#ubuntuify writes

It arrives on a raid like any other—its distinct screech, as if the air was being sheared with its power and its purple blasts—unseen for so long.

The dragon with the wingspan which no one has ever seen before. The dragon which hunts with the night as its natural habitat. The son-of-Loki, the night-fury, the creature of the night which hunted not with relentless flames but precise, methodical attacks.

Has not been heard for many winters. It arrives on any other raid, perfectly unremarkable, and as the night at its back.

It strikes like a beast worthy of a sonnet. A story worthy of Beowulf—or any myth.

And no one expects the man that sits on its back, the cruel betrayal of the man who walks like a dragon, fluidly and with an unmistakable grace that would be beautiful if it were not connected to the creatures that tear through villages, and raining fire like a recurring nightmare.

Another raid, another day. Astrid’s axe flows like the wind in her veins. The fight, the feeling of adrenaline spikes—natural as she slices a dragon with her trusty axe—always sharp, especially after she knows it was made by Hiccup.

Her axe slices through the air, as blood spills of the dragon she slew, its blood on the floor, bloody and with the musky taste of iron. Something by now she is used to, even accustomed to. It doesn’t matter whether the blood is friend or foe, it is blood all the same. It doesn’t make her puke, not anymore, not after she’s seen so much of it.

She wields her axe with a careful precision, without the body mass of her peers, she wields it elegantly, with the mobility to boot. Rather than taking dragons by the horns, she wields her axe with a careful elegance, almost but somewhat both draconic and (but definitely more) Viking in nature.

As if she didn’t peer over how to use a dragon’s movements to her advantage, as if she had not been training for the moment to slay a dragon for as long as she remembers. For as long as she remembers why she fights. The dragon is carefully beheaded with a few elegant slices, the blood is messy, but she simply wipes it off her skirt before moving onto the next target.

Stoick the Vast—still Chief after all this time, though a few patches of gray hair have grown, especially after Hiccup—commands the men. He is as much a strategist as he was before, though he has gotten more brutal, different from the feeling he exuded when she was younger. There was something desperate in it now, something clawing and she, like the rest of Berk, felt it running through their veins as they fought in each and every raid. It has took too much from them, and they feel it with every night a raid comes.

Astrid hits a dragon on the head, headstrong as ever, with the blunt side of her axe. It whines, but with a simple twist and twirl, it is grounded, bleeding out like so much of the battlefield has been painted in red.

It isn’t anything personal to Astrid. It never has been, it never will be. It’s always been a pragmatic choice, it’s them or us.

Even now, she is untainted by the pain of grief, as molten fire rips through buildings and burns houses, even as molten rock, solidifying under a Gronkle’s fire, falls onto one of the buildings, causing chaos in the village square.

She knows every moment matters, and that one singular moment can ruin you, like it did to her Uncle Finn, fearless until faced with a Flightmare.

So, Astrid simply wields her axe, strong and sure, elegant as a shieldmaiden should be, and as the movements go through her—a screech of air reaches her ears, splitting the air beneath them, as one of her kin screams “Night Fury!” before a pillar goes into flames.

A purple blast appears from the midnight sky, its power radiating off the shockwave of the Night Fury’s screech. And in an instant, one of the catapults is destroyed. A shockwave goes out from the catapult, striking out and raining down a small torrent of devastation—distinct and powerful.

Bola launchers launch in the midnight sky, attempting to attack the dragon that lives in it. The namesake of the dragon, defined by how it lives in the sky, never seen, never heard. A phantom in all but name.

The dragon, so long unseen, appears like their worst nightmares. A life given by troubling times, an omen—driven by the tyranny of dragons as they grow even more fearsome, even more gruesome.

And Astrid for a second—for one momentary solitary second—is momentarily frozen in something akin to fear, though not quite, and nothing she would admit to herself. The screech of the Night Fury has been for so long unheard, she would be remiss to say that she forgot about the ear-splitting scream which brought an omen of destruction, as tides shifted within the battlefield.

The dragon she had only heard of during her younger years as she put out fires during Berk’s raids. A dragon that Hiccup once claimed to take down, a dragon that seemed to control the skies and the ground simultaneously, easily splitting the battle between Viking and Dragon in an instant. Divining its grace from the skies above, like a deadly predator that not even Bork the Bold saw of.

If Stoick was their captain, steering the ship and making sure they protected Berk with all they’ve got. The Night Fury was the one on the other end, the dragon of which some call the son-of-Loki, for its terrifying and coalescing power, with a power that never seemed to end, and if they did that no one had lived to see the tale.

But the dragon doesn’t stop; instead of stopping as it used to, instead of facing a few decisive blasts, it strikes and haunts the air like it was home, like it was twisting the very skies to its whim, and the screech—its defining trait and the fear of so many children her age when they were younger, haunted by what creature, what mighty beast could’ve made that sound—before the dragon simply disappeared, and everyone forgot its presence, willing to forget to focus on the dragons and simply surviving a new day.

It proves that fear today, it proves the reason it should be feared. It proves it with every screech and every blast of purple raining from the sky.

Within a few minutes, another blast from the sky comes raining down, destroying the foundation for a catapult. The first blast destroys and crumbles a stack of rocks, breaking and making catapults fall over, and the chaos makes sure some dragons are able to take an escape. Astrid lets out a muffled exclamation under her lip, as she shifts strategies, while most Vikings shift closer to the catapults, and the dragons are able to take some sheep with them.

Astrid picks up an abandoned bola by the side, and remembers an early lesson, something she hasn't had to do in a long time. She wields the bola, and ties it in a certain way.

Astrid knows that one bola can't take care of an army of dragons. She holds it in one hand, while wielding her axe on the other, before using the bola as a makeshift noise machine as she disorients the dragons coming her way trying to take some of their sheep. Making noise is usually used for survival, when you're barely a wee lad and barely able to defend and kill and maim a dragon.

She wields both elegantly, one as a makeshift shield and the other as a defensive tool as she is able to protect most of the sheep in her self-assigned area, but the houses are aflame, even more so than they are usually, most of the new fire brigade hiding in fear of the Night Fury, of which they've never seen before.

Some of the adults pick up the slack, wield water buckets, larger than usual and throw towards the houses as some adults try to keep the children safe in the Great Hall, which has stood for as long as Vikings have settled on Berk.

The ever present fear of the Night Fury coursing through every Viking's veins. It calls to them like a broken tome—the death of their heir hanging straight on them like a noose.

A story that is told, and a lesson that is taught. Something that has taught them grief as it empowers and weakens them, changes them into something different, and it just screams—but the scream isn’t theirs.

At the blood spilling at the battlefield filled with dragon blood—the sky-phantom rains a terrible scream as a blast destroys with a powerful blast, more powerful than they’ve seen before—a blast that echoes in their ears, almost splitting on pain for those who are near.

A shockwave at the Night Fury’s wail and the training arena’s bars are broken, its chains that hold it together breaking into pieces as the interlocking chains fall apart, and the dragons that are held there escape.

The sound of the Night Fury is able to somehow call some of the dragons to retreat. As if acknowledging the dragon as powerful and one of their own, as if it were their general. As if they heard its scream and realized what it was calling them to.

Within another few minutes, daybreak comes and they realize they've suffered the biggest losses they've faced in the longest time.

The Great Hall is filled with silence. Within a few years, by adapting Hiccup's designs as well, they've been able to use their mead hall more as a place of refuge, especially for those who come from other villages.

No one really knows why the dragons have grown stronger, just that they started migrating away and landing in villages all across the archipelago. The Great Hall which is usually held in esteem and noise and mead, is strangely silent. Instead, all the Berkians stand in some kind of esteemed horror, maybe in the strange hope that this was all some bad dream.

But every second that counts down, every minute, and every hour simply screams the fact that it isn’t, as they stay brutally awake.

“How many did we lose?” The Great Chief’s voice—Stoick the Vast—sounds small in the cacophony of silence that is their Mead Hall. Even the children are silent, even the children are either clinging to their mothers or sniffling under the trauma that was the Night Fury’s screech of absolute destruction.

“More than we can count, Chief.” And a breath of air feels like it comes to them, confirming their worst fears. This has been the worst raid in a very long time.

The silence is jarring, even sad. Even Mildew doesn’t make a sound, for all his horrendous ideas, despite his supposed Elder status. The first day after the raid is quiet, the normal day-to-day of Vikings not making even a meep of sound.

Gobber simply works in the forge, no Hiccup shadow by his side, not anymore—and it is at times like these he really wants the lad to be here. His sarcastic comments would light up even this day, even his destruction and abject disregard for authority would not stop him. Gobber simply works alone, without an apprentice, and mends broken swords and all the broken equipment from that day.

The bola launchers especially, the ones that are useful for even the wee ones to wield are snapped, the equipment tied up all the wrong way, the gears in the wrong spot from all the chaos—even dead, Hiccup brought this village life.

He brought them to a new age of dragon hunting. His creations, his numerous blueprints, enough to fill in the hole for both Stoick and Gobber.

His image, preserved in the village he died in. Gobber hasn’t even touched the lad’s workshop in all this time, only going in to keep things in order, to make sure Hiccup is still there. Whatever left of him is there, that is.

When the Berk Council comes into session however, is the only excitement there is for the day. After everything, they have to discuss what to do after. Especially after all the lost supplies, taken from the dragons. A thread of discontent travels through the air, before disappearing in the darkness.

Despite the silence of the morning and afternoon, it seems like the raging discussion within the Great Hall is still loud, gossip and discussion and bickering like Loki’s handiwork itself. The beast really did earn the name son-of-Loki, didn’t it?

“The beast came back, the Night Fury herself, what are we going to do?”

“For the love of Thor, don’t speak its name!”

Perhaps this was why they named the beast the son-of-Loki in the first place.

“It ain’t a god, we can speak its name, it won’t appear when we say it.”

“How do you know that?”

Stoick the Vast, chief of Berk, stands on the first seat of the Mead Hall, somewhat taller than all the rest, with his lineage by his side, and even if he is weaker, maybe changed and tempered by the colors of grief, by his age mayhaps. He is still Chief.

“Silence!”

And silence enraptured the Great Hall at Stoick’s word. Even after all these years, even after losing Valka and Hiccup, he still holds his voice, and everyone respects him more for it. They know he has lost everything to the dragons. They know he will not lead them astray.

“We will not get anywhere with this bickering.”

“Stoick, the beasts have grown smarter! It is clear that whatever blight you have brought us through your—” Spitelout.

“Now that’s just wrong, the boy may have—” Gobber.

“Don't think you don’t notice it, Stoick. The beasts have grown stronger, fiercer ever since we started using some of HIccup’s designs.”

Every murmur silences at a halt at that comment. Not a whisper comes after that. Not a single one.

Even Snotlout, for all his blunt mind silences—no one has talked of Hiccup since he died. Not in front of the Chief, and not in a Council meeting especially. Even the newcomers from other places quickly learn not to ask of what happened to the runt that was known to be Stoick’s son. They know it’s not a topic to brooch.

“Just because you have grown salty at the fact that Snotlout hasn’t gotten the chiefdom yet, doesn’t mean you get to disrespect Hiccup’s image, Jorgenson,” and Astrid says that with a particular disdain that comes with all Hoffersons when they speak with a Jorgenson. Their long standing family rivalry still holding.

“Oh? As if you were ever fond of the boy, I heard of the rivalry you had with the dragon-whisperer, you never treated him fondly either, girl.”

His voice sprinkled with the spite of someone who believes they haven’t gotten what they deserved.

A pang of hurt hits Astrid at that moment. Nothing too severe, just a little inkling. She knows she should've treated him better. He would’ve been her Chief, and if how fast he improved in training was any indication. She knows at the very least that he would’ve been a good chief.

“Do not attack my daughter, Spitelout. We need to focus on the Night Fury.”

A shiver crosses across the room at the dragon’s name. They hadn’t seen the dragon in so long, they thought it was dead, or ran away. Maybe haunted some other Viking village.

Astrid personally thought it was a nightmare from when she was younger. She was so young then, it would be easy to mistake the Fury’s booming noise as something out of a nightmare.

A dragon that only existed in fables and her memories, especially after it disappeared and its signature sound was stolen from the skies, maybe Hiccup actually took the dragon down, but she shakes herself off at the thought. No matter how much Hiccup improved, he couldn't have taken down the dragon before all that.

“No matter what you say, the beasts have grown smarter, Stoick. Spitelout has a point.” And as much Astrid hates to admit it, and maybe everyone in the room, the dragons have grown smarter. More fierce, something more desperate. Something that none of them have gone unnoticed, though the reasoning was also something they had never thought of before. They were Vikings, they didn’t think, they fought every day to survive and that was all.

“‘Course I do! Spitelout, spitelout, oi, oi, oi!” The contemplation is obvious on every Viking’s face, as unused to it as they are. The words may have been given as an item of spite—but they held merit, if nothing else.

“And what do ye expect us to do, brother? Lay down our weapons and hope the dragons have mercy?” Stoick says, like there wasn’t any other choice in the first place. The Haddock stubbornness showing itself in all its glory.

“Of course n—”

“We continue the hunt, like we search for the nest.” Stoick says to the rest of the room.

“Aye!” one voice cheers, before “Aye!” all of them say in unison.

But already, the inkling within Astrid had already grown. Something worth investigating. Why had the dragons grown more desperate, smarter, as Spitelout said, no matter how much she wanted to disagree.

Before the Council Session ends in the Great Hall, she slinks away, going in the background before anyone can notice, before searching for something she doesn’t quite know the answer to.

“Uh,”—paper scrambling—”uh, maybe we could ask Trader Johann for some food the next time he comes by!”

Astrid doesn't quite know what she's doing, or even where she's going. Something like suspicion, a suspicion she abandoned a long time ago with Hiccup, especially after Hiccup's death nags at her.

It drives her to walk somewhere and with no set destination, she walks towards the only place she's ever seen Hiccup frequent—no matter how brief their interactions were.

Before she even knows it, she's there and sees the almost homey feeling of the forge. She doesn't really know if Gobber has a house outside of the forge, but other than her taking care of her tools, she hasn't quite looked too hard at the environment for too long.

A pang hits her heart—that’s getting quite common, honestly, as she thinks about the returned Night Fury and dreams of dragons destroying her home every raid. Alone, here at night, she dreams about her village and

The thing about people being gone is that you never get to meet them again.

Astrid wonders for a moment if Hiccup saw the Forge as home—before shaking herself off and focusing on what she's here to do.

She looks around, and sees a room, somewhat darker than the rest of the forge. It seems untouched—no, correction, less haphazard than the rest of the room, and right before she is able to investigate further.

“What do ya want, lassie?”

Astrid stops at the voice—Gobber.

“What, did ya really not expect me to see you hiding away during the council meeting, honestly lass, you’re just like Hiccup.”

“I–” Astrid’s never acted like this before, going behind people’s back, and getting caught no less. She always tried to do the best for the village, and in her more formative years, that meant helping out as much as she could.

She stops before she realizes Gobber is inviting her in. “Well, you want answers, don’t ya?”

She stops for a moment, contemplating, hesitating, before she takes his offer and goes inside, before one thing that passes her mind comes to surface. “What do you mean just like ‘Hiccup’?”

Gobber invites Astrid to sit a moment, the hot furnace of the forge calming her nerves a bit. “Everybody knew Hiccup was a bit-o’-troublemaker. I’m sure, the boy’s mind was extraordinary, always thinking, always pursuing.”

She really didn’t think of it that way, from how she remembered Hiccup. He was a troublemaker, but there was an earnest thing about it, something completely innocent, even if it did make things worse.

“He had the ol’ Haddock stubbornness in him as well! You could never make Stoick change his mind once he set on something,” Gobber takes a sip of mead, before continuing on, “it got him a lot of places he shouldn't've been.”

“I’m not doing something like that,” she said as an inkling of doubt spread within her head.

“Secret plans behind the village’s back? Moving around when everybody’s too busy to notice what you’re doing?”

A pause.

“It’s not bad, lassie. You’re doing the same thing Hiccup used to. This time you’re in his shoes, and I don’t think you’re entirely wrong in this either. Hiccup sure wasn’t wrong every time the village decided to prosecute him for his ev’ry mistake.”

Gobber looks pointably at her. “Of course, not everyone really noticed that, did they?”

“No,” and if her voice was a little meek at that, she’d never admit it to another living soul.

“Hiccup was Hiccup,” and to Astrid it seemed like Gobber was trying to prove something to her, “always hunting for things, you heard the big ol’ speech Stoick gave after Hiccup made the mess that made him claim he got a Night Fury!”

“A Night Fury of all dragons!”

She did remember that little tidbit about the Night Fury, though albeit only in passing. She remembers stewing over that in her suspicion of whatever made Hiccup that good, even if now she recognized it as what she knew it was. Jealousy.

“The lad may not have been entirely helpful,”—Astrid felt like that was understating it, even despite everything she’s heard—”but he still had a good heart for the village.”

“And I’m sure you do too, and if I knew the lad like I know you, Astrid. I know I won’t be able to stop you either.”

Wasn’t that utterly terrifying? But before Astrid could say anything, a rebuttal at least, Gobber stands up, and Astrid doesn’t know what he’s doing before he pulls out a key. The key to the room she was interested in.

“I know you may not have had the fondest memories of Hiccup, Astrid.” Gobber said matter-of-factly, something strangely divorced to the eccentric blacksmith she normally knows.

“But I know he would’ve wanted you to see this.” Gobber stands again, opening the door and showing her something she doesn’t really know, something she came here for and something she has no idea what she’s gonna do with.

She doesn’t move an inch, she doesn’t know what he’s giving her, and she doubts he knows either. She doesn’t even know what she’s looking for. It just felt like something she had to do for some reason.

“Well, you’re here for answers, aren’t ya?” The door opens to Hiccup’s workshop, and something about it is just crucially beautiful. At a simple glance, it is filled with drawings of machinery, things she would have no hope in even trying to understand or comprehend.

“I haven’t touched it since Hiccup, well, you know.” She does know, and now that it has come. The dragon, the Night Fury everyone suspected killed Hiccup.

Dragonscales that were found and they never understood. So many pieces and something that was a shut case after Stoick found it. The dagger at the bottom of the lake.

There wasn’t any blood, but the haunted look on Stoick when he found the place—it told all the story anyone needed to hear.

And to her, the dragon and the boy disappear at the same time. The everlasting shadow of the Night Fury growing over Berk disappearing for winters on end. Nothing matched up, except that. There were too many coincidences.

Gobber just goes silent as she silently inspects the room. It’s beautiful, somehow. She doesn’t know why, specifically, but she knows it is beautiful, in that kind of random things placed everywhere kind of way.

Drawings everywhere. Schematics, and a little sketch notebook that she doesn’t dain to open yet. Feeling like it would reveal hidden secrets she didn’t really want to see right now. The forge outside may have felt almost homey, but the inside felt positively lived in. Felt like it completed the ensemble.

Beyond that, there were a bunch of gears, metal creations that seemed to fit together in some unorthodox way, even a box of scrap metal underneath it all.

There was also a rag posted on top of something in the corner.

But before her investigation can continue further, something sparks, something just catches her eye, and she sees something that just calls to her.

“What’s that?”

Gobber sees what she’s pointing at and gasps. “Well, I’ll be damned. I haven’t seen that old piece of junk in a while.” Piece of junk?

“The original bola launcher, not the ones we let the youngins use these days, this was the original, stronger, but more prone to malfunctions as in Hiccup’s original design.” Hiccup was brilliant, huh? Maybe that brilliance can get to work in a different way.

“Was this the one Hiccup claimed to take down the Night Fury with?” Astrid looks at it appraisingly, she doesn’t really get the nuts and bolts, she doubts anyone else does, but she thinks it’ll work. It has to.

For this, for Hiccup.

“I believe so, lassie. What are you gonna do with it?” A question she's never ever thought of in her life rings through her mind. What would Hiccup do? She may not have ever known him that well, but he knows he’d probably do something.. well, Hiccup.

“I dunno.”

And before Gobber can answer she adds, “something Hiccup, maybe.”

And maybe that’ll be enough, maybe they need to fight fire with fire. Intelligence with something completely random and totally not prepared for.

“Can I take it?”

“The old thing wasn’t doing anything, taking dust out here anyways, go ahead, lass.”

Within her mind, something forms, an inkling of something she doesn’t quite understand yet, but she just knows, as she runs through the motions, she just has to do. The pieces fall together and something like a plan falls into place. Even if she thinks she won't like either outcome., and maybe something in her will feel like she’s closed at least one book in her book of grievances.

Redemption—and she wants to be redeemed.

Waiting for the next raid is agony. Of course Astrid doesn’t like raids, but between all the bickering about supplies, and just all the Council meetings she’s had to be a part of at this point. It grates on her nerves, and not even a good ol’ training session with her trusty axe is able to relieve the frantic energy within her.

Especially the plan, she doesn’t know what she’s doing but anticipation just builds within her, something frantic and untempered and for the first time in a long time, she feels prepared and alive.

She wants to hunt that Night Fury right out of the sky and take it down. She doesn’t know why, but excitement burns within her, at the potential of being able to take down a Night Fury.

She’s a Viking, after all. She thrives on the hunt.

Then the raid happens, and all that’s been planned seems to come to fruition. Where the Night Fury, the dragon of which not even Bork the Bold dared to document, the one that has earned the ire of every Berkian and beyond even into the archipelago is sure to come.

She hoists her trusty axe before her, and prepares to do either the stupidest or smartest thing she’ll ever do in her Viking career.

Astrid never thought she’d say it, but she’s doing a Hiccup.

Every raid starts with lots and lots of dragons. Lava pours out of a Gronkle’s mouth as it flares a fireball edging right near her, and she dodges a bit inelegantly than she would prefer. It reminds her of what she’s fighting for, that life is fleeting in a world of dragons.

As a wrong step could end her life faster than she’d even be able to feel it.

Secretly, she’s stationed the bola launcher near the training arena, knowing that it's barren and she will most likely avoid detection there, and that nobody has been there in a while because there aren’t any dragons to train, and of course the frequent talks about the Night Fury distracting everyone from the fire.

Everybody is armed with a sense of cold despair, she feels it in the village. As she runs through, the village—lively as it used to be—is stuck with the cold frantic energy of waiting like never before.

The Night Fury is frightening—its presence a terrifying omen to any sane Viking in Berk—and every Viking is armed, their axes and swords holding tightly to their chest as they wait in bated breath for the dragon to arrive.

Dragon blood fills the air once more, and it seems it was this time to show for desperate Vikings are—what happens when a Viking is cornered.

The sheep are less now. Trader Johann hasn’t docked in a while, but every slice is with purpose. They are rationing, close to starving, as the winds have not been favorable to them.

They will starve if the dragons get too many sheep. Something will have to give here, and they have sat on this land for generations, for many Chiefs to come and go.

They will not be the last to stand on this land. They will fight for every Viking, every child, to stay and survive against the relentless waves of dragons.

It’s one of the bloodiest dragon raids she’s seen in years—blood on both sides.

And yet, despite all of it, despite every measured strike she commits, every calm and precise maneuver to make sure she keeps close to the bola launcher, just in case the dragon dares appear itself in the sky and strike against her.

The Night Fury is completely absent from the sky. It does not appear, not even in the chaos of fire, as Monstrous Nightmares and Deadly Nadders come raining from the sky, lighting the roads with their fire, like birds of prey.

And one-by-one, she is able to fight and in habit or maybe some sort of trance, she forgets about the bola launcher and the Night Fury, and shifts to protecting her village once more. The fanciful notion of the Night Fury fades from her mind.

And one raid passes without the appearance of the Night Fury. The Berk populace are relieved somewhat, maybe fooling themselves with the saying that maybe the dragon was a one-time thing. Like the dragon that had haunted every Viking in her generation’s dreams could ever stay away for that long.

But every raid comes with a split moment of disappointment for Astrid. A moment of something that strikes at her heart, the fire that she first wielded a long time ago still yearning for something beyond the Archipelago. Like a young heart, it seeks and yearns for adventure, like the stories that sonnets are forged over, like stories that come into plays and are sung by bards in Mead Halls.

She knows she shouldn’t feel this way, she knows that it shouldn’t. And yet the call still returns, the call for something more lurking beneath her fingers. She practices with her axe, in precise fluid movements. Every moment like second nature, and with no contest, no possible enemy in the sky to take off, it’s perfectly iridescent, ever-changing, and yet something is intrinsically missing.

For a moment, she thinks that maybe the Night Fury was a trick of the sky, as if the decrepit village around them, the lack of supplies, and the current rationing was not evidence of the dragon that wielded the sky as its weapon.

But the days pass, and with every raid.. Well, the spark within Astrid, within any child, adult, or otherwise alive being who has not reached the climax of their lives just yet simply fades, a bright glistening torch of which slowly snuffs out from either the wind or the lack of wood.

Perfect iridescence fills Astrid, the movements, the appeal of being a protector forever feeling exhausting just for a moment, maybe the thought of years stretching on for eternity. Not particularly memorable under the midnight sky. Folklore to fade within less than a generation if even lesser than that.

Every child on Berk is regaled with stories of sonnets brought from bards from far away. Stories of Beowulf and strength and honor bounding them, bounding adults and children alike to keep fighting in the blaze of a predator that breathes fire and can destroy homes in an instant, incinerate their kin in seconds.

The need to prove herself, fire that burnt within her ever since the Hofferson pride was struck down, the need to prove herself that she was different, something so intrinsically tied to her being that it has twisted and turned into a part of her, no longer being able to be removed or changed.

Something that once created can never be let go of.

Self-imposed fire that changed her, made her into who she is, and gave her discipline, understanding which grasped her and let the boy who looked like he was about to fly like a dragon know that this was about allegiances, this was about survival and that this war was their livelihoods, and there wasn’t any need to think about anything else because any moment of hesitation could get you turned into her Uncle, or maybe something closer to Hiccup himself.

As if she’s never heard whispers beneath her very own village, the whispers that no one would dare to voice aloud, the whispers about Valka Haddock.

A warrior taken before she was able to see her son flourish and grow, a whisper that would never be said in public for fear of attracting the grief-stricken ire of the Chief that had protected them throughout it all.

Something that bounds them all in comradery, in shared loss.

Eventually, Trader Johann comes, giving them much needed supplies at dock, as a few Vikings regale tales of a dragon that has not been seen for a couple winters. He brings much needed supplies to Berk, food to last them at least for the rest of the dragon raids.

And yet, something inside Astrid isn’t satisfied. Like there’s something more about the dragon that meets the eye, and she knows she’s playing with fire—both physical and metaphorical.

As if she could forget the coincidences now that everything’s been pointed out to her. Like the dominoes falling into place.

Hiccup disappearing before the fight with the Monstrous Nightmare.

Scales of an unknown dragon in the woods.

Blood.

The Night Fury disappearing from the skies.

Astrid Hofferson has never been one to accept defeat from a challenge, and she will get to the bottom of this.

Or if nothing at all, she will get revenge.

For Hiccup.

Because no one else will. The shieldmaiden rises and steels herself, and makes a promise to herself. If she can, she will kill the dragon in the skies—the Night Fury, the son-of-Loki—and slay its reign on the stars.

She will get revenge—she will get Hiccup’s revenge, even if she isn’t the one who is supposed to be administering it.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was never a boy of conflict. On his dragon, he sweeps upon planes with wings as dark as the night sky, but dragon blood is something that he holds particularly close to his heart.

He is not the boy he used to be, and how could he? When he has witnessed crimes committed against dragons all the time in the Archipelago, and even beyond it.

How could he say he has nothing else but a dragon heart, if not the fact that his human one is still beating beneath his chest, pounding with blood in its vessels?

How could he, when all he has ever wanted is to be accepted, to be wanted in the world of danger? How could he when all he was in his old village was ostracized and left to waste?

So, on a night of particularly bad judgment he goes back to the skies of his old village, of Berk and everything it entails, but this time on the back of his best buddy, his brother if not for their differing species and blood.

He sees the raid happening, and he remembers what he fights for. It's not even a certain moment of weakness, of running away.

He runs towards the fray and in a moment of unknown proportions, fires a plasma blast into Berk.

"Figure out what side you're on,” Astrid says to him in his memories. He laughs because he thinks he's finally found his own side.

And he doesn't think any of them would approve. They fire more plasma blasts as he watches the blood spill in the water. The dragons slowly being killed, and the weapons he made being used to imprison and hurt dragons.

It's not a moment he's proud of. It's a moment of rage and destruction, but—

It does save dragons, and for that, he's happy for another day well done. He doesn't interfere anymore if he can.

He doesn't know why he stays there, in the backdrop of the night. Maybe out of some sense of mistaken nostalgia.

Maybe to protect the dragons from mistreatment, or maybe just to watch as his village gets torn to shreds.

Or maybe when he finds a shieldmaiden under the guise of night using one of his original designs (he still remembers making it, somewhere in the miasma of his memories).

He visits to see what she's doing, against everything he stands for. Everything he thought he would do.

Then it arrives, the Night Fury, son-of-Loki, sky-phantom, without even making a snippet of noise, its whistle not existent, as if it were only making the noise to warn them anyways. A clanking of gears and a rig?

She stands fearless against the dragon, against the Night Fury—but it doesn’t seem it’ll matter, its wingspan, black and proud is larger than any dragon she’s ever seen, its hide thicker and its strength palpable from even this far away.

Fearless Astrid Hofferson—the name echoes in her head, like her Uncle Finn’s epithet does too. It echoes, and she at least thinks that this time, her death will not be as a shame as her uncle’s was.

Not for the first time, Fearless Astrid Hofferson accepts her death—and like every other moment she’s ever thought about death’s cold embrace and the gates of Valhalla. She thinks it's taking longer than expected.

The dragon looks positively terrifying in close range—its body is less lean, less like a bird, and has more mass than any other dragon. If the Monstrous Nightmare was a scaly beast with spikes all over meant to terrify, the Night Fury was something different, a different breed, a different kind that spoke of something unspeakable.

It had earned its name, the dragon of which her nightmares were once built on.

She doesn’t know why it hasn’t done anything yet. She doesn’t, and every moment sends a spike of fear through her. Every second she doesn’t do anything coursing a level of pure unadulterated adrenaline through her and she wonders if there ever was anything different.

Even if it were for nothing, she would be known as the Shieldmaiden who stood against a Night Fury.

And then, she sees it. There’s someone on the dragon’s back, and she doesn’t know how none of them have seen it before. Then again, none of them have been able to see the dragon against the stark black sky, but one would think a human on the back of the dragon as it sweeps for catapults would be noticeable.

The dragon-man. A boy covered in dragon scales, and his eyes—piercing as they are—staring into her soul, if only for a moment.

Harsh green against calm yet furious blue as they stare at each other like compliments, like the Aurora Borealis’ green to the blue sky of Astrid’s eyes and he moves around on the dragon’s back wrongly, at least not in a way that feels entirely human.

It’s unnaturally fluid, tinted with a kind of odd elegance that she would never expect from a person who wears dragon scales as armor and as a shield. A Viking would wear the scales of a slayed dragon proudly, like a peacock showing its feathers. The dragon moves with him as well, as if they move like one, as if they were one and the same, and she wonders if this boy was ever human at all.

It calls out to her, the movements, elegant in the ways she never really noticed and in ways she imitated without knowing why, the need for ability to replace her lack of brute strength before the illusion falls apart and she takes up her axe—Hiccup’s work, she whispers to herself as if it would cleanse her of a guilt she’s moved past but never quite let go of—and attempts to strike the dragon and his rider.

She tries to swing against the dragon, and for one foolish moment, she thinks she might just have the chance. To get revenge. To get maybe a mistaken sense of wergild for Hiccup. Before she remembers the dragon she’s truly facing.

The night-fury, the son-of-Loki, the shadow-beast, the dragon that no one has ever seen before. A ghost in the sky and on the ground.

And the part that everyone always forgets. Speed unknown.

If the dragon is fast in the sky, it’s also fast on land. Maybe that’s why no one quite survives to see the Night Fury.

Maybe she meets the same way Hiccup does, dead.

But in those fierce moments of life, the moments she decides to accept her fate, it doesn't do anything. It does not decide to strike and maim and kill like she has watched so many other dragons do.

It just stands there, eyes as sharp as slits, staring at her, completely tame under this master's hand.

It stares at her, and she can do nothing but stare back for every blink could be her last. She feels the pounding beneath her ribs, the beat of every heart.

She feels it, and for once, perhaps she might accept that she is afraid.

Death is something scary, but not unusual for a viking. Death is expected, surviving beyond death?

That's something else, that's something far more terrifying than she expected. But it doesn't do anything, it simply stares, and in a moment before she can do anything. It escapes into its home—the night.

It takes it like there was nothing else—the night of which all men stay away from, the time of predators, of wolves and creatures that can and will kill you.

It goes back to it like it is home. And before the day ends, she goes to Stoick the Vast, Viking Chief of Berk, and a story is set in stone.

The dragon-man, should he be found, shall be killed on sight.

They call him, "Dragon Master,” "Dragon Conqueror,” and yet all those names rub off wrong in the cold calculating expression of her mind.

She saw those eyes, as they relegate praises of the highest degree, stories of horror they may be to some, in a world where might makes right, the Dragon Master is the king of all.

But no, that dragon-man was no Dragon Master.

No, they looked like they were one. LIke somehow, this human was brought to the side of the dragons. Like he was one of them—like as much as she saw her village as kin, that this dragon-man saw the dragons (as inexplicable as it may be) as kin.

They moved in a haunting rhythm.

But if she knows anything at all—she knows this—those eyes, no matter how animalistic they may have been, were human.

And now that they’ve seen him on the ground, now that they’ve caught this dragon-master on board.

She holds back to the best part about dragons, when she was a mere child. Dragons, no matter how terrifying they may be, can be killed.

And so can humans—because no matter how those eyes, windows to the soul, may have been dragon-kin, those eyes were still terrifyingly human, no matter how much something within her says otherwise.

—

“Shut up, Hiccup, you owe me this.”

“I don’t owe you anything—”

“For kidnapping me, remember?” At that mention, he was silenced. It was peaceful, deceivingly so. If they both didn’t know better, it might have been domestic.

The silence however instead was just left with everything that could be. Everything that could’ve been.

She looked particularly soft in this limelight. Her eyes sparkled with a sense of innocence, something untainted yet untamable. Like a river with no end. It was everything Hiccup could’ve wanted.

It was also everything Hiccup loathed, in a sort of looking back kind of way. She reminded him too much of Berk, of the unsustainable suffocation that came with it. With the disdain he noticed before everything.

And she just had to ruin it by saying something, didn’t she?

“Why did you leave?”

Hiccup didn’t really know what to say to that. There were a lot of reasons, really. Toothless was just the breaking point.

He’d spent so much time running, thinking life would be better on Berk without him—he didn’t really think on the why he left.

“I don’t know,” he replied simply.

It feels like both a step in the right direction and the wrong one. He had spent so long running away from that life, it felt like losing. It felt too much like the feeling he had spent running away from.

Or more accurately, flying away from.

None of them wanted to say anything anymore, in fear of ruining what peace this moment held. Tomorrow, he was sure that they’d be at each other throats again, sparring over whatever small issue they had that day.

They had to live together now, didn’t they?

They couldn’t go back anymore. It felt wrong to think that to Hiccup though. To him, Astrid had always been the better of the two of them.

She was always the image of the perfect Shieldmaiden. Something so far, something untouchable.

Everything about this moment felt wrong, but also felt so right. “Why don’t you want to go back?”

Hiccup wanted to laugh derisively at the comment. Instead, he just stayed silent. He was aged the same amount as she was, and while she stayed the same.. somewhat.

He had grown, he had used his wits, the ones that he was mocked for, and thought about it critically.

He found that in the moments where they weren’t sparring each other with the nearest weapon, or whatever could constitute as one. He would listen to anything she’d say.

Even after all these years, he was still smitten by her—by the power she carried with her, with everything—the unlimited and unending bliss that was a person.

Except hers felt wider, more full, something indescribable. Something he didn’t want to define for himself just in case he’d break the illusion.

“I don’t know.”

“After all these years, you really still are an idiot, huh, Hiccup?”

He would be insulted, if he didn’t hear the unmistakable fondness that came with, not like the cruel remarks of his peers, of those back on Berk.

“I guess I am.”

For the first time in a really long time, he smiled. It wasn’t the forced smiles he put up with with the rest of everyone. Not like the seriousness he did when he went around as the Dragon Conqueror or whatever name they gave him in that area of the sea.

Astrid felt the need to support him. It was some old instinctive, maybe even stupid instinct in her. Something old and that never really died as she grew into who she was today.

Something the bitterness of the world could not take from her. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she did it anyway.

It felt like a hidden force was driving her. It felt elusive, like a drive to do something, it felt like the feeling of being drunk but on something else.

“You don’t owe them anything, you know?”

“What?”

“You don’t owe anyone on Berk anything.” She didn’t really know what she was saying anymore, maybe it was some hidden bitterness within her from being offered as sacrifice, maybe it was something else, but she felt the need to say something.

“I know that,” he said, but she didn’t believe him at all. There was a small crack in his voice, something—a small look into the boy she knew all that time ago.

And she couldn’t help but wonder what could have been, if he would’ve become better under the village’s tutelage, if they cared enough to see what they were doing in place of cruel jokes, which while she never participated she was definitely complacent in.

“You don’t owe anything to them either,” he whispered back.

She didn’t dain that with a response as he threw something into her. A storm that was brewing for a long time already.

Discontent perhaps. Or maybe she saw into the broken and wretched hearts within Berk, something that Hiccup’s death worsened.

Where all the cracks started growing leaving something ugly in its wake.

The Berk they both grew up in was long gone by now, or maybe it never existed. And a small part of her, no matter how small, wanted to give in to the promise of that. The promise Hiccup offered.

Running away.

But another part of her, the one that was a sharpened mind, with everything she held dear, didn’t want to do that.

They had a chance now. The fight in her about this particular topic was fading, her hatred of dragons simmering into something more sensible, something softer.

The same sentiment that Hiccup shared.

The same sentiment that drove him to do all the things he did.

She just didn’t know what that meant for her. She didn’t know if that meant she was just like him, a person who abandoned her home for ideals.

Something, even if she did see the value in, she promised she would never do.

Hiccup may have been in the skies, but she was on the ground. Hiccup may have seen, but he didn’t see what was going on like she did.

“I’m sorry.”

And she didn’t know what she was sorry for, but she knew she was sorry.