shaking around the knife handle. He took deep breaths, before the creature let out a sound that he swore sounded like a plea, making Hiccup glance back down at it. The dragon's acid green eyes locked with his again, and Hiccup had to tear his own away.

There wasn't emotion in those eyes. There couldn't be. Because dragons were heartless, that's what he was always told.

"I'm going to kill you, dragon," Hiccup said, sucking in a breath, "then I'll cut out your heart and take it to my father," he turned the knife tip downwards, "I am a Viking. I am a Viking!"

Hiccup took a deep breath, raising the knife above his head. Then, he made the mistake of looking back into the dragon's eyes one more time. The eyes that were green just like his. Eyes that were pleading for mercy for a chance to greet the sky and stars only even one last time.

No, no, dragons were heartless.

He raised the knife even higher, closing his eyes shut. He couldn't meet the Night Fury's eyes again.

But then the dragon let out a defeated cry, saying goodbye to the sky, goodbye to the clouds, to the stars, to the moon and to the sun.

Hiccup couldn't bring himself to thrust down the knife.

He finally let his arms fall in defeat, staring at the ropes tied around the dragon's limbs and wings.

"I did this," he whispered, starting to flee.

But then he turned around, looking at the tangled reptile at his feet. He did this. He could just as easily undo it.

On an impulsive thought, he started frantically cutting the ropes.

Then the dragon was loose, and let out a mighty roar. It pounced on top of Hiccup, pinning him to the ground with a single paw, making him scream in fright.

Hiccup's breathing became erratic as he looked into the Night Fury's eyes, no longer filled with fear. Instead, he saw anger. An emotion he was far too used to seeing in people's eyes.

Then, the dragon's whole demeanor changed. The creature sniffed him for a few moments, his pupils dilating slightly.

Hiccup looked into the Night Fury's eyes again, really looked into them. When he did, he was transported to a world so far from his own. The night sky, littered with stars, was folded out in front of him, the moon seeming to wink at him mischievously. Then, the feeling of the wind beneath him, as though he were gliding through the air. Smells of dewy air and fresh grass and salty water. His tongue was coated with something tangy and sweet. And a sound so angelic filling the air, the sound of joy and freedom.

And then the visions were gone, as fast as they came.

For a second Hiccup and the Night Fury looked at each other with confusion, before the dragon seemed to shake his head slightly, his pupils returning to normal.

The Night Fury opened its mouth, revealing many sharp teeth, before rearing his head back. Hiccup closed his eyes, preparing for a grizzly death. Instead, a roar blasted from the dragon's mouth, so close to Hiccup's face he could feel his breath.

When the ringing in his ears finally stopped, Hiccup realized the weight on his chest was no longer there, and he faintly registered the Night Fury's confused screeches. But one thing became abundantly clear to Hiccup before he blacked out.

The Night Fury hadn't killed him. He had given him only ringing ears and confused thoughts. If the most feared dragon of all hadn't killed him, was anything he was taught about dragons right?