This is where I belong ||httyd fanfic||

66. Sacrifice

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His left hand lifted from the handlebar of Toothless's saddle. Fingers twitched and clenched into a fist, as if to shake of the final shreds of doubt from his form. It drifted over to his thigh, where his Dragon Blade lied in wait. The dragon head molded for décor licked its mouth, he imagined, once the rough iron was grasped. It had never once felt like the weapon of a true warrior. Merely a strange toy for a boy who looked into the eyes of what were called demons and found friends.

That was all he was, one who was never what anyone expected.

But now, as it hovered near his face, pressed upon its brow, he saw it as a hero's blade. It was an answer to everything. It was him, something strong hidden beneath an unsuspecting form. He was Hiccup, the Dragon Trainer, Hiccup the Hero, Hiccup the Chief of Selardalr. Dare he say it – Hiccup the Useful?

With a click of its switch, the blade ejected, bathed in flame. His eyes shot open once the flame appeared and cast his gaze down to Spitelout. The flame within him roared yet was tamed. He'd trained the dragon in him, he supposed.

"Sorry, Uncle Spitelout. It all sounds so tempting, but there's been a change in plans."

"Oh?"

"It's touching, in an admittedly sick and morbid way, that you'd burn down an island to bring me back." Hiccup drawled with sarcasm, his voice sounding like his own again. "But I happen to be chief of said island. And I plan on protecting it till the end of my days."

"Well said, dragon trainer." Harold laughed heartily.

Hiccup shrugged, giving a lopsided, snarky grin. "No going back now."

The elder Jorgenson kept his lips taut, but Hiccup caught the flash of a dark snarl. If there was one thing a Jorgenson hated, it was not getting what he wanted. If there was one thing he loved, it was being the guy keeping that away.

"I see. What a pity." Spitelout began with the last thing Hiccup would ever sense in his tone – defeat. He turned away with his hairy meat slabs of arms crossed behind him, head bowed and pace slower than a Gronkle's. "Truly, Hiccup Haddock, born heir to the chiefdom of Berk: a disappointment to the very end... But make no mistake."

The dead silence in that moment was stirred to life then.

Toothless's ear flaps lifted, while Titan's nostrils flared. Their riders had caught what stirred their dragons quick – splashing, the shifting of waves and pressing stench of torched wood. Hiccup shifted his eye, following the moving of the masts, as his heart climbed to his throat.

The enemy fleet had been rearranged. From a straight line to a ring surrounding them. The men cranked the levers of their ballistas and catapults, stretching the lines of their bows. Each man still standing looked out for blood.

Spitelout turned to them again with the words of a Jorgenson on his lips. "I always get what I want."

"FIRE!"

A man's shout shook the air and sea and the catapults launched as one. Hiccup yanked his arm on the bars and Toothless spun above. The tip of his tail fin just grazed a stone as their boulders crashed into one another. The dragon chief rose from the cloud of dust, dispelling it with a beat of his dragon's wings.