Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Berk felt different.

"The chief is back home!"

"Long live Chief Hiccup!"

"Long live the Chief!"

Not because of the wrecked houses, or the dragons now filling every corner of the island, or even because Stoick was gone.

It felt different because, for the first time, Hiccup was walking through Berk knowing everyone expected him to know what to do. He was the chief. His father had given him that title right before he died. And now...
 

Everybody was looking at him.
 

Hiccup, standing smack in the middle of the crowd while his people cheered for him, and he was... happy? Everything was as it should be. His people were accepting him as chief, Drago had been defeated, the dragons were saved. It was a fact: Berk was safe. But something wasn't right, and even though he was truly happy for his people, he couldn't feel genuinely happy for himself.
 

In the middle of all of it, Hiccup's mind continues to drift because he just couldn't work out why he felt so unhappy (or can he?).
He felt like something was wrong, like something was missing. Even with all of Berk, even with all his friends around him, he felt... alone.

"Why am I-" Hiccup was yanked out of his daydream by a sudden noise that startled him a little.

"RROOOAAARRR! GRAAAARRR!

RAAAUUUGHH!"

Dragging him back to reality, a deafening roar swept over Berk. It was Toothless, celebrating his coronation as alpha, and Hundreds of other dragons started roaring all at once, shooting blasts of fire up at the sky on Toothless's command: 

"RAAAAAWWWRR! RROOOAAARRR! GRRRAAAAH!"

It was a gift to his brother Hiccup, a way of saluting and celebrating that just as he had become the Alpha, the King of the Dragons, Hiccup had become the "King" of Berk.

He walked over to his dragon and scratched him under the chin, the spot he knew Toothless loved most.

"Thanks, buddy. I couldn't have gotten through this without you."

Hiccup could see Astrid and the others right beside him, celebrating with their dragons too.

Astrid noticed Hiccup looking kind of spaced out and came right up next to him.

"You okay? You look sadder than a yak that lost its dinner."

"I... don't know." 

Hiccup could've lied, could've said everything was fine and she was imagining things, but he knew Astrid knew him well enough to tell when he was lying. And he didn't want to lie to her just to get grilled about it. 

Not now, he didn't have the strength for that.

"What do you mean you don't know? Berk is safe, we saved all the dragons, everyone's sa-... oh." 

Astrid stopped mid-sentence, realizing what she'd been about to say. 

"Sorry. It's because of your dad, isn't it?"

Hiccup looked at Astrid, almost surprised, and thought, “oh... right. It's that.”

A storm of feelings was hitting him all at once, feelings he hadn't even known he was holding back. His grief had finally arrived.
He didn't want to cry right now. Not in front of Astrid, not in front of the whole village, not in his naming as chief.

To keep his composure and hold back the tears that were trying everything to get out, he started walking around Berk. Maybe not the best idea, since every little piece of this tiny corner of the archipelago brought back memories.

All of Berk was part of his past.

With Astrid beside him, worried about her childhood friend, Hiccup stopped in front of the Great Hall. Toothless stayed behind them, watching everything in silence.

Realizing he wasn't alone, Hiccup started to feel a little uncomfortable with the silence and tried to say something to break the ice.

"So..."

Hiccup murmured.

"I guess it's official now."

Astrid wore a worried look, because she knew Hiccup wasn't okay and she wanted to talk about it, but she also knew this wasn't the right time, and that Hiccup definitely didn't want to talk about it and he wouldn't, not right now.

So she decided to give Hiccup some time, let him digest things at his own pace... but, not too much time.

Astrid smiled. "You look nervous."

"Me?" He pointed at himself "No, I'm perfectly calm."

Astrid raised an eyebrow and Hiccup took a deep breath.

"Okay. I'm terrified."

He still didn't know how to be a chief. His father had trained him for years, but now that he had to put all those years into practice, his mind just blanked. He did know one thing though: he definitely wouldn't be alone. Even so, it was all so... scary.

She laughed, easing the nerves of the spiky-haired scrawny guy a little.

"You'll be fine."

Hiccup looked out at Berk.

For years, this place had been just the island he lived on, the place he was born but where the people living in his village never really accepted him. Or rather, his father's village.

But today, from today on, it wasn't just his village anymore. It was his island, his people, his home…

But at what cost?

The rebuilding started right away.

The Vikings fixed up houses, the dragons helped carry lumber and stone, Fishlegs organized the newly arrived dragons, Snotlout complained about everything (nothing out of the ordinary), and Ruffnut and Tuffnut argued over who'd helped more (at least they weren't breaking stuff or killing anybody anymore).

And Astrid…

Astrid seemed to be the only person capable of keeping everyone working. After the talk they'd had, and seeing how shaken he was, she kept checking in on how Hiccup was doing, really putting in the effort to help him.

But there was one thing Hiccup couldn't get out of his head. Things were going back to normal, like before the fight with Drago, maybe even better with the peace reigned. But someone, just like him, wasn't managing to recover the way the rest of the village was.

Valka.

Hiccup had lost his father, but she... she had lost everything. She'd lost her Bewilderbeast, the creature that had been her companion for so many years, the dragon who took her in after Cloudjumper brought her to his "den," her sanctuary, the place she called home, the local she'd gone looking for refuge in, and... her husband.

Alphas usually protected hundreds of dragons, and Drago had used his as a weapon.

His own Alpha had killed Valka's, controlled Toothless, her son's dragon, and made him fire at him. he survived only because her husband sacrificed himself, throwing himself in front of Hiccup to save him.

And that made her blood boil, her heart shatter, and her anguish (guilt?) multiply.

But now, her last redemption, her consolation prize, and all that remained of her dragon.

An egg.

 
...
 

The days went by, and Berk's look and seasons changed. Everything was getting better, but at the same time something terrible was happening: 

Valka was losing something else, again, losing a piece of her life, a piece of herself. Because when you hit rock bottom, there's still a little further to go before you reach the bottom of the abyss. And life seemed determined to make Valka the living proof of it.

It was "late"; the sun was already setting, not because it was the time it normally got dark, but because the season was approaching when the days were shorter and the nights longer.

Hiccup was walking around the village, supervising the repairs and straightening things out, instructing people when they were doing something wrong, and helping everyone who needed it along the way. While he was finishing up helping some random Viking rebuild his hut, Hiccup caught a glimpse of something in the distance, a dot on the hills of Berk.

And there was Valka, sitting near the cliffs and looking like she was enjoying the sunset, when really she'd been lost in thought for so long that she hadn't noticed the hours slip by or the day coming to an end. The egg was with her. She hadn't left it alone since she brought it to Berk.

It sat carefully protected among furs, the little portable nest Hiccup had built especially for it.

Hiccup walked up.

"How is it?" he asked, even though he knew the situation wasn't good.

They'd done everything within their reach to give the egg the best possible conditions to survive and hatch, but they weren't merciless beasts, they were just warm-blooded humans trying to care for cold-blooded dragons.

Valka didn't answer right away. She put her hand on the shell.

"Alive."

Hiccup let out the breath he'd been holding.

"That 's good."

"It is."

But her expression didn't change.

"Is that all you can say?"

Hiccup stayed quiet, because yeah, it was all he could say. What was he supposed to tell his mother, who'd already lost so much in so little time and was now sitting here losing something again?

Valka looked at him.

"Sorry."

"You don't have to be."

She went back to looking at the egg.

"I should've noticed sooner."

"What?"

"That something was wrong, that Drago was coming to the sanctuary, that he was coming for me."

Hiccup sat down next to her.

"technically he was coming for me, but you did everything you could." Hiccup said, trying to comfort her, even though he knew th-

"I didn't do enough to save him."

Hiccup didn't answer.

Because he knew exactly how she felt. The same guilt, the same feeling that if he'd just been faster, better, more... anything, maybe his father would still be alive.

A few days passed.

The egg started showing more problems, problems that weren't noticeable at first. But the movements inside it slowed down. Valka got worried and, together with Fishlegs, examined the shell.

"The temperature's rising."

"Is that bad?" asked Snotlout.

"For a Bewilderbeast egg?"

Fishlegs looked at him.

"Very."

Valka closed her eyes, bit her lips, and looked almost on the verge of tears.

"It needs cold. Bewilderbeasts live in places that are always freezing, and to survive in that cold they learn to regulate their body temperature from the egg. The mother cools and warms the egg constantly, teaching it, making it memorize what it feels like to regulate its own temperature."

"Mom, we can do that for him, or her, we just take shifts looking after the egg so everyone can get some rest."

"It's not that easy. There's nothing in Berk that's cold enough," Fishlegs answered.

Hiccup frowned.

"Berk is cold." Astrid argued.

"Not cold enough."

Valka finally spoke as she stood up.

"The Bewilderbeasts, where they come from, have extremely specific conditions. The ice, the temperature, even the water itself..."

"Then we need to reproduce those conditions so it has a chance of getting better."

Valka thought of something, but in the end she just nodded.

"Maybe."

Hiccup looked out at the ocean.

"And if we can't?"

Valka estayed silent.

Neither of them needed to answer.

The next morning, Berk woke up before the sun, and for the first time in days, or since Drago's attack, nobody complained about having to work early. There was a reason for that.

The egg.

Hiccup was kneeling in front of the contraption, surrounded by tools, scrolls and little containers of water. You could clearly tell he hadn't slept: his eyes were heavy and his hair was even messier than usual. Toothless lay beside him, fast asleep.

Hiccup looked at the dragon.

"You know I should be sleeping too, right?"

Hiccup pointed at him, and Toothless opened one eye.

"No need to answer."

The dragon closed his eyes again.

"Great."

Hiccup went back to work.

He spent another day going back and forth between his house, the forge and the Great Hall. At home he designed and sketched possible projects, looking for ways to help the egg recover, or at the very least slow its deadly condition.

In his room, he spread pieces of parchment, drawings, notes and blueprints across the table, each one looking more absurd than the last. A cooling system. A sort of ice box, tubes, a few water reservoirs. A structure that would let him partially submerge the egg in ice-cold water without damaging the shell...

Another drawing showed a contraption that made Toothless blow his plasma over chunks of ice to create a current of warm air, for emergencies.

Hiccup stared at the last drawing.

"This is ridiculous."

He crumpled the parchment.

"This one too."

Another drawing.

"Definitely ridiculous."

Another one.

One where cold water would run through a series of channels around the egg. Little valves would let the temperature change gradually, imitating what Valka had explained about the hatchling's mother.

"...This one might actually work."

Cold, the simple cold of naturally icy seawater.

Warm: as the water ran through the channel and sat in the machine, it would naturally lose or 

gain temperature depending on the water. In this case, warming up.

Cold again, this time artificially, caused by Hiccup's machine, draining the old warm water around the egg and releasing cold water from the ice compartments. Swapping the water out and restarting the cycle.

Simple in theory. In practice, it was a machine built by Hiccup, which meant nothing about it was simple.

"If this blows up, I'm going to pretend it was you."

The Night Fury tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, and with a bit of mockery pulled a face that said "seriously?"

"Okay, okay, I know. I can't blame the innocent dragon."

Toothless let out a little grunt.

Hiccup sighed and stood up, turning his head, and then got startled by a reflection in the metal, spinning around so fast that he lost his balance and landed on his butt on the floor. And there was Astrid, standing behind him.

"Good morning to you too." She crossed her arms.

"Did you sleep?"

"Yeah."

"How much?"

Hiccup hesitated and started looking around, avoiding Astrid's eyes, something she knew he did whenever he got caught doing something wrong.

"Like... twenty minutes?"

"Twenty minutes?!"

"Twenty-three, actually."

Astrid took a deep breath.

"You're impossible."

"I'm working."

"You're trying to make up for no sleep with work."

"It 's working."

"I could be wrong, but I think you almost put a valve in backwards."

Hiccup looked at the piece, then at Astrid, then back at the piece.

"...That explains a few things."

Astrid shook her head, came closer and sat down next to him.

"Hiccup."

Her tone had changed.

He stopped.

"What?"

"You don't have to carry everything alone."

Hiccup turned and looked at the machine again.

"..."

"You know I'm right."

She bumped him lightly with her shoulder and sat beside him, trying to cheer the dark-haired boy 

up.

"Knowing it and believing it are different things."

Hiccup went quiet. For a few seconds, all you could hear was the sea.

Toothless laid his head in Hiccup's lap, and Hiccup went back to his drawings, but he couldn't focus. Every time he tried to think of what to say, his mind wandered off.

His father.

The Great Hall.

The ceremony.

People shouting his name.

"Long live the chief!"

Hiccup closed his eyes.

"I lost my dad," he finally said.

Astrid didn't answer.

"And now my mom might lose the last piece left of the dragon she loved."

He squeezed a tool between his fingers.

"I can't let that happen."

Astrid looked at him.

"You can't control everything."

"I know."

"And it's not your fault if the egg doesn't make it."

Hiccup looked away.

"I know."

Astrid sighed.

"You don't actually believe that."

He didn't answer.

Because he didn't.

Astrid got up and headed for the door of the hut, stepping out to give him privacy, because she knew he'd want to be alone right now.

When Astrid left, Hiccup finally let himself say what he was thinking.

"I should know what to do..."

Pushing himself up with one hand on the table, he put the other on his forehead and massaged his temples.

"My dad would know," Hiccup whispered, so quietly that Toothless could barely hear. How could words so quiet and so small carry so much weight? How could they hurt him in such a tortuous way?

Silence.

Toothless raised his head again.

Hiccup took a deep breath and just went back to work.

————————————————

Hours later, at the forge, Hiccup showed up carrying a stack of blueprints.

Gobber was hammering a piece of metal when he noticed him coming.

"If you're about to ask me to build something else, I'm telling you now: no."

Hiccup set the blueprints on the workbench.

"I need a metal structure that can hold a low temperature for a long time."

Gobber looked at the drawings, then at Hiccup, then back at the drawings.

"No."

"You didn't even finish looking."

"Don't need to."

"But-"

"Hiccup, you just became chief. I refuse to let your first big order as a leader be making me build a freezing bathtub for a giant egg."

"Why does everyone keep reminding me of that," Hiccup muttered.

"It's not a bathtub."

Gobber pointed at the drawing.

"It 's got water."

"Yes."

"It 's got ice."

"Yes."

"And the egg goes inside."

Hiccup hesitated.

"...Maybe."

"Bathtub."

Hiccup let out a sigh.

"The egg's getting too hot."

Gobber's humor vanished.

He looked at the drawing again.

"How much time do we have?"

Hiccup didn't answer. And that was answer enough.

Gobber stopped hammering the sword he was working on.

"Right."

He pulled up a stool.

"Let's see what you've come up with."

————————————————————

Meanwhile, back at the house, Valka stayed by the egg. She barely left its side. Fishlegs had tried to convince her to rest a few times, but she always answered the same way:

"It needs me here." Which was true, but not completely. The egg needed somebody there, just not necessarily her.

Maybe she was the one who needed to be with it.

That afternoon, Astrid showed up carrying some furs and chunks of ice.

"Brought some more."

Valka thanked her with a nod.

Astrid looked at the egg.

"Any change?"

Valka took a few seconds to answer.

"The movements have slowed down."

Astrid knelt and touched the shell to feel its temperature. It was warm, warmer than it probably should have been.

"Is it still alive?"

Valka closed her eyes and hesitated.

"Yes."

...

"But it's getting weaker."

Astrid looked at her.

"Hiccup's working on it."

Valka gave a small smile.

"I know."

"He hasn't slept properly since he found out about the problem."

Valka frowned.

"That's not healthy."

"I know."

"Then make him stop."

Astrid let out a little laugh.

"Have you just met Hiccup? What makes you think I could stop him?"

Valka finally laughed.

"No, I've known Hiccup since he was little. I wasn't here with him, but I'm sure I know what he was like growing up."

"Then you know it won't be easy."

"I do."

The two of them fell silent.

Then Valka looked at the egg.

"He's trying to save something because he thinks he failed to save something else."

Astrid didn't answer.

That night, Hiccup was still at the forge. After he explained the contraption and the situation, Gobber had agreed to help him. The two worked in silence until Hiccup dropped a tool.

"Dammit it!"

Gobber looked at him.

"You alright?"

"Yeah."

"Sure you are," Gobber rolled his eyes. "Fine as a yak running from a dragon."

Hiccup looked up.

"What?"

"You've got the same look you had when you first tried to convince Stoick to let you ride a dragon."

Hiccup froze.

"That was eight years ago."

"And you look just as scared now."

Hiccup looked away.

"I'm not scared."

Gobber arched an eyebrow.

"Right."

Hiccup pressed his lips together.

"I just..."

He looked at the structure on the workbench.

"I don't know if I can do this."

Gobber put down the hammer.

"Do what?"

"Be chief."

Gobber was quiet.

"My dad always knew exactly what to do."

"Your dad never knew what to do. He was chief for decades and still, every single day, something came up he couldn't handle, especially with dragons."

"He didn't even know how to take care of you. I wonder why that is."

He said it in that teasing tone only the one-legged blacksmith knew how to use to cheer up his favorite little kid. Gobber looked at his rookie little chief's face, and he was finally smiling.

"And I've only been chief for a few weeks."

"Exactly."

Hiccup let out a humorless laugh.

"Everybody looks at me expecting an answer."

He ran a hand over his face.

"And I don't have a single one."

Gobber uncrossed his arms and pointed at Hiccup.

"Then stop all... this."

Hiccup looked at him.

"But you're pointing at all of me."

"I'm not pointing at all of you, I'm pointing at what you're imitating, trying to be..."

"Listen, Hiccup, you're not Stoick. You're not a chief like him, you're just Hiccup. So try to figure out what kind of chief you're going to be."

Gobber pointed at the blueprints.

"You're the kid, and the first Viking, who rode a Night Fury. The guy who looks at an impossible problem and decides to build a crazy machine to solve it."

Hiccup stayed quiet.

"And honestly, that's probably the most Hiccup thing there is."

For a moment, Hiccup smiled.

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me yet. You still have to finish this."

"Right."

Hiccup picked up the hammer.

"Let's finish it."

The next morning the structure was ready. It wasn't pretty. It honestly looked like a cross between a boat, a forge and a fish crate.

But it worked?

Hiccup, Snotlout, Astrid and Fishlegs carried the structure to the greenhouse while Valka watched them set everything up.

"Please, explain."

Hiccup pointed at the mechanism.

"We'll use ocean water, which runs through these channels and circulates around the egg, with ice sitting in these compartments here, where the water passes through to cool down, and as the water circulates, it gains and loses heat."

"It still has to be regulated manually, but it's the best I can do for now."

Fishlegs examined the design.

"This could work."

"Could?" asked Snotlout, with a hint of mockery, clearly doubtful that Hiccup's contraption would do anything.

"In theory, maybe?"

Hiccup smiled. He was really happy to have finally solved a problem completely his own way.

Maybe Gobber's words last night had really lifted his spirits.

"I love it when you say that."

"It's better than when I say I have no idea."

Toothless came over, happy to see his friend relaxed after so long, and let out a little grunt.

Hiccup looked at him, realizing his companion was happy the mechanism worked too.

"Yeah, I think so too."

Valka touched the structure.

"And how do we keep the temperature?"

Hiccup looked at the ocean.

"We're going to need ice."

Astrid smiled.

"We've got plenty of ice."

Hiccup shook his head.

"Not the kind we need."

"Berk has loads of snow and ice, but snow isn't ideal, and the ice chunks are too small, or brittle and hollow. We need blocks of solid ice."

Valka frowned.

"What are you thinking?"

Hiccup looked at the horizon.

"The north."

Over the next few days, small expeditions began leaving Berk. The Vikings went looking for ice and the dragons helped haul the enormous blocks back to Berk.

Toothless could carry some of the big ones faster than anyone.

Maybe just a little slower than Cloudjumper, who was bigger and handled the weight more easily.

But unfortunately, that didn't fix the situation. It only delayed the inevitable.

The egg kept getting worse, its movements growing rarer. You could tell the machine was helping, just not enough. The temperature kept climbing, and one night, something changed.

Valka was sitting beside it when she heard a sound.

creak

She raised her head.

creak

Her heart began to race.

"Hiccup!"

The boy burst into the egg's greenhouse, right next to his house.

"What happened?" Valka looked at the small crack that had appeared in the shell.

Hiccup frozed.

"Is it hatching?"

Fishlegs, who'd been sleeping at Hiccup's house to help look after the egg, woke up at the commotion and ran over to examine the crack.

And what he saw made his face lose all its color.

"No."

Hiccup stepped closer.

"What do you mean, no?"

"The shell is giving way," he answered in a frightened voice.

"But that's good, right?"

Fishlegs shook his head.

"It shouldn't be happening right now," Valka murmured, pale as if the blood were draining from her veins.

"It's too weak."

Another sound.

CRACK.

A small chip of shell fell off and made everyone stood still.

Hiccup knelt down, tilting his head sideways right up against the egg, trying to hear the faintest sign of life. "Hey..." He put his hand on the shell. "You still in there, little guy?"

Nothing.

Hiccup swallowed drye.

"Come on..."

Nothing.

Then...

Tok.

A tiny movement.

Hiccup's eyes went wide. "It answered." Grinning from ear to ear, Hiccup looked back, wanting to share the news with everyone else in the room, as if they hadn't just seen the same thing he had.

Valka came over, putting a hand on her son's shoulder while still staring at the egg. "It heard you."

Hiccup smiled, but then the crack spread, cutting off the wave of collective joy that had filled the room.

"We have to do something" said Fishlegs who was watching the shell.

"If it tries to come out now..."

Hiccup looked at the egg, then at the machine, then at the ocean... until an idea began to take shape.

"What if..."

Astrid looked at him.

"What?"

"What if the problem isn't just keeping the egg cold?"

Fishlegs came closer.

"What do you mean?"

"My mom said the mother teaches the hatchling to control its own temperature."

Valka nodded.

"Yes."

Fishlegs seemed to finally get what Hiccup was driving at, and jumped in before Hiccup could finish his train of thought: "So maybe the warmth we're giving it isn't enough!!"

Hiccup started walking toward Toothless, reaching into his bag for his blueprints and notes.
"It needs to feel changes in temperature. All we've been doing is letting the water come up to room temperature, which in Berk is already naturally cold. We need cold, then gradually raise the temperature to get a bit of warmth, and then cool it back down again."

Valka began to understand.

"The way it would happen naturally."

"Exactly."

Valka looked at her son.

"You want to imitate the mother."

Hiccup nodded.

"If we can't bring the mother back..." He looked at the egg. "Then maybe we can do what she would do." Laying his blueprints on the table, he started modifying them right away.

Valka stayed silent. For a few seconds she just watched her son, and then she put a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe that's what it needs."

Hiccup took a deep breath. For the first time since becoming chief, he felt something different. Not certainty, not confidence, but hope.

"Then let 's do it."

That night, all of Berk mobilized. The Vikings dug tunnels and paths for new channels, the dragons brought ice, and the forge worked for hours making parts for the new section of Hiccup's machine, building containers for hot stones.

Astrid organized the shifts, guiding and coordinating the Vikings and dragons, and breaking up their fights.

Fishlegs wrote down every change in temperature, taking the utmost care and attention not to miss a single visible or temperature change, Gobber built valves to control the water flow, Ruffnut and Tuffnut were put in charge of hauling ice, which naturally ended in an argument.

"I carried more!" said Tuffnut, gesturing at his pile of ice.

"You dropped half of it!" shouted Ruffnut, leaping on top of him. Amid punches, kicks and bites, 

her brother answered:

"Because you pushed me!"

"Because you were in the way!"

"TWINS, THAT'S ENOUGH!" shouted Astrid as she landed next to them on Stormfly.

The two went quiet, glanced at each other, and answered in sync: "Yes, Astrid." But instead of going back to work, the second Astrid stopped looking, they ran off.

Hiccup watched it all. People were working. Not because he told them to, but because everyone wanted to help, and in that moment he realized that maybe being chief didn't mean having all the answers. Maybe it meant knowing when to ask for help.

He smiled.

Toothless came over and nuzzled him, and Hiccup stroked his face.

"I think I'm starting to get it."

Toothless purred.

"That doesn't mean I wasn't terrified."

The dragon let out a little grunt, as if to say "it's going to be okay” and that made Hiccup smile.

"Yeah. Maybe."

Off in the distance, Valka watched. For the first time in many days, her face looked a little less desperate.

But she knew this wasn't over yet. Because inside that egg was a life fighting to be born, and to save it, Hiccup would have to find out if what he was trying was really enough.

Or if, this time...

he'd have to face something not even the dragons knew.

A few days later, Fishlegs came into the Great Hall, where Hiccup was talking with Gobber and the others about Berk's problems.

"Hiccup!"

The boy snapped his head around, looking straight at Fishlegs.

"What happened?"

"The temperature dropped." Hiccup's eyes went wide with fear and expectation

"How much?"

"By my calculations, almost four degrees in under ten minutes."

Valka hurried over.

"Seriously?? That's great!!"

Fishlegs shook his head doing an exaggerated yes

"That's what I thought too."

Hiccup ran, and soon the others were following him to the egg, which sat in the greenhouse, its little wooden igloo. The water around it was freezing, and a thin layer of ice was starting to form over the metal structure.

"I don't believe it..."

"Did anyone touch the valves?" asked Astrid.

"No." Fishlegs started answering the questions that were beginning to pile up.

"Was the ice added?" Hiccup asked

"Not yet."

He went still.

"Then how..."

A tiny sound cut off the question.

Tok.

Everyone looked at the egg.

Tok.

Another movement.

"It's moving." Hiccup stepped closer to get a look at the egg.

Valka put her hand on the shell.

"More than before."

Fishlegs looked at his instruments "Its temperature is changing too."

"To what?" she asked

"It 's dropping."

"So it 's working." Hiccup smiled, feeling relieved with this.

Fishlegs hesitated.

"Maybe."

The smile off his face instantly vanished.

"What is it?"

"The temperature isn't just dropping..."

Hiccup frowned.

"Then what?"

Fishlegs picked his book and showed him his records.

"It's dropping on its own."

…

Valka looked at the records.

"It doing this itself?"

"Doing what?" Hiccup asked

She put her hand on the egg again.

"Regulating its own temperature."

Hiccup's eyes widened and made a confused face.

"But it hasn't even hatched. It shouldn't be able to do that."

"I know. The mother would regulate its temperature constantly to teach the egg, and once it hatched it would know how to regulate its own, but only after it was out of the egg."

Another movement.

This time, stronger.

Tok.

Tok.

Tok.

"It 's responding." This made Hiccup smile, and that made Valka smile too.

But then... a part of the shell suddenly started to darken and Everyone's smile disappeared as a new crack opened across the top of the egg.

"NO!" cried Valka.

Hiccup stepped closer.

"Maybe it's too weak... its attempts to control itself are hurting the shell."

"It's not ready. It shouldn't be regulating its own temperature yet," Fishlegs added right away.

"How do you know? Maybe it's just a tiny genius," said Ruffnut.

"Because the shell is too fragile, too thin, and it's cracking way too fast."

Another crack appeared.

And another.

As Hiccup went pale, the whole shell began to give off tiny crackling sounds.

"Hiccup, we have to do something." Astrid's voice was desperate as Hiccup reached out to touch the egg.

Valka grabbed his arm.

"No."

"Mom..."

"We can't help it out."

"But if it's weak..."

"If it tries to hatch now it might not survive, but if we break the shell now... we'll definitely kill it."

Hiccup froze.

Those words went through him like knives through his chest. Once again something, someone, was going to die and there was nothing he could do.

"Then what do we do?"

Valka took a deep breath.

"We wait."

"We wait?"

"Yes."

"While it dies?" he said, raising his voice a little, letting some of his anger and stress from this whole situation slip out.
He didn't mean to be rude or start a fight; it was just a slip from someone already at his limit.

Valka looked at her son.

"While it fights."

Hiccup went still, he knelt beside the egg, put his hand on the shell, and took a deep breath.

"Hey..."

Silence.

"I know you're in there."

Tok.

Hiccup smiled.

"That 's it."

Another tiny movement.

"You don't have to rush." He took a deep breath "We're here."

Toothless approached slowly, careful not to step on anything important, not wanting to break Hiccup's machine. He touched his snout to the shell, and for a few seconds nothing happened.

And then...

Tok.

Toothless's eyes went wide and he smiled at Hiccup, who was watching him.

"I think it likes you."

Toothless let out a little purr, but a thin layer of ice began to spread across the shell.

Valka took a step forward.

"Hiccup..."

He looked.

The ice kept growing. It wasn't coming from the water, it wasn't coming from the machine, it was appearing straight out of the egg.

"What is that?" asked Astrid.

Nobody answered. Hiccup carefully touched the shell and felt how cold it was. Really cold.

"It's making its own cold."

Everyone stared at the egg.

"That shouldn't be possible."

Hiccup looked at her.

"Maybe it's because it's a Bewilderbeast."

Valka slowly shook her head.

"No."

"No?"

She came closer and studied the ice, then the crack, and then her face changed.

It wasn't fear.

It was fascination.

"My Alpha never did this."

Fishlegs stepped closer.

"Are you sure?"

"I am."

She touched the ice.

"He controlled the ice around him. He could change the temperature of the water and freeze huge areas."

Valka looked at the egg.

"But I've never seen a hatchling do this before it was born."

Hiccup stared at the shell.

"So..."

He swallowed.

"What exactly is inside that egg?"

She didn't answer, but at that very moment the water began to freeze and the ice spread across the entire structure, wild, as if it were trying to take over everything around it.

Astrid took a step forward.

"Hiccup!"

"I see it!!"

He ran to one of the valves and tried to shut it quickly, but couldn't, because the ice was faster and had already crept across almost the whole machine.

"The valve's jammed, IT WON'T CLOSE!"

Gobber came into the hut carrying a tool.

"Stand back!"

He hit the valve with his hammer.

CLANG!

with this it finally shut, but the ice kept growing.

"This isn't coming from the machine," said Hiccup... "It's coming from him... it's losing control!"

Then they heard a sound, a roar? It was more like a small, weak grunt, almost a whimper, but it was definitely supposed to be a roar.

It also sounded kind of like... a cry for help?

Everyone was silent, and Hiccup brought his face close to the shell.

"Are you okay?"

For a few seconds... nothing. Then a small fissure opened right before his eyes, and something shone through it.

Blue.

Before suddenly shooting up toward the sky, tearing through the roof and leaving snowflakes and a trail of light in its patch

Hiccup's eyes went wide and almost fell backward from the shock.

"Do you guys see that?"

Fishlegs came closer.

 "We do."

The twins came up beside Hiccup.

"What is it?"

He didn't answer because he realized that maybe they weren't just trying to save a Bewilderbeast hatchling. Maybe he was witnessing something no human in the world had ever seen. And the worst part (or best?)  was that the egg seemed to be reacting specifically to him.

Hiccup put his hand on the crack, trying to comfort it, because for some reason he felt like the egg was scared.

"It's okay." A glow began to rise. "I'm here."

The egg responded with a brighter glow, just for a moment.

Tok.

Hiccup smiled.

"And I'm not going to leave you alone."

Outside the sanctuary, a cold wind began to blow. It wasn't an ordinary wind. It came from the ocean. It came from the same direction the ray of light had traveled, and it brought with it something nobody in Berk expected to see this time of year.

Snow.

Through the half-open door, everyone could see tiny flakes starting to fall over the island, which was strange because even though autumn was close to winter, it would still be almost two months before the snow started.

Astrid looked at the snow.

"It's snowing now? How?"

"It doesn't make sense. We're still in July, it wasn't supposed to snow for another month and a half."

Valka watched the flakes land on her hand, her face serious.

"It shouldn't be."

Hiccup raised his eyes, pulling his attention away from the egg toward the now-open door as the snow kept falling, piling up more and more between the rooftops of the huts and the ground.

Toothless started growling softly, sensing something even he didn't know the name of. It was like a presence?

And he wasn't the only one. All the dragons waiting outside the sanctuary went tense, maybe all the dragons in Berk.

Hiccup stood up.

"What exactly is going on?"

Nobody answered, because at that moment the blue light began to appear again. It wasn't an ordinary light; it seemed to pulse in time with the egg's movements, once, then again.

As they watched the light, a wave of cold swept through the sanctuary. The torch flames dimmed, and the walls began to be covered in a thin layer of frost.

Toothless lifted his head immediately and growled.

Hiccup looked around.

"This isn't coming from the egg."

Gobber frowned.

"How do you know?"

"Because..." Hiccup looked at the window. "It's coming from outside."

Everyone ran to the entrance and saw that all of Berk (the island) was covered in a thin layer of snow. The Vikings were looking up at the sky, confused, because it was too early for a snowstorm and, most of all, it shouldn't have been happening like this.

The wind started to blow, but it wasn't an ordinary wind. It had no set direction, it seemed to come from every side at once. The trees swayed, the sea began freezing near the coast, everything, absolutely everything seemed to be getting colder.

Just like in winter.

Fishlegs went pale.

"This isn't a storm."

Snotlout looked at him.

"Then what is it?"

Fishlegs shook his head.

"I don't know. Why do you think I'd have an answer for everything, Snotlout??"

"Because that's your job!! BEING A NERD!"

Valka walked slowly to the water's edge and closed her eyes. She felt the wind, the cold, the humidity, and then she said something.

"This isn't natural. Someone did this." She looked at the egg.

Hiccup walked up.

"How?"

"I've never seen any phenomenon like this. My Alpha never did this."

"Not like this."

"Wait, you think the egg did this?"

"Yes. Either it did this, or it called someone with that light and they did it."

Those words got different reactions from the group.

Fishlegs groaned a little, scared. Snotlout pretended to be brave but was practically praying. The twins just played in the snow and didn't care about the egg's supposed powers. Astrid was worried about Berk. And Hiccup and Valka stayed quiet, just watching the snow fall.

Gobber then cut through the silence: "Jokul Frost, the egg called Jokul Frost!"

"Jokul Frost? You really think it called the personification of winter, the child beloved by the winds? You're out of your mind." Snotlout mocked him, and got smacked on the head for it.

At the same time, the blue light from the egg pulsed again, almost as if agreeing with Gobber. The wind made itself felt and answered too? It made the snow begin to swirl around the sanctuary, forcing Hiccup and the others to raise their hands to shield their faces.

"It's like..." Fishlegs said, very quietly "Like nature itself is responding to it."
 

 
That night everyone gathered in the Great Hall. Maps, books and ancient scrolls were spread across the table: maps and scrolls of Berk, maps brought from Valka's old sanctuary, and maps taken from the dragon's eye before it was destroyed. And centuries-old books too; not even books considered "fiction" were dismissed.

Fishlegs and Hiccup searched for any mention of similar phenomena, combing through scrolls, reading books and studying maps for a clue, but they weren't finding anything.

Until, after hours of searching, a brief memory flashed through Fishlegs's head.
 

"It has to be here, I saw it somewhere," Fishlegs said, hunting for something as he flipped through a book everyone knew well.

"What is it, Fishlegs? Did you find something?"

"There are stories about this, or at least something similar."

"Similar?"

"THAT'S IT! THAT'S IT!!!"

Hiccup was still floundering, trying to work out what Fishlegs was talking about, so he leaned over the Book of Dragons in Fishlegs's hands.

"In the Book of Dragons? I've never seen anything about this. And I know this book inside out."

"It's not exactly about what happened, or about eggs. I don't even know if it's real or just a story

."

"Stories? And how is that useful to us, Fish Face?" Snotlout threw a book on the floor.

"We've been searching for who-knows-what for HOURS and now you come in here and say you found a STORY!?"

Fishlegs flipped open the back cover of the Book of Dragons and just ignored Snotlout. Right on the inside of the back cover there was a whole section with a drawn island, with something written beside it, a tale, and some more drawings.

Everyone who had ever read to the end of the book knew this section existed, but nobody ever understood it, and they'd always written it off as a bedtime story, left there out of pure respect and tradition. Why would there be a whole page about an island that doesn't even exist in the Book of Dragons?

Many had tried to find and conquer it, but it was never found.

There is a forgotten island,
lost in mist and angry seas.
where the ice will never melt
and winter never leaves.

The wind seals up its roads, the mist erases every trace,

its mountains breathe out frost upon the silent, frozen place,

its rivers sleep in crystal, deep beneath the glass,

and snow falls on its silence as the ancient ages pass.

They say the island has a will,

that it sees the truth, and sees it still.

It shows the past of the one who stays,

and carries its legacy along the way.

When strangers cross its seas, the ice shuts every door,

The snow conceals the shores, and hides the distant shore.

The sky roars without thunder, as the waters rise from the ground,

the wind turns back the uninvited, who will never be found.

For there, all will be judged, and none can flee.
If lightning tears its clouds from the ice, as bright as can be,

Do not mistake it for a star or thunder in the sky.
For when it answers, even Odin holds his breath, and the Fate goes by.

If you still wish to find it, when the skin touches the heavens, follow the wind and watch the stars it crosses.
For what rises to the heavens also reveals the way back to the shores.

But if you are rejected, give up —  or pray to be spared.

"But it's a start. This talks about a region where winter never ends, it says beams of blue light have been seen rising toward the sky from the island, leaving snowflakes wherever the beam passed."
 

Astrid pointed at the book.

"That? It's just sailors' tales. Probably something Bork wrote for fun."

Snotlout snorted.

"Great. Sailors' tales. Super reliable."

Fishlegs ignored him.

"I just don't get the ending. What did he mean by that?"

Hiccup moved closer.

"If you still wish to find it, when the skin touches the heavens, watch the stars it crosses.
For what rises to the heavens also reveals the way back to the shores."

"My dear one-legged chief, leave this mystery to the Thorstons! Tuffnut and Ruffnut, extraordinary detectives at your service."

"I know I'm going to regret this, but sure, go ahead, guys. Just try not to destroy the book, please."

The twins started trying every kind of experiment: shaking the book, turning it upside down, they even tried burying it.

"You may be an antique, but you're not immune."

"Yeah, sis, tell us where the island is and you won't end up in little pieces."

. . .

Silence, since, well, how's a book supposed to answer? It's a book.

"It's really good, bro. Maybe this is a lost cause."

Hiccup, who was watching all this and really regretting leaving it to the twins, was about to take the book out of their hands.

"Okay, twins, thanks a lo-"

"I've got it!!"

But Tuffnut cut him off before he could finish and ran out of the hall carrying an oil lamp with him.

Ruffnut went with him, and soon everyone was following them. They saw the twins heading for the egg's sanctuary and rushing inside.

"Dear small, great egg, if you tell us where the island is it'll be easier for everyone."

"Exactly."

Silence. No sound, no glow, absolutely nothing.

"Little egg, come here, let's have a girl talk. You don't have to tell that idiot Tuffnut anything, tell me, your Auntie Ruffnut."

"HEY!! I thought we were in this together!!"

"Sorry bro, girl stuff."

He just made an angry, dissatisfied face, like someone who'd clearly been betrayed, and pounced on his sister. Kicks, punches, hair pulling, everything they were entitled to.

In the middle of all this chaos they kept rolling around back and forth, with

Hiccup and the others watching what was happening as if it were just another normal day.

Until the twins, who never pay attention to anything when they're fighting, started getting very close to the table where the lamp and the book were.

Astrid, seeing what was about to happen, tried to warn them. "TWINS, WATCH OUT"

But it was too late; they'd already rolled and thrashed so much that they bumped into the table, sending the lamp and the book to the floor. Everyone fell silent, and all you could hear was leather and metal hitting the ground.

Was it luck, fate, or divine intervention? In the milliseconds of the fall, the wind pushed the book, making it flip open and slowing its fall, landing right on top of the lamp with the island section open.

Fishlegs and Hiccup ran to the book and they breathed a sigh of relief.

They saw that even with the lamp's glass broken, the fire hadn't burned it.

But something curious was happening: right in the corner of the page, where there was a drawing of the island, other drawings began to appear? Glowing? How was that possible?

That was what everyone was asking themselves. They picked up the book to look closer and watched the drawings stay for a few seconds before vanishing, losing their glow.

"What is that? Why was it glowing?"

"It's obvious why it was glowing, my dear Astrid," Tuffnut said, snatching the book out of Hiccup's hand.

"It's a message from Loki to us!!!"

Hiccup just yanked the book back out of his hands and started heading toward Toothless.

"Hiccup, what are you doing?" asked Fishlegs, still intrigued.

"Toothless, a weak flame please."

Toothless opened his mouth and let out a weak flame, just as Hiccup had asked. He held the book close to the fire in Toothless's mouth, close but not enough to burn it.

And there they were, the magical drawings appearing again.

Depictions of the wind, a sun, stars, the moon, and way above the mountains a big star appeared, much bigger than the others but still smaller than the sun.

"Is it reacting to dragon fire?" Astrid wondered "No, that's not it... it looks more like it's reacting to heat!"

Hiccup agreed with Astrid but stayed quiet, too quiet for her taste. He was suspiciously   studying the drawing very close.

"What is it, Hiccup? Did you see something we didn't?"

Hiccup finally answered her.

"It's just that something is weird

"The sun is to the left and the moon to the right of the mountain. That shows the sun is setting and the moon rising."

"West and east... they're coordinates, Hiccup, coordinates!!" Fishlegs exclaimed happily.

"Not just that, Fishlegs. The poem says:

If you still wish to find it, when the skin touches the heavens, follow the wind and watch the stars it crosses.
For what rises to the heavens also reveals the way back to shores.

And where was the wind coming from?"

"The north!" said Astrid.

"And even better, what's right above the mountain? Dead center. Veraldarnagli."

"The World's Nail..."

Fishlegs quickly pulled out the map he'd been carrying around since that morning and started plotting a probable route.

"This way."

Hiccup narrowed his eyes.

"There's nothing there, Fish Face, it's not even on the map."

"And like the poem says, many never found it, and the rest never came back."

"Gee, I wonder why," Snotlout mocked, still convinced it was fiction.

Hiccup ignored him and the silence briefly took over, some scared, some skeptical, and of course two people in awe who weren't about to stay quiet.

"What 's it called?"

Fishlegs turned another page and found a nearly erased note, faded by ages of disuse and neglect. 

"Apparently Bork gave it several names, but the most repeated are Vaetrheim, Frostheim, or... Jökulheim."

Everyone fell silent, briefly stunned, some scared, some skeptical, and of course two people in awe.

"Wow..." The twins were beyond excited. How could they not be amazed after discovering an island where winter never ends, with a name supposedly given in honor of Jokul Frost, herald of glaciers and winters, adopted son of Laufey, Loki's own mother!!! Hours after the egg had supposedly communicated with Jokul Frost!

The twins suddenly threw themselves at Hiccup's legs.

"Hiccup, please, we've never asked you for anything, I promise I'll behave, I'll be a good boy. Do you want Ruffnut? You can have her."

"Yeah, Hiccup, you can have me, but we're begging you, let us go there pleeeease."

Hiccup just ignored the twins' pleas at his legs and motioned for Fishlegs to give his opinion.

Fishlegs hesitated, then nodded.

"It's the best lead we've got so far."

He looked back at the map, at where the supposed island was, and knew they probably needed to go there... but it would be extremely dangerous.

He looked at the egg again and felt an enormous guilt and pressure. On one hand, he could go to the island looking for something that could save the egg. On the other hand, shortly after becoming chief he'd be leaving Berk to fend for itself, without him to help his people or defend them, for an indefinite amount of time. 

He'd be taking the egg, his mother, his friends, on a possibly deadly expedition.

Seeming to make a decision, Hiccup finally looked at the map again.

"We need to go there."

"What? You can't go there, not now!"

Astrid started arguing against Hiccup's decision as he began heading toward Toothless, who was outside with Valka, who had woken up after finally agreeing to rest a little.

"Hiccup- HICCUP." He finally turned to listen, coming face to face with Astrid's angry face. Worried, but also angry.

But that didn't matter. Hiccup truly cared about the egg... and maybe, just maybe, he wanted to run away from here, like, just a tiny bit, nothing much. 

It would be a golden opportunity to show everyone he could solve this easily, as a dragon trainer, as a chief.

"Hiccup. You can't go there right now."

"Go where, son?"

"Oh hi, Mrs. Haddock, our great chief here, is going to take us to Jokul Frost's island!!" 

Hiccup never imagined he'd be the cause of so much happiness for the twins.

"Jokul Frost? What does he have to do with this? And what do you mean you're going to his island?"

"It's nothing, Mom, it's just to help the egg."

"Astrid, I know it's crazy to go there right now, but please let me go... I need this."

Astrid frowned.

"Are you sure?"

"No."

Hiccup took a deep breath.

"But it's the only possible lead we have, and if we stay here waiting to figure it out, we could lose the egg."

Astrid felt herself wavering. "UNNRURR," she grunted in frustration at letting herself be swayed by Hiccup's puppy eyes.

"Okay, but I'm coming with you. All of us are."

"What? But it's Berk, who's going to protect it?"

"Gustav and the others can manage without us for a while."

Astrid replied right away, mentioning Berk's dragon riders, leaning her body to the side and crossing her arms as she smiled.

"Either we go with you or you DON'T go."

Hiccup felt stunned for a moment.

"Even if I have to rip off your other leg, you're not going without us."

Astrid subtly raised the tip of her axe blade.

"...Wanna risk it?"

Hiccup, defeated, finally gave in, and the two of them looked toward the rest of the gang.

"Snotlout, twins, come here."

Valka stayed silent, guilt eating at her, because even though she still didn't understand everything they were talking about or what was going on, she knew Astrid was right.

She knew she shouldn't be dragging her son into this; he was Berk's newly named chief, his people needed him. That was her egg, her responsibility, her problem…

Valka looked at Hiccup, wanting to say it wasn't necessary, that she could go alone. Knowing it'd be a lie, that she'd probably end up resting with the egg... forever.

But when she looked at the egg inside the greenhouse through the open door, small, delicate and fragile, she couldn't. She couldn't take away the hatchling's last chance of surviving.

Was she really that bad of a mother?

…

Probably.

————————————————————

Hiccup started gathering the maps.

"We'll have to modify the boat so it can handle the ice and carry the egg, our luggage and supplies."

Snotlout raised his hand.

"I still think this is a terrible idea, we're going to Thor-knows-where just to save a stupid egg, I vote we don't go."

Ruffnut and Tuffnut looked at Snotlout like they were about to kill him.

"You always vote not to go."

"Because usually you guys want to go to places where we'll probably die."

Tuffnut smiled.

"So that's a yes?"

"No!"

Hiccup smiled.

"We leave as soon as the weather allows."

Astrid looked at him.

"And the egg?"

"It comes with us."

Valka, who'd been tuned out of the conversation lost in thought, seemed to come back to her senses, and immediately answered the only part of the conversation she'd understood.

"No."

Hiccup looked at her.

"No? It's the reason we're going, we can't leave it here."

She clenched her jaw, gritting her teeth, and put a hand on the shell. Now was the time to call off this whole madness, to convince her son not to go on a suicide mission to save her egg, which was her responsibility.

She took a deep breath, opened her mouth to say something, hesitated, but then said:

"I'll take it."

Not letting it show, Valka felt guiltier than ever, because she'd chosen the dragons over Hiccup... again.

Hiccup nodded.

In a good mood from managing to help the egg, Hiccup added, "Then let's go find a boat."

The next morning Berk began preparing a vessel. It wasn't big, it wasn't fast, but it was sturdy and it worked.

Hiccup reinforced the hull with extra wood and had thick furs installed around the areas where the egg would be carried.

Gobber complained through almost the whole process.

"If I have to build one more thing for this egg, I'm going to start charging."

Hiccup kept working.

"You gonna charge me?"

"No."

"So?"

"I'm complaining preemptively."

Hiccup smiled.

"Fair."

While Astrid organized the supplies, Fishlegs sorted maps and furs, Snotlout checked the weapons, the twins argued over who'd get the best spot on the boat, and Toothless stayed close to Hiccup.

But something was off.

While everyone worked, the snow kept falling, and the closer departure got... the harder it fell.

Hiccup stopped in front of the sea. In the distance, the horizon was almost completely white. 

He felt the wind hit his face, cold, but not unpleasant. For some reason it felt extremely familiar, as if the wind itself were pointing somewhere.

Toothless came over and Hiccup put a hand on his head.

"You feel it too?"

Toothless let out a little grunt.

Hiccup looked north.

"Then let's find out."

Behind them, inside the sanctuary, the egg glowed again, and this time a thin layer of ice spread across the floor, forming a line pointing north.

Frostheim.

With nobody in Berk knowing their true destination, they were about to enter a land where nature probably didn't follow the rules they knew.

And somewhere very far from there, beyond the ice-covered mountains... someone would feel that change too. A small connection, new until then…

Unknown?

But Hiccup, Valka, Astrid, Fishlegs, Snotlout, Toothless and the others didn't know that yet. To them, Frostheim was just a mysterious place, a last hope to save the egg.

They didn't know they were heading toward something that would completely change their lives.

In the dead of night, Hiccup woke up and started getting ready for the trip: clothes, extra legs, tail pieces for Toothless, and other essentials for the cold.

When he was all set to leave, he headed for the door, but right as he was about to open his hut's door, he looked back, saw Toothless, and wondered, "Am I making the right choice?"

Toothless, sensing the shift in Hiccup's mood, pressed his snout against Hiccup's back, trying to comfort him.

It really seemed to work on the brunette, because it calmed him enough to keep going and open the door, only to find everyone already waiting for him outside.

Fishlegs was grinning at Hiccup.

Snotlout had his arms crossed.

 "If this gets us killed, I swear I'll kill you again in Valhalla."

The twins were hopping around in pure joy.

Astrid was there in the middle of it all, looking at Hiccup with a smile on her face before saying, "Ready to go?"

The boat left Berk a little before dawn. 

The sky was still dark when Hiccup and the others boarded, and luckily for them the snow had eased up during the night, but the cold stayed fierce, something Berk was used to.

Unbeknownst to them, the snow stopped falling in Berk a few minutes after the boat and the egg left.

Valka sat in the most sheltered part of the vessel, keeping the egg wrapped in thick furs. Even so, from time to time she'd pull some of them off to let the cold air in, careful not to let it warm up too much.

Fishlegs watched closely.

"Is everything okay with it?"

Valka put her hand on the shell.

"It's calmer."

That didn't answer Fishlegs's question, but it was good news anyway. Hiccup, who was helping adjust one of the sails, looked back.

"That's good, right?"

"It's better than before."

Hiccup nodded.

It was something.

Toothless was flying just above the boat, keeping pace with the vessel while the other dragons carried part of the supplies.

Astrid was by the mast.

"How long until we get there?"

Fishlegs opened the map.

"If the wind keeps up like this, in theory, maybe two days."

The boat was being pulled by Cloudjumper and Hookfang, because the wind was blowing in the completely opposite direction... which was weird, since a current in the water was also pushing them forward. It was as if something or someone was trying to help them, and something else was pushing them away.

Snotlout let out a laugh.

"Maybe two days?"

He pointed at the horizon.

"We're headed to a land where apparently nobody goes and you're saying 'maybe two days'?"

"It's an estimate."

"A dumb estimate."

"Got a better one?"

"Yeah."

Snotlout crossed his arms.

"We don't go."

Astrid rolled her eyes.

"You already said that."

"And I still think it's a great idea."

Hiccup ignored them.

His eyes stayed locked on the horizon because the sea was strange.

There were no big waves; it was actually unusually calm. 

Every now and then small chunks of ice floated past the boat, few at first, but then they began showing up more often.

Fishlegs looked at the water.

"We're headed the right way."

Hiccup turned.

"How do you know?"

"The farther north we go, the more ice we find. That's normal in the more northern lands."

Hiccup looked at the sea, anxious, worried, but also happy.

"So you think Frostheim really exists?"

"Probably."

"You keep using that word."

"Because I'm not sure about anything."

Hiccup smiled.

"Fair."

A few hours went by and the sun finally showed up on the horizon, but it brought almost no warmth.

The cold crept up slowly.

Hiccup started to notice that the water around the boat was changing. Small plates of ice were knocking against the hull, plates that hadn't been there before they passed. Yet they kept popping up like magic whenever the boat was about to go through that stretch of ocean.

TACK.

The sound made everyone look down.

Snotlout grabbed Hookfang when he briefly lost his balance.

"Is that normal?"

Fishlegs studied the ice.

"Probably for this region."

Snotlout pointed at him.

"You just said 'probably' again. Do you actually know anything?"

"Then why don't you answer, Snotlout? Since you have all this wisdom."

"I... I could, but I'm trying to give you the chance to be useful."

"Wow, thanks Snotlout, I don't know what I'd do without you.

"

"No problem, Fishlegs."

Astrid laughed.

Then Toothless let out a roar from above, which made Hiccup immediately look around to find what he'd detected.

"What is it?"

The Night Fury began to descend and landed at the front of the boat, looking north, his ears perked as if trying to pick up again something he'd lost.

Hiccup walked over.

"What do you see, Toothless?"

Hiccup knew that even if they couldn't see it, Toothless certainly could. He didn't just have better eyesight than Hiccup and the others, he didn't see only with his eyes, but also through sounds, smells and sensations.

Toothless let out a small growl that didn't sound aggressive, but... confused.

That made Hiccup look at the horizon, searching for whatever was confusing his dragon so much. Even after all his effort, he found absolutely nothing, only the vastness of the ocean.

"Is there something out there?"

Toothless just looked at him, then toward the north, still seeming to stare at nothing, and then back at Hiccup.

"I don't see anything either, but Hookfang seems nervous."

The dragon flapped his wings and went back to flying.

Astrid and Stormfly came over to Hiccup and Toothless, careful not to get too close. Dragons can get really skittish when they're tense.

"They're sensing something. Probably the smell of some dragon."

Hiccup shook his head

.

"I don't think so."

Astrid looked at him.

"Why not?"

"Our dragons wouldn't be this tense over just one dragon, and if it were a flock we'd have seen it already."

Hiccup looked at the dragons escorting the boat, but none of them wanted to relax. They were all flying alert, and only Toothless kept looking north, as if he'd figured out where whatever was putting them on edge was coming from there.

And that made Hiccup uneasy.

The hours went by and night soon fell. The temperature dropped, the ice thickened, that made them stop the boat. The ice had become too thick; it wasn't safe to keep sailing.

The Vikings decided to set up a small camp on an area of ice thick enough to hold their weight.

The egg was placed in Valka's tent, protected by furs and little wool blankets.

Hiccup sat by a campfire next to Astrid, lost in thought, maybe from exhaustion or maybe something else. But who could blame him, a lot had happened in the last days.

Toothless was sleeping near them, almost belly-up, all his earlier tension gone as if it had never existed.

Astrid had gotten up and was now waving in front of Hiccup's face, trying to get his attention.

"You should sleep."

"So should you."

"I'm not the chief."

Hiccup smiled.

"Then I can order you to go to sleep."

Astrid crossed her arms.

"You wouldn't dare."

"No."

He yawned.

"Probably not."

Astrid sat down next to him and, for a few seconds, they sat in silence.

Hiccup felt on edge, because things were kind of weird: he and Astrid had, uh... a history? But in the dragon's domain, when it seemed like something might develop, everything stayed the same.

And after that day... Hiccup didn't even like thinking about that day.

"Are you thinking about your dad, about what happened two moons ago with the egg??"

Hiccup went still.

"A little of everything."

"I figured."

He looked up at the sky.

"When I was a kid, I thought I didn't know anything, and I was right."

Hiccup sighed.

"But after that, after Toothless, things finally started to click."

"But now... now I just feel like back then. The old Hiccup who didn't know anything."

Astrid smiled.

"Everyone thought that too."

"Thanks for the support, Astrid, that really helped." Hiccup said with sarcasm, not actually annoyed or offended.

"Probably."

Hiccup laughed.

"You're using Fishlegs's word."

"Maybe."

The two burst out laughing at Astrid using one of Fishlegs's words again. Astrid really knew how to cheer him up, but right after, he looked back at the egg.

"I wish he were here."

Astrid didn't answer.

There was nothing she could say, so she just stayed beside him.

It was the middle of the night and everyone was asleep, Hiccup included, but a thing happened.

Hiccup woke up for some reason even he couldn't explain, got up and headed outside his tent, not noticing that Toothless wasn't there with him. Hiccup didn't seem bothered by that, which was... strange.

He stepped out of his tent, becoming extremely confused and worried at not seeing the boat or any dragon, only Astrid and his mom's tent, which was glowing with the blue light he'd seen a few days ago.

Still confused, Hiccup kept walking slowly toward the tent. Even though he wanted to run, he felt like his legs weren't obeying him, his body wasn't obeying him, nothing was obeying him, it was as if everything was numb. 

As he slowly entered the tent, he saw... someone? Something? Standing right in front of the egg, it looked like a bunch of snowflakes circling in one place, as if trying to imitate a human shape.

Confused and terrified, Hiccup kept going toward the egg, one step at a time, and when he got very close he felt like he was in control of his body again, and his first reaction was to grab Inferno, set it ablaze, and say:

"What are you and what did you do to my friends?"

The instant Hiccup tried to question the creature, it turned and looked at him, and he saw two blue glimmers floating in the middle of the mini snowstorm.

Freezing on the spot, Hiccup found himself asking, "Are those eyes??" Suddenly the thing lunged at Hiccup and then

Hiccup woke up, hyperventilating, with a feeling like his lungs had no air to breathe, cold sweat of fear. There was no way he was sweating from heat in the middle of a slab of ice.

"A nightmare?" Hiccup tried to jump up, but fell, since he didn't have his prosthetic on. He barely got it on before running outside, startling Toothless, only to find nothing. Everyone was there, the tents, the dragons, he could even see the twins sleeping in their tent.

The fire was still lit, Meatlug was sleeping practically on top of Fishlegs, the others were also sound asleep… But there was one abnormal thing: just like in his dream, Astrid and Valka's tent was glowing. 

Silence spread around Hiccup, he stopped hearing the twins' snoring, stopped hearing everything around him... Hiccup was starting to panic.

He ran toward the glow, waking everyone up since his metal leg wasn't exactly quiet, and charged into the tent, startling and waking Valka and Astrid.

"Hiccup, is everything okay?"

"What's wrong son?"

Hiccup didn't answer them. When he saw them, an immense relief ran through his whole body, but then he saw it.

A creature around the egg, the same creature from his dreams. It had noticed them, it had seen them, but it seemed too busy to care about the others' presence. 

The creature made a little snowball, or was it an ice ball?, and dropped it onto the egg, which seemed to absorb it.He pointed at the creature and signaled for them to keep quiet.

Astrid slowly got up and grabbed her axe, and then she saw Valka run toward the creature. She didn't need to know what it was, didn't need to know what it wanted, she only needed to defend the egg.

A gust of air that inexplicably seemed to come from inside the tent threw Valka backward, nothing big, nothing too strong, just enough to make her fall back and stop running.

And then it looked at them very briefly and flew right over everyone, colliding with Hiccup, but since it was made of wind and snowflakes, nothing happened.

Silence. They were all too stunned to speak, all of them dumbfounded.

But Hiccup was the first to snap out of the trance. He ran (again) toward the egg, examining it.

"Hey buddy, are you okay? Did it do something to you?"

Tok. A movement.

After all that commotion, everyone was already at the door or inside the tent, watching in confusion at what was happening.

The shell was starting to glow, not with the same blue light as before; this one was fainter, like a light hidden beneath the ice.

Overcome by worry and curiosity, Hiccup laid his hand on the shell, carefully, both so as not to hurt the egg and so as not to get hurt himself, but as soon as he touched it, he felt it.

A pulse.

Not a heartbeat, there was no way to feel that through the shell, it was something different. Like a vibration passing through his hand.

Hiccup pulled his fingers back.

"Guys... it's vibrating."

"What happened while we were sleeping??" said Snotlout, part confused, part worried.

Hiccup looked at them.

"I had a nightmare and woke up, saw a glow coming from the tent and came to see what was going on."

Valka stepped closer.

The energy grew, and then the ice around the camp started to move.

Everyone was frightened.

"What's happening?!" yelled Snotlout.

The ice began to crack.

CRACK.

CRACK.

CRACK.

Astrid drew her axe, knowing it probably wouldn't do any good, but it calmed her.

"What's happening?"

"It's him," said Valka.

They looked at the egg, and a gust of wind swept through the camp. The flames went out, and for a few seconds the darkness was total. Then a blue light appeared beneath the ice.

One line, two, three... several began to appear, spreading across the surface like roots, one sprouting and branching into more lines, forming rivers of light.

Fishlegs was completely fascinated.

"This..." He swallowed "This isn't just ice."

"Then what is it?" For the first time the twins asked, maybe with more fear than fascination.

Fishlegs couldn't answer.

The light faded, the ice stopped moving, and everything went back to normal.

Snotlout looked around.

"Is it over?"

Nobody answered.

Hiccup looked north, and there it was... the eyes, watching quietly and intently, before simply vanishing into the dark.

There was something different on the horizon and it was approaching through the sky before falling in front of Hiccup, but it didn't look like much? At least it wasn't dangerous. It was the same ray of light the egg had shot off in Berk. 

After a few moments processing what had fallen in front of him, Hiccup connected the dots

"An answer... someone answered the egg."

"Was it him? The mist?" asked Astrid.

"I don't know, I just know that whatever that thing was, it did something to the egg, and I think the egg is what called it."

Fishlegs came closer.

"How do you know?"

Hiccup pointed at the light in the sky.

"Because that wasn't there before."

Everyone looked at the trail of light that had fallen from the sky and perhaps they began to fear for their lives.

Like an unspoken agreement among them all, early the next morning, like literally still about three hours before sunrise, they'd already set off even if they were restless, exhausted.

The reason they left so early was that even though they tried hard to go back to sleep after the previous night's events, none of them could, so they just tried to push on.

The ice grew thicker by the hour, and it was very strange because the wind and the cold intensified and eased as if something were controlling them, but they pressed on anyway.

The sun had been up for a few hours, everything was going fine so far, at least nothing stranger than what had already happened. Until, unfortunately, the boat couldn't move forward on its own anymore.

The dragons started helping more than before, pushing harder and harder to keep up the boat's pace, because on top of an extremely strange wind that came from the north heading south, it seemed to blow only against the boat's sail, and nowhere else.

Toothless and the other dragons landed on big plates of ice and used their fire in lines to break as much ice as possible, taking turns so none of the dragons completely ran out of fire, helping clear a path for the boat.

Snotlout and the others used oars and axes and whatever other tool or weapon they had to break up the smaller pieces of ice. But even so, they pushed on and didn't give up, advancing slowly, as always with their chronic stubbornness.

Until finally…

Fishlegs shouted.

"Land!"

Everyone looked at the horizon. Enormous ice-covered mountains rose up until they vanished into the clouds, frozen waterfalls ran down the cliff faces with the majestic beauty of nature, gorgeous and certainly untouched by human hands, with the pure white of the snow, shades of deep blue and navy from the ice that seemed to swallow the entire island, and huge patches, or should I say bands, of purple and violet, maybe caused by sunlight reflecting off the mountain, though they didn't know if that alone could cause a color so vivid and beautiful.

Hiccup was speechless.

Valka was speechless.

EVERYONE was speechless.

Frostheim. Finally, Frostheim.

. . .

Astrid looked at Hiccup.

"We made it."

He nodded, but he didn't look happy, because he felt like there was something about that place, a feeling, like he was being... watched?

The dragons seemed to have noticed something too, because they were tense, just like on the first day of the trip. Once again they knew something the riders didn't.

The Night Fury growled low, Hiccup put a hand on his neck to comfort him, but he was also confused, trying to understand what was going on with his dragon.

"It's okay, buddy, easy."

Toothless didn't take his eyes off the mountains, and Hiccup knew he wasn't ignoring him, he was just focused on something Hiccup still didn't know about.

He kept watching Toothless before looking around, to see how the others were doing and whether the other dragons were acting like his, until he caught a glimpse of the egg, briefly, out of the corner of his eye. The blue light was appearing again, and stronger than before.

Valka seemed to notice too.

"It seems to recognize this place."

Astrid frowned.

"But it's never been here."

Valka looked at the landscape, thoughtful, worried, but also a little relieved.

"Maybe it never needed to be. Maybe... maybe it's just following its instincts?"

Hiccup didn't understand. He had so many unanswered questions. What was that creature last night? How could the egg be reacting to the island? Why was it reacting to the island?...

What was the island...?

…

Everyone watched for a few more minutes, trying to spot some local wildlife, some dragon, but all they saw as they got closer was more and more white mist, a strange fog that got thicker with every yard, covering almost the entire coast. And in the middle of the fog, they heard something.

It wasn't a roar.

It wasn't a scream.

It was a low sound.

Almost like a melody carried on the wind, maybe... a song?

But before they could ask each other about it an extremely cold, strong wind suddenly kicked up. It tore through the group, knocked the dragons out of the sky and pushed the boat back, away from the island.

Now the sky began to close in, the snow began to fall, and the fog kept getting worse.

Toothless raised his head, alert, more alert than any of the other times on this trip.

All the dragons did the same.

They even seemed... scared. Meatlug was practically hiding under Fishlegs, Barf and Belch stayed close to the twins as if they wanted to protect them, Hookfang, who'd been knocked out of the sky, quickly got back to flying and kept an extra distance from the island, tucking in right behind the boat, and Stormfly stood right beside Astrid with her spikes raised, ready to fire.

Only Toothless and Cloudjumper stayed at the front of the boat, Cloudjumper flying and Toothless standing at the very tip of the vessel.

But until then it was just ordinary snow, an apparently weak snowfall that started coming down, good old calm snow, or so they thought.

Slowly the snow fell harder and the winds grew stronger, not in a threatening way, but still worrying. It could've been the supposedly endless storm that was said to fall on the island, or maybe just a typical snowfall for that part of the archipelago.

Not that it would stop them. Even a snowstorm was an everyday thing in Berk, it didn't bother them, so they just kept getting closer to the island, ignoring the snow and only watching for changes in the wind.

They were already very close to the island. The snowfall had strengthened enough to be a nuisance for navigation, but the most worrying thing was the fog. It was thick enough that they couldn't see a hand in front of their faces. They were guided only by the one thing they could see on the horizon, the peak of the island's tallest mountain. It was as if the fog, or nature itself, were trying to make them see the tip of Frostheim.

"Hiccup, we have zero visibility. If this keeps up we'll hit something and not even know until we feel the impact," said Astrid. "If we fly above the fog maybe we can get our bearings better."

"No, if we fly above the fog we won't be able to find our way back to the boat, and we can't rely on sound alone."

Hiccup had already thought of that option. He and Toothless could fly above the fog and easily come back using the Night Fury's echolocation. But for some reason Toothless refused to budge, barely even looking at Hiccup as he called him, still intent, still alert.

"If that's the problem, you've got the right guy for the job," said Snotlout. "Me and Hookfang can be a lighthouse up there."

"Let him go Hiccup, I'm sure when he disappears up there we won't even notice he's gone, and we'll get his share of the food," said Ruffnut, mocking the Viking.

"And do you have a better idea?" Snotlout shot back sharply.

"we do, we're going to pray," answered Tuffnut.

"Pray? Since when are you guys so religious?" said Snotlout.

"Calm down, my short companion who smells like yak."

"We've always been religious."

"This clearly has nothing to do with us supposedly being right next to the house of one of your favorite gods," Astrid joked.

"Second favorite, to be exact."

"Just be quiet and let the professionals work."

"Oh Jokul Frost, lord of icy winds, of snows, and of mornings when nobody can feel their toes…”

They were slowly calming down thanks to this chatter, as if it were melting the tense, icy mood that had hung over the group for a few hours now, ever since what happened the night before.

Hiccup was one of them, and Valka was glad about it, just watching the whole scene, not feeling the need to step in or join the conversation so she could enjoy it, letting through an extremely faint glow that was starting to come off the egg.

“I humbly beseech you... reduce this damn fog!!

You don't have to make it sunny!

You don't have to stop the cold!

You can keep on freezing everything.

You can even take Snotlout as tribute if you want!!

But for Thor's sake, let us see where we're going!"

And at the end of the twins' prayer everyone fell silent, not because they thought it would work, but because they found the whole situation unfolding so funny.

But as if by miracle, or in answer to their prayer, the fog really did seem to thin.

"See, all you had to do was ask nicely and he answered our prayer."

Everyone was laughing and happy, not because of the fog clearing, which was good but wasn't the reason. They were finally relaxing, enjoying the trip, enjoying the edges of Frostheim.

But you know how it goes, a poor man's joy doesn't last long, or should I say a Viking's joy doesn't last long.

Hiccup, with better visibility now, started looking ahead and examining their course, and to his horror he saw it. It wasn't Jokul Frost, it was a typhoon starting to form, and it was sucking in the fog.

The typhoon wasn't that close to them, maybe 2,500 to 5,000 feet northwest of the boat? But everyone could see it getting closer and closer every second.

"Fishlegs, twins, take Snotlout's and Cloudjumper's lines off the boat and help move it as fast as you can!! If it's not working, cut the rope and abandon the boat."

"Astrid, go with my mom to the east side of the island, take the egg with you."

"WHAT?! What do you mean, I'm not leaving you guys behind."

"Yes, you ARE! As leader of the dragon riders and chief of Berk, I order you to go. NOW."

Astrid gave him her annoyed look, the look of someone angry, furious, but also very worried, sad and scared for her companions and for Hiccup.

Hiccup hated talking like this or using his chief's authority on people he considered family, especially Astrid. But in this situation, it was necessary.

"Go, just go... I need you two safe Astrid... please"

Astrid finally gave in and followed Valka and the egg toward the east side of the island, but it didn't last long. Soon a second typhoon appeared right in front of Valka and Astrid, as if it had deliberately shown up right in their path.

Hiccup saw what was happening with his mother and Astrid and tried to quickly go help them, but the wind was already too strong.

Toothless tried to go toward the two of them, but the wind pulled him in the opposite direction, he could barely move. Hiccup considered diving through the air with Toothless, but he was also almost sure it would backfire and they wouldn't have the strength or speed to regain altitude.

Hiccup was starting to panic.

He had to save his mother, he had to save the egg, he had to help his friends who couldn't move the boat with the typhoons making flight so hard.

But none of those needs were within his reach, so all that was left was to torture him.

Valka and Astrid were clever Vikings, well trained by life, and they reacted quickly to the sudden second mysterious hurricane, changed course and tried to fly in the opposite direction from where they'd been headed, meaning straight toward Hiccup and the others.

"EVERYONE FALL BACK NOW, AWAY FROM THE ISLAND!"

Hiccup didn't know if the others could hear, didn't even know if any of them could really hear anything that wasn't the wind, but like a shoal of fish swimming through the sky, whether they'd heard him or not they got the message and started to retreat. It was hard, but slowly they were managing.

But something changed. Something or someone, apparently, must've heard Hiccup too. A god? Maybe Thor, maybe Odin, could even be Loki himself because somebody was definitely controlling this storm, and that somebody apparently hated them.

None of them could believe what they were seeing: the western hurricane was changing direction?

"Hiccup, is it just me or are the hurricanes trying to corner us?"

It wasn't just Fishlegs's imagination, they really were trying to corner them. How could two hurricanes show up in exactly the directions they were headed, and on top of that, they were now certain one of them was changing course as the riders changed course.

The western hurricane quickly stopped approaching the gang and headed south, circling not just the island but also moving toward the riders' escape route.

Disoriented and worn down by the pressure and adrenaline of the moment, everyone started looking for a new escape route, and they had to find one fast.

Time was running out, the hurricanes were closing in, and the snowfall the hurricanes had brought in from the island was getting worse, seeming to turn from heavy snow into flakes that cut like knives.

"BY THOR WHAT'S GOING ON!! SINCE WHEN DOES SNOW CUT?!" Shouted Snotlout.

None of them could even know what was happening, and they'd have to deal with it whether they liked it or not.

Astrid and Valka were still trying to get back to the group, trying to ignore their skin being sliced by the snow. Astrid tried to go in front, showing the way for Cloudjumper and Valka to follow, since Valka had to pay close attention to the egg to protect it. Even though it was weakened, and they didn't think the snow was strong enough to damage the shell, they couldn't risk it.

Continuing on and keeping watch over the egg made Valka notice that the snow didn't seem to want to affect it, and the egg was glowing brighter with every passing minute.

But they kept up the teamwork and ignored that fact for now, and with a lot of effort they were finally very close to Hiccup.

Fishlegs, Snotlout and the twins tried to approach Hiccup, since he'd drifted a bit away from them in his attempt to reach Valka and Astrid.

With extreme difficulty, since none of them were as aerodynamic as Toothless and Hiccup.

Snotlout and Hookfang were so big that the wind affected them more than most, Meatlug and Fishlegs had poor balance because of their small wings, not having as much strength or control to resist the wind, and the twins were, well, the twins, having both Hookfang's disadvantage of being big and less coordination than the others in the chaos.

While everyone fought to survive in the storm, far below them, a few meters from their last position, was the boat, their good old boat that had been abandoned by everyone. 

What cruel creatures T-T

Seeming to want revenge, or maybe it was just the wind pulling and the typhoon's suction on the water, which was now a waterspout mixed with ice, and apparently would soon have wood in it too.

Faster and faster and closer to the waterspout, which was so strong it was practically tearing it apart from a distance, and it didn't help that it also seemed to be heading toward them, which was also the direction of the riders.

Crack

Astrid and Valka were finally beside Hiccup.

"HICCUP WHAT'S HAPPENING!? THAT TYPHOON CAME OUT OF NOWHERE"

Astrid screamed at the top of her lungs, trying to make Hiccup hear her over all the noise of the wind.

"I HAVE NO IDEA, IT'S LIKE ODIN IS MAD AT US"

The twins and the others arrived and regrouped

.

"HICCUP WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW. WE'RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO HANDLE THIS STORM"

CREAK

"I KNOW, FISHLEGS, BUT I CAN'T FIND A WAY THROUGH"

The first waterspout and the second one forming were now very close to them and practically circling them, which was strange because they should have tried to swallow each other by now. But they seemed to stop at a certain maximum distance, almost orbiting an invisible circle of 260 feet.

And the wind, which was certainly almost knocking them out of the sky, still wasn't as strong as it should've been. They were so close that they should've been pulled into at least one of them already.

Did this have something to do with the egg's glow?

"ALL THIS BECAUSE OF THE TWINS AND A STUPID EGG," complained Snotlout.

"SNOTLOUT, AS FLATTERED AS TUFFNUT AND I ARE THAT YOU THINK SO HIGHLY OF US"

CREAK

"YEAH, THANK YOU SNOTLOUT <3"

"BUT AS FAR AS I REMEMBER I'M STILL NOT A GODDESS OR LOKI'S WIFE, SO I CAN'T DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS"

The twins defended themselves, in a tone that clearly showed they were genuinely happy about the compliment and offended by the accusation at the same time.

"YOU AND YOUR STUPID PRAYER, YOU MOCKED THE GODS SO MUCH YOU PISSED ONE OFF"

"LOOK SNOTLOUT, I'M SURE THE TWINS' PRAYER DIDN'T CAUSE ALL THIS"

"AND HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT FISH FAC- AAAAAHHH GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF"

Everyone saw Snotlout panic over a... sail.

The twins were laughing, Valka was distracted by something, and Astrid, Fishlegs and Hiccup were confused.

"Is that our boat's sail?" Hiccup murmured.

"HICCUP IF THE SAIL'S HERE... WHERE'S THE REST OF THE BOAT?" asked Fishlegs.

Hiccup and Astrid made faces of shock for a split second before screaming even louder than they already were.

"EVASIVE MANEUVERS!"

As if synchronized with Hiccup and Astrid's shout, more and more pieces of the boat flew in the direction they were flying, forcing each of them to dodge however they could.

Snotlout and Hookfang dove down, Astrid and Stormfly kept watching and changing direction as planks flew at her, Meatlug and Fishlegs just dodged as best they could and were lucky that almost nothing tried to hit them, Valka and Cloudjumper were dodging easily and intercepting some of the debris with Cloudjumper's fire, and Hiccup was doing the same.

Only the twins were dodging by the skin of their teeth, the debris for some reason seeming to aim at them more than the others. Maybe they really were being punished by Odin for blasphemy or by Loki for treason.

They made evasive maneuvers in the air, constantly changing direction and making split-second decisions, which, let's be honest, is not the twins' strong suit. Everyone was too busy to help the twins, except Valka.

She had more years of flying experience than all the others, and she'd also been lucky not to have much wood almost hitting her (what could have caused that?).

Even while dodging her own debris, she managed to ask Cloudjumper to destroy some pieces of wood flying toward the twins, which really helped.

Hiccup and Astrid began approaching them again since they were managing to keep pace with the debris.

But whenever something's going right, something has to go wrong.

Valka was too accommodating, having to split her attention between the egg, the twins, and her own debris, which made her neglect it.

Hiccup noticed his mother wasn't paying enough attention to see the huge mast coming her way.

Toothless roared as loud as he could to try to warn Cloudjumper.

"MOM, IN FRONT OF YOU"

Toothless and Hiccup shouted at the same time, Hiccup to warn his mother while Toothless shouted to warn Cloudjumper.

They were already going toward them but didn't need to, because Astrid, who was also watching what was happening and was closer, was already diving toward Valka and the egg, arriving in time for Stormfly to fire right at the middle of the mast, snapping it in two and saving Valka from the impact.

But that sent one of the mast pieces flying toward the twins. Barf and Belch, to protect their riders and avoid getting hit, tried to use their gas to blow up the rest of the mast. But since they were in a windstorm their gas wasn't very effective, and to make sure it worked they used more gas than usual.

The explosion managed to destroy the mast, but it also came really close to Cloudjumper, who got spooked and was left disoriented for a moment, dropping Valka, who couldn't keep her balance with only one hand.

"CLOUDJUMPER"

"MOM" 

Hiccup and Toothless started a high-speed dive to catch Valka, but they were farther and higher up than they'd have liked. Luckily Cloudjumper wasn't disoriented for long and also dove to save Valka.

But what about the egg?

The egg was also in free fall, and it wasn't in Valka's arms. When she lost her balance and fell off Cloudjumper's back, she'd also let go of the egg by accident.

Cloudjumper managed to catch Valka in midair, but only with his claws, he couldn't catch the egg without breaking it.

But the twins were already there. When they saw they'd knocked Valka down and Cloudjumper had gone to save her, they focused on the egg, with Hiccup right behind them also trying to catch it.

Mid-dive, they were almost about to catch the egg, but they were getting too close to the sea. If they hit the ocean at this speed they would surely die.

"TWINS, PULL UP!!" shouted Fishlegs, who couldn't be heard by the pair of siblings, they were already too far away and there was too much wind noise.

Hiccup tried a little longer but realized he wasn't going fast enough to catch the egg before hitting the ocean, and pulled up before it got too dangerous.

But the twins just ignored it.

That didn't mean they didn't know the situation they were in. They knew perfectly well, but they were still determined to save the egg.

"WE'RE CLOSE SIS"

"IT'D BETTER BE, OR WE'LL GET TO VALHALLA EARLIER, AND I DON'T KNOW IF I'M READY TO MEET LOKI YET"

They kept going, and the closer they got, the faster the ocean came up to meet them.

"TWINS GET OUT OF THERE!!" Hiccup screamed.

"Unnrrrnnn I don't even want to look," Fishlegs muttered to himself, clearly very scared.

"No..." said Snotlout in an extremely sad and frightened voice.

Astrid put her hand over her mouth, horrified at the sight of her friends' probable death.

And Valka was... is just as horrified as Astrid., if not more, because if she'd just held on to the egg none of this would've happened.

They wouldn't turn in time.

There was no saving them.

…

"GOT IT"

Tuffnut caught the egg. He and Ruffnut started trying to brake or turn so they wouldn't smash into the ocean, but neither inertia nor gravity would be that merciful.

Maybe somebody else would.

"I LOVE YOU BRO, SEE YOU IN VALHALLA"

"LOVE YOU TOO SIS, I COULDN'T THINK OF ANYONE BETTER TO BE WITH WHEN I DIE"

The words had barely left Tuffnut's mouth when the wind exploded.

The egg in Tuffnut's hands, which had been glowing since the start of the storm, suddenly stopped glowing.

And then the waterspouts swallowed them whole. They'd seemed to respect a certain distance, but now they advanced and crashed in with everything they had, swallowing everyone. Including the twins.

All the dragons were thrown in different directions at once.

"AAAAHH MEATLUG" Fishlegs screamed in panic.

Astrid gripped Stormfly reins tightly.

"HOLD ON, STORMFLY!"

Stormfly grunted in agreement with Astrid, who was still trying to regain balance, but she didn't fail to notice that the Nadder let out a roar more frightened than usual.

Astrid saw her wings beating against the wind, desperately trying to keep them steady in the air, but it was no use, because they already knew they were no longer flying.

They were being carried.

…

Hiccup looked back and saw that Valka and Cloudjumper were still close, but they'd already been dragged for a long time in a different direction.

He realized his mother seemed to be searching for something, and he knew what it was, he was looking for it too, but for different reasons.

It was the egg, which, like the twins, was still missing.

"ASTRID!" shouted Valka, who saw her struggling against the winds.

"VALKA!" Astrid, who'd managed to hear Valka's call, tried even harder to influence where the wind threw her.

The two tried to get closer, but the more they tried, the more the wind pushed them apart.

"GO LEFT!"

"I'M TRYING!"

They kept trying to get closer, but gusts from every side were hitting the dragons.

Then came a gust of wind from above, but this one was stronger, more focused on a single point, which was right in the middle of Stormfly's back. It sent her hurtling downward.

Astrid instantly felt dizzy, her stomach rising into her throat, her heart racing, her mind telling her that if she didn't regain control she would surely die.

"STORMFLY!"

The Nadder, like her rider, hadn't given up, and with great effort she finally regained her balance, barely. But it wouldn't last long, because the nearest waterspout, the one they were currently in, began to spin at an absurd speed.

The water rose higher and higher, mixing with snow, ice and pieces of wood still whirling in the winds.

Making life hard not just for Astrid and Valka, but for the others too.

…

"HOOKFAAAAANG," Snotlout was currently spinning, not in the waterspout, but in a spin around his own axis.

"DO SOMETHING FISH FACE"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO, SNOTLOUT!? WE CAN'T EVEN FLY!"

Hiccup, who saw all of this happening at once, decided those two needed help more than Astrid and Valka.

He was already approaching, but it seemed that his mental exhaustion and Toothless's physical exhaustion had started to get the better of them. Without them noticing, the front half of their old boat, still with mast, sail and everything, appeared like a ghost.

All Hiccup could do before they were hit was try to change course with Toothless, dodging the main part of the debris, but it was already too late to dodge completely. The debris was already too close and coming at gigantic speed.

It was inevitable.

They crashed into the sail's mast, hitting Hiccup's back and head, along with Toothless's back and tail, snapping the mast in the middle and leaving the sail tangled on them, leaving Hiccup dizzy and making him fall off Toothless's back, since Toothless could no longer control his flight.

"Tooth..." Hiccup fought to keep his eyes open while in free fall. "less...."

"ur.." Hiccup tried to open his eyes but his eyelids were too heavy. All he could feel was cold, the kind that can freeze you alive.

But there at the very end (or after a long time?), trying to concentrate, he could hear something... someone?

"They were more insistent than last time, I'd never seen Vikings flying on dragons... curious."

It was a cold voice, not because of temperature or because it was intimidating, it was apathetic, monotone.

But also... so beautiful.

This person (He didn't even know if a person could have such a divine voice) must have noticed Hiccup was waking up, because even though he couldn't see anything, Hiccup knew they had gone quiet and were now staring at him.

"Just return him to the others, please."

Hiccup tried to use all the strength he had left to open his eyes. He wanted so badly to see this being, he NEEDED to see what they looked like.

He kept trying, fighting to control his body and open his eyes, until he finally managed to lift his eyelids just a little and saw. 

He saw him.

He couldn't see anything clearly, but the little he saw made the air leave his lungs. By reflex he tried to raise his arm to maybe touch them, but before he could even properly lift it he felt a bump? He couldn't tell; he didn't feel anything hitting him, he only felt the wind, as if he were flying?!

Was he on top of a dragon? Was it Toothless? It didn't feel like Toothless, and even if it were, why would he obey that being?

Even while trying to reason it out, Hiccup had already pushed himself too far. Before he could try to understand, he was slowly falling asleep again, passing out.

When he came to and opened his eyes, all he saw was a ceiling, one he didn't recognize. Everything hurt from his toes to his head, even the phantom pain from the foot he'd lost as a kid seemed to want to make itself known.

"Did we go back to Berk?"

Hiccup wondered out loud, a habit he'd had since childhood.

"No, this isn't Berk."

Hiccup tried to get up from the bed but his whole body screamed in protest, every muscle burning at the slightest movement, especially his head. By Thor, this was the worst migraine he'd ever had in his life, like his temples were about to crush his skull and his eyes were about to burst out.

And he'd fallen off Toothless plenty of times before... Wait, Toothless?

"TOOTHLESS!! BUDDY, WHERE ARE YOU"

Even with all the willpower he had (which was not small at all), his legs barely held him up before he fell out of bed, but he kept going, looking around to see if he could spot something, someone, anything.

{At this point anything will do, just please help... he needs me}

He dragged himself, crawled, and with adrenaline and willpower slowly started trying to stand up and balance again.

Using the wall and what might have been a desk to make up for the balance he couldn't manage on his own in that state, he went slowly, leg by leg, step by step, dragging himself along the wall, not seeing that he was leaving a trail of blood dripping from parts of his body: leg, abdomen, head. Pick a part, it was bleeding.

With every step it got harder to stay conscious. He'd clearly overdone it, and even worse was having to walk in this state, where body and mind weren't obeying.

When he was getting near the door he finally gave in, threw himself against it and used the doorknob for support, which was a terrible idea, because it was a doorknob, it opens doors.

Sure enough, the door opened and his body followed, and he just closed his eyes, braced for the impact and waited for the pain. And it came, just not how he expected. It still hurt like hell, and his head throbbed with every sudden movement.

Except he'd landed on something soft?? Hiccup opened his eyes and saw he was on top of... someone?

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty, you're up already?"

The Voice.

Without thinking, he turned his head up so fast he was sure he'd hurt his neck. It was definitely the same voice, just younger? Which didn't make much sense.

Hiccup didn't have much time, didn't see much, and not very well, but he knew that what he was looking at wasn't the BEING from before. It was similar, but the BEING had been completely white, taller, with blue eyes that glowed like ice from the deepest part of the ocean.

"A fairy..."

He smiled at Hiccup, which made his heart skip a beat. Even though he wasn't the same as the other one, he was absolutely stunning! Not one bit less beautiful.

"I was just coming to see you, but since you're here I don't need to."

Oh gods, if the other was the personification of winter, he was like a forest covered in snow, with brown hair with just one white streak, and his eyes... no, one eye was brown like amber and the other was blue, reflecting so many other colors, as if it were a blue sky giving off the beautiful colors of the rainbow that lived within it.

{But who is he?}

{A resident of the island?}

{An actual fairy?}

{Do they hunt dragons?}

{Where is TOOTHLESS!?}

{WHAT DID HE DO TO TOOTHLESS!??}

"Uh, I know I'm comfortable, but you're still going back to bed."

That pulled him out of his gay pani- daydreams and paranoia, bringing him back to reality, and by reflex he tried to get up, which he clearly couldn't, so he just fell on top of him again, like the clumsy guy he's always been. As a last resort, ignoring the pain, he just threw himself backward to get off the fairy.

The fairy in question just stood up, patted down his blanket and the back of his pants to brush off the dirt, and started walking toward him.

Hiccup just kept scooting backward along the floor, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the fairy. He was bad for his heart, and right now not so great for his safety either.

Scooting isn't exactly fast, either, so he caught up with him in no time. All he did was lift Hiccup up like a princess.

"Hey, STO- PUT ME DOWN!!"

"Pfft HAHAHAHAHAHA"

Hiccup stopped moving and resisting when he heard a laugh, and the Fairy, currently carrying him like a princess in distress, stopped along with Hiccup, tilted his head to the right and looked over his shoulder.

A faint smile appeared on his face, and he slowly began turning his body in the same direction he'd been looking, finally letting Hiccup see where the laugh was coming from.

"Oh Hiccup, you should've seen your face, help, help please save meeeee"

And there were Snotlout and Fishlegs, apparently fine? What the HELL was going on today??