STOLEN - REWRITE [httyd]

[six]

(also for those wondering, Toothless did not take Hiccup from Berk, CloudJumper did due to Hiccup and Toothless having the same age in this book to connect it to the movie plots better)

The next few days went by in a blur for Hiccup, between trying to escape, the constant interrogations from the chief that threatened him to break, and desperately trying to find or gain contact with Toothless were enough to make his already cluttered mind spin. His wings fluttered and twitched around him as he nervously tried to remember a sentence in the native norse language that the young female viking had told him to say to the chief. His horned flaps, which also supplemented as his second pair of ears, as he noticed he had both a dragons pair which resembled those of Toothless', and those of the viking kind. They rippled and beckoned him to direct them towards sounds lingering in the distance.

He had to have been held captive for around a fortnight by now, his count of the sunrises completely escaping his memory. And it turns out that the company of caged dragons he was with would not be difficult to reason with at all, as they were very common dragons around this part of the archipelago; a Nadder, Zippleback, Gronkle and a Monstrous Nightmare. Hiccup had already promised them an escape and a place to live within the sanctuary even before he knew exactly how he was going to get himself out in the first place.

An exercise supposedly known as "Dragon Training" was introduced to a group of hardy teenagers over the course of the last few days. A older man with a scruffy beard and two missing limbs instructed the kids not to kill the beast in front of them, but to give him a good visual in which he would know that one of them knew what they were doing. The winning prize for the most successful trainee would get to kill a dragon in front of the entire tribe. The thought of having to watch a dragon die in front of him had made Hiccup sick to his stomach, which was not exactly getting the amount of food he was used too having.

Today was the fourth day of their training, but Hiccup knew not how long it would last. Over the course of the last few days, he managed to grab a sense of which teenager was which, being able to name them off if he really thought about it. The blonde female that captured him was named Astrid, and her trusty weapon of choice was an axe, as he observed. Did she ever put it down? He wondered. Her stocky friend was named something along the lines of Snotgrout or Snotlout, a fitting name, Hiccup happened to think. The husky one was named Fishlegs, which was a very strange name indeed, and lastly there was a set of twins, which he had no idea what meant until he saw them. They both looked the same. Hiccup knew the difference between their genders, but had no idea who was Ruffnut and who was Tuffnut.

Today's dragon contestant was the Deadly Nadder, a fairly young dragon, as they all were, though even at this age many scars were gouged into her scales, many patches of them having fallen off as well. Hiccup's ear flaps and wings twiched as the Nadder let out a nervous squawk, eyeing the set of humanoid creatures in front of her armed with weapons. She did what she was supposed to do, defend herself. She jumped into the air, leaping her large feet off the rocky ground, spinning her wyvernish body around to shoot a wave of her blue and yellow spines. Two were deflected by Astrid's axe, one bouncing off of the 'Snotty' kid's helmet, Fishlegs was long gone, panting heavily as he ran as far as possible from the dragon. Seems as though his fear overthrows his knowledge of these common dragons when in battle. And the two twins continued to fight over which spear they wanted.

The walls were set up strategically so that the teenagers could take cover behind them, but not so that the nadder's keen sense of smell gave them away almost instantly. Astrid seemed to have control over this training exercise, continuing to enter into the dragon's blind spot to threaten the dragon with her axe. Startled, the dragon widely opened her jaw, lined with jagged teeth of all sizes, and let out a bursting stream of fire, which Hiccup knew was one of the hottest flames created by dragon in the known archipelago.

Astrid jumped out the way just in time, ending her escape with a dive into a roll, which the instructor commented, "Nice sommer'ault dive, 'strid!" She brushed her stray hairs that sat on her forehead out of her eyes, and continued to stay focused on the task at hand until the man, who Hiccup found out was named Gobber, called it quits.

After all the teens had been excused, the instructor asked Astrid to stay behind for a seconds, "'strid, the freak here needs to be given some food or else 'e will starve to death before we 'ven get to question 'im."

"The chief gave me strict orders not to feed him, Gobber. And he can barely speak norse as it is, there is no need to question the thing."

"Just snag 'im a bowl of yack stew or a fish from the Great Hall at dinner, that boy is clearly somethin' special, so we might as well try te ask him 'ow he got those things."

Astrid sighed, "I guess."

"That's a good lass." Gobber reassured her, patting Astrid heavily on her back on his way out of the training ring.

Hiccup's wings twitched before folding tightly against his body nervously as he heard Astrid speak to him without directly looking at him, "Tomorrow, I'm getting answers."