úlfheðnar, httyd

xxxiii. Hiccup Confronts Drago

     But things started to go downhill the moment Hiccup's mother fell. She and Cloudjumper freed a battling Windstriker against one of Drago's armoured Thunderclaws, steering away as fast as they came, but they failed to see the weighted net catapulted right at them. Hiccup felt something in him jolt, making Toothless accidentally stagger in his flight at the shudder of his rider. Hiccup only barely helped steer them away from a soaring lit boulder, his eyes fixed on his mother as she was separated from Cloudjumper halfway through the fall. 

     "Mum!" he wanted to shout, but his voice got stuck in the back of his throat.

     He watched her hit the ground on a large bank of snow; suffocating her fall enough to give her enough strength to roll and perch herself back up onto her feet. But someone was there waiting for her. A tall, strong man shrouded in a dark cloak of what Hiccup knew, even without examination, to be dragon skin. Long dark hair and a scarred face, Drago Bludvist, the only man Hiccup's father feared, slowly approached Valka admist the raging battle; Cloudjumper whined and struggled under the net entangled around him, desperate to reach his rider. 

     Hiccup was in a trance, breath hitched as Drago Bludvist dragged his long, dragon-tooth blade spear in the snow. His mother gripped her staff, ready to fight. 

      He wanted to go down there. He had to get down there. He turned Toothless━

     "Hiccup, look out!"

     Fishlegs's warning came in a thin matter of time. Hiccup gasped and dived Toothless into a spin away from a net from another launcher, heart pounding. He hadn't been scared of Drago, no━not until he was prowling up towards his mother like some predator. 

     Toothless screeched when he flung back to a jolting holt. Hiccup breathed heavily, pulling them back on track and destroying the catapult closest. They shot up to the clouds, ready to dive back down towards his mother when a horrifying call made Hiccup's blood turn as cold as ice. 

     Chills travelled down his spine and Hiccup pulled Toothless back into a hover. He glanced back, and his stomach dropped. Drago spun his staff upwards━spiralling overhead towards the ocean shore with a deep-throat bellow. A dragon call Hiccup couldn't recognise, but he knew he wouldn't like what arrived ... in fact, a part of him already knew. 

     He watched the ocean churn; a gigantic whirlpool of bubbling water, foam and ice━as if the very sea was being awaken from the deepest depths. Hiccup's heart began to race. He watched Yrsa falter, holding a hand up to Snotlout for him to stop with her. They glanced down at the sea below━the way the ships began to tilt upwards from the centre. They toppled on themselves, pushed upside down like wooden toys by the rising ocean. Seeing it, Yrsa and Snotlout raced to beat it. Behind them, warships were being crushed, upturned and shattered. The others met with Hiccup, unable to believe their eyes as the ocean erupted. 

     Yrsa and Snotlout made it safely. Hiccup was relieved, but unable to take his eyes away from what surfaced from the ocean itself. 

    First emerged the jagged tips of what seemed to be gigantic coral. Until what followed it made Hiccup feel sick. Grey-white scales, webbed collosal dorsal fins, beady, hypnotic eyes and two, humongous tusks that showered waterfalls of water as they rose into the open air, clasped with the braces of broken chains. 

     The creatures roar seemed to shatter Hiccup's ears, blasting them all━even from up here━with a skin-biting winter wind that made them shiver in their saddles and their dragons whine with fear.