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Toothless lands to the sound of Hiccup yelling, “STOP!” The night fury settles on his feet, eyes slitted angrily as he stares at their target before looking away to watch Hiccup dismount, leg clicking out of place. He watches Drago carefully, but especially focuses on the bullhook in his hands, as Hiccup pulls off his helmet and tosses it away.
Drago’s eyes also remain on his target as he chuckles, deep and throaty. His gaze is searching, scanning down the one-legged dragon rider and finding him lacking. “This,” He begins, a dark humor evident in his voice, “Is the great Dragon Master?” Toothless strides forward with intent, but a hand points in his direction and makes him stop. His rider doesn’t want to fight, so for now, neither will he, but he can’t help the growl that vibrates in his throat.
“The son of Stoick the Vast?” Drago laughs again, before his face becomes a mask of seriousness punctured only by a slight smirk. “What shame he must feel.”
Hiccup, shaking his head in something like disappointment, gestures to the chaos all around them, at the battling dragons and the dragon trappers at danger of being squashed below a scaly foot, and at the fallen body of the Alpha, still laying on its side. “All of this loss, and for what?” He stares intently at Drago, arms open wide. “To become unstoppable? To rule the world?” Drago looks away, almost nodding as he looks out at the war before them. There is no shame or guilt to be found on his face for his actions, and it makes Toothless want to tuck closer to his rider and envelop his little rider in his wings.
“Dragons are kind, amazing creatures that can bring people together.” Hiccup tells the madman, gesturing towards Toothless as an example (though its usefulness is to be doubted, as Toothless is still snarling, teeth bared and eyes slitted), before drawing closer to Drago as he says his last line.
That makes Drago turn back and face him, sticking the bullhook into the ground with enough force to leave it standing before, with his right hand undoing some sort of strap of sorts beneath his hair. It proves to be a clip for the false left arm, which he removes to show the missing appendage beneath. “Or tear them apart.” Drago says to Hiccup, watching the young man carefully as he seems to rear back a tad at the large patch of scarred flesh.
“You see,” Drago continues, “I know what it is to live in fear.” He steps closer, and Toothless almost snarls until he remembers Hiccup’s want for peace. “To see my village burned, my family taken. But even as a boy,” he loops around Hiccup like a predator stalks its prey, “Left with nothing , I vowed to rise above the fear of dragons and liberate the people of the world.” He grabs his bullhook from the ground, and watches the swarm of shapes in the air as the Tyrant peers at something hidden in the mountain.
Hiccup, in an almost exasperated motion, rolls his head. “Then why a dragon army?”
“Well,” Drago turns around, “You need dragons to conquer other dragons.”
Hiccup thinks for a second, finding the almost blatant hypocrisy in the man’s words. He stares at Drago intently, green eyes boring into him with furrowed brow. “Or maybe,” He says, eyes dark, “You need dragons to conquer people. To control those who follow you… and to get rid of those who won't.”
Drago looks at him in something almost a mockery of respect and laughs. “Clever boy,” He compliments.
“The world wants peace.” Toothless begins to draw forwards, knowing Hiccup’s plan (as quickly strung together as it is). “And we have the answer, back on Berk. Just,” He holds his hand over Toothless’ head, and the dragon looks over to it before focusing back on the hulking man before them. “Let me show yo-”
Before Hiccup can even finish speaking, Drago whips around, eyes sparkling with malice. “NO! Let ME show YOU.” He almost seems to grin, before hollering.
Drago yells and yells, twirling the bullhook around him until its whistling. In the distance, the Tyrant looks up from whatever it had been watching, and begins to make its way towards them, steps making the ground shake.
Hiccup and Toothless can only watch, their feet unwilling to run in the face of such a large and powerful foe heading towards them.
And then, the Tyrant arrives.
Drago sticks the bullhook back into the ground and looks at this titan under his command with a twisted look of pride.
“No dragon can resist the Alpha’s command.” Drago tells the pair beside him. He moves to pick up his hook, but stops, gaze remaining on the bewilderbeast as he seems to consider something. “I wonder, Dragon Master, if you live up to your name.” The older man says instead, a new smirk curling his features and making the scars marring his face all the more pronounced.
Then, he lifts the bullhook, and points it at Hiccup’s chest.
----ꬰ
Hiccup stares at the hook pointed towards his chest, and looks up at Drago questioningly. This turns out to be a mistake, as behind him stands the Tyrant, whose eyes are narrowed in concentration focused at him .
He meets the great dragon’s eyes, and his head seems to explode with pain.
Yelping like a pained animal, he tries to tear his gaze away, but his eyes are always drawn back. He tries to stand, and when did he fall to his knees? , but his legs don’t seem to be working. He tries to ground himself, grasping at the ground and the snow coating it, and yet he can hear nothing but the ringing in his ears as his vision starts to cloud over.
Something warm and scaled nudges his side, and it vibrates with a worried coo. Toothless , his scattered thoughts mutter, before the headache grows too strong and he can’t think anymore.
Almost distantly, he feels himself move as if stepping through a thick and cloying liquid, reaching down for his sword. He can’t hear the worried sounds from his best friend, or the questioning call of “Hiccup?” from his father who had paused in his mad dash, or feel how the scales decorating the lower half of his chest piece rattled.
He could only see a mess of colorful blurs, only feel like something was covering his skin and moving his limbs for him, only think of one thing.
Inside his head, something starts to whisper.
Kill him , it says, kill the black dragon . His scattered thoughts can only hiss in a joyful agreement, words lost on him some time ago.
Hiccup moves through the molasses and steps towards the black blur in his vision.
Kill, kill, kill , the thing chants, and his mind takes up the chant for it.
The sword in his hand ignites, warm against the cold feeling filling his body. The haze coating his mind makes it impossible for him to hear the now growing scared croon from the night fury before him. He doesn’t even realize he’s cornered the dragon in a ring of broken off pieces of ice.
He is closer than he thought to the blur, he could practically touch it, and he almost wants to.
No , the thing in his mind mutters, don’t touch, kill .
Inferno (how did he know the sword’s name?) raised, he takes a step closer and begins to swing. Behind him, someone bellows in a wordless battle cry, and a large shape takes up his blurred vision, blocking his sword strike with one of his own.
It is brown and almost spiky, and it has all his attention and rage because how dare it stop him from following the thing’s orders.
He can hear it growling with him in his mind before it snarls, Kill them both . Rumbling in joy, he goes to do just that.
----ꬰ
Stoick pants, winded from his mad dash practically across the battlefield. But he cannot rest just yet, because he has a battle to win, even if it might be against his own son.
Further away from the three of them, he can see Valka, and beyond her Gobber trying to catch up. Good , he thinks, stay out of this .
Drago Bludvist dares to control his own son, and so this has become personal now.
His gaze is drawn back to Hiccup when the boy twirls and swings again. He almost wants to shiver at his boy’s eyes, the pupils in them practically nonexistent, but he cannot, because he must fight.
So he blocks the second strike, and prepares himself to strike back.
The resulting battle is grueling, not only for his body, but also his mind, because this is his boy he’s fighting, his boy who is trying to kill him. Both parties get a multitude of small strikes at each other, except Stoick’s don’t bleed and are instead ringed with burns.
Toothless, still huddling against the ice, practically crying out for his rider, finally finds his chance as the pair pause in a standstill.
The Tyrant standing at the cliff of their raised platform, eyes narrowed and spines shaking with power, watches the night fury move to tackle the human beneath his thrall and begins to intervene, but his Master orders him to stand down and so he backs away and instead orders the human to strike upwards with his flaming claw.
Stoick watches his son move his sword into the perfect position to run his dragon through, and runs forwards.
He knows very well what will happen if Hiccup learns he killed his own dragon, so instead he tackles the scaly beast midair, managing to move Toothless enough out of the way that the sword strikes him instead.
The flaming sword pierces his armor, melting the chainmail onto his very skin, and runs him through.
----ꬰ
Hiccup wakes as if from a dream, except a dream wouldn’t hurt his head this much. Shaking his head to get rid of the feeling of cobwebs clogging up his movements, he notices how his arms seem to be aching.
The blurriness of his vision begins to lift as he notices the heat at his hands that suggest Inferno is lit and in his grasp. He cannot remember ever drawing his sword.
Worry begins to stain his thoughts, and he hopes his vision will clear quicker. It does so, and he wishes he never woke up.
His father, Stoick the Vast, stands before him, wounds and chinks in his armor that weren’t there last he’d seen him. But worst of all, he stands with Inferno stuck through his chest, melting down the armor around it.
“Wha-” Hiccup gasps, pulling back. The sword tugs itself from his dad’s chest with a sickeningly wet shinnk sound, and he cringes as tears start to prickle at his eyes.
“Dad?” He asks quietly, disbelieving and scared and worried all at once. He hears claws scrambling for purchase to his left, and turns to look. Toothless, sprawled against the ground, is wheezing a little, winded by something.
From his dragon’s position, and his dad’s, it looks almost like- no . No. NO .
Stoick stumbles, and that is when Valka arrives at the scene. “Stoick.” She gasps, and draws up next to him. From further away, he can hear Gobber calling for help, some kind of medical assistance.
Hiccup stumbles and falls to his knees, tears now trickling slowly down his face, tracing a line down his dirtied face. He stares emptily at the red staining his still smouldering sword, feeling as if something in his chest was cracking.
Toothless pads over to him, cooing out a concerned question. He nudges his arm with a scaled head, but he can barely feel it, can barely feel anything but the crushing feeling of seeing blood on his sword.
Valka, hands against the bleeding holes in her husband’s chest, looks up to see her son (her beautiful gift of a son, just like her) on his knees, sword still in hand and staring at it aimlessly. “Hiccup?” She asks tentatively. He looks up, eyes seeming dead in his skull and tears trickling down his face. “Can you help me here?”
“Yea- I- Yeah.” And he stumbles forward to press his hands against the wounds, seemingly oblivious to the melted metal staining his hands now. She wants to be concerned for him, but can only bear to worry for Stoick.
Gobber arrives, and, with materials that she couldn’t even fathom how he’d gotten, takes over trying to keep her husband alive.
Hiccup however, continues to just stare before shoving Toothless away and running, not even noticing that he grabbed his now extinguished sword. Toothless roars, starting to run after, but stops at Valka’s call of “Wait!”
Turning back to look at her, confused and worried, she explains. “Give him some time first, he needs to come to terms with this all.”
Toothless chirps in an unwilling agreement, but he still watches intently as his rider’s small form is swallowed up by the ice of the emptying battlefield.
Thankfully, Stoick seems stable for now, and there is hope he might survive. The bleeding was minor for the type of wound, and they can only guess the flaming sword cauterized the wound, and the strike hadn’t hit anywhere important. The remaining dragon riders collect around the small group, all worrying and concerned for their uncertain future.
None of them notice how Drago and his bewilderbeast begin to move, taking the dragons with them. They don’t even notice when, once more, Hiccup slips beneath the Tyrant’s thrall.
They only see it when two shapes slip away into the water on bewilderbeast tusks.
By then, it is far too late to change things.