NOTICE: The story is rated T for a couple of mildly graphic scenes. The first one is in this chapter.

Chapter 1: The Raid

Hiccup's POV

This is Berk. For the most part, it's a relatively decent place to live. There's a nice forest to stroll in, several cliffs to watch the sunsets from, and of course the village itself. From the docks situated at the bottom of a cliff, a wooden ramp winds its way up, through, and around the village until it comes to the plaza. Meade Hall, an imposing building built into a mountain, sits on a hill opposite the ramp. The houses of the most important families sit around the plaza, along with the forge. Despite the village being three hundred years and seven generations old, every single building is new. We tend to have to rebuild a lot, considering the pests the village is constantly plagued with. While other places would have mice or mosquitoes, we have…

…dragons.

I slammed the door shut after peeking outside and finding a Monstrous Nightmare about to torch my front door. I could feel the heat on my back as flames licked and danced around the edges of the wood. Knowing Gobber needed me at the forge, I quickly opened the door again, made sure the Nightmare was gone, and dashed out of the house, right into a dragon raid, and shouts for me to get inside and out of the way.

"What are you doing out?!"

"Get inside!"

"Get back inside!"

Suddenly, I felt a jolt as I was lifted off my feet by my vest. Even at sixteen years old, I'm scrawny enough to be lifted by most regular-build Vikings.

"What is he doing out again- what are you doing out?! Get inside!"

As much as I wanted to argue that I couldn't get to the forge to do my job without going outside, no one argues with Stoick the Vast, chief of our tribe. He put me down and I quickly raced over to the forge while listening to the report of dragons sighted.

"What've we got?"

"Gronkles, Nadders, Zipplebacks, and Hoark saw a Monstrous Nightmare."

"Any Night Furies?"

I slowed just a little, listening both for the answer and the signature whine of the most elusive dragon known to Vikings.

"None so far."

"Good."

Slightly disappointed, I entered the forge just as a dragon flew overhead, setting the roofs of a dozen houses alight. Dragon attacks every other month meant we had to rebuild, meaning every building had been rebuilt at least once in my lifetime.

"How nice of you ta join the party! I thought you'd be carried off!"

I rolled my eyes as I took off my vest and tied my apron around my waist.

"C'mon Gobber, we both know the dragons around here wouldn't be interested in all…this."

I spread my arms, subtly gesturing to myself.

"Well, they need toothpicks, don't they?"

I snorted. "If they needed toothpicks, they'd go after the woodpiles as well as the food."

Gobber just shook his head as he switched his hammer attachment for his ax. He'd lost his left arm to a dragon shortly before I was born, and his right leg shortly after. Despite his attitude, Gobber's been more supportive to me than anyone else in the village, including my father.

"Man the fort Hiccup, they need me out there!"

As he started towards the door, Gobber suddenly turned around and pointed at me.

"Stay. Put. There. You know what I mean."

And with a yell, he hobbled off into the night.

I tried to keep myself occupied by sharpening swords and handing out bolas and replacement weapons from the service hatch, but I couldn't stop straining my ears, listening for a particular whine.

Suddenly, one of the houses close to the forge exploded, and the fire crew rushed in to get the fire under control. All the other teens my age were on the crew, but my dad hadn't let me join due to my un-Viking size and lack of strength.

As they poured buckets on the blaze and turned around to refill, I caught sight of their faces. Fishlegs Ingerman, a blonde, husky boy who was obsessed with dragon information, but didn't particularly care about killing them; Snotlout Jorganson, a smug, stocky, black-haired boy that thought everything he did was a blessing to us all. He was also my cousin, unfortunately. Then there're the twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston; they were spitting images of each other, with long blonde braids on either side of their heads, mostly because they thought cutting it would be a crime to Loki, whom they worshiped. But the last teen, a blonde girl with her hair in a long, single braid over one shoulder, blue, steely eyes that would make some grown men call for their mothers if they were caught in her glare, wearing a blue shirt, spiked shoulder pads and a spiked skirt with metal skulls around the waist, was the only person in the village that I shared a mutual hatred with.

Astrid Hofferson, head of the fire crew, and Berks resident shieldmaiden, seemed to think she was more worthy of being the next chief than I was. When Berk was first settled, the Haddocks and the Hoffersons had been the first two clans to settle on the island, and when a chief needed to be decided, the head of each clan had fought for the right. In the end, my ancestor had won, and the Hoffersons have held a grudge against my family ever since.

The Hoffersons were always trying to get their eldest into the chiefdom, but the closest they ever got since Berks's founding was with Astrid's uncle, "Fearless" Finn Hofferson. Finn was an incredible blacksmith and swordsman and had won dragon training with his age group. He was supposed to challenge my Dad for the chiefdom, and he had planned on killing the only dragon more elusive than the Night Fury: the Flightmare. This glowing dragon only appears once every ten years, coinciding with a phenomenon of lights pulsating in the sky called Arvandil's Fire. But when the dragon appeared, "Fearless" Finn froze, presumably of fright, earning him terrible nicknames such as "Fearful" and "Frozen." Since Finn's death, Astrid has been determined to become the best Viking on the island, and simultaneously show me as the worst.

So far, she's been doing pretty well at both, which is why I glared at her as she passed by the forge with a confident smirk.

"Need any help in there Haddock? Are you actually in there to work, or are you just hiding from the dragons?" Astrid taunted.

I growled and glared as I felt the heat in my face rise, and not just from the flames outside. "I'm doing just fine Hofferson, but then I don't need four other people to help me sharpen a sword." I gestured to the other teens behind her.

Astrid snorted. "You probably need at least ten other people to hold up the sword with those wimpy arms of yours."

My face and ears burned, and I looked away as Snotlout and the twins laughed. "I-I'm s-stronger than y-you th-think."

Although I couldn't see it as I stared at the floor, I could practically hear Astrid roll her eyes. "Yeah right, if you were you'd be out here defending your village like a chief would instead of cowering in the forge."

I looked up as Astrid and the other teens walked away, and Fishlegs looked back and gave me a small smile of encouragement. I quickly looked away again and went back to sharpening the sword on the grindstone; I didn't need fake pity from them.

As I picked up the next sword to sharpen, I heard it; a faint whistling in the wind, growing louder as the creature making it got closer.

"NIGHT FURY!"

"GET DOWN!"

In a flash of purple light and a loud BANG, one of the watchtowers creaked and collapsed, sending the Vikings on top of it to the ground.

The only thing that Astrid hates more than me or the Flightmare is the Night Fury. About five years ago, Astrid's older brother, Gunnar, had been on the fire crew during a particularly nasty raid. Gunnar had been Astrid's idol; he had been there for her when Finn passed. The raid that night was supposed to be the last one of the season; for reasons unknown, dragons rarely if ever raided during the coldest months, which is when we hold Dragon Training to train the youth of the village to fight the demons. Gunnar had been fourteen, the minimum age for Dragon Training, and had been trying to put out a fire near a watchtower with some younger kids. The tower was already unstable from the flames licking its support beams, and then a high-pitched whistle had alerted the village to the approaching Night Fury. Gunnar had quickly ushered the other kids away, but he was still too close to the building when the purple explosion had hit. When the raid ended and the dust settled, the villagers had found Gunner lying face down in the dirt, a bloody gash on his head, and a large chunk of stone lying next to him. I hadn't been allowed out of the forge at the time, but the shrill scream I heard when Astrid discovered his body still haunts my dreams sometimes.

Dropping the sword I was about to sharpen, I raced back to a curtained off part of the forge that Gobber let me use as my workshop; there was parchment all over the walls and desk with designs and inventions I'd thought up over the years, but I was after one thing in particular. After searching through a pile of scrap bits and pieces, I dragged out my bola launcher, a cylindrical device mounted on two wheels and a handle like a cart. Not bothering to take my apron off, I grabbed the handle and started pushing it out of the forge and towards one of the hills on the edge of the village.

"Hiccup, what are you doing?!"

"Get back to the forge!"

"Yeah, I know! Be right back!" I yelled.

At the top of the hill, I stopped, opened the contraption, loaded the launcher, and waited for the perfect shot.

"Come on, give me something to shoot at, give me something to shoot at…" I muttered.

A couple of seconds later, I heard the distinct whine of the Night Fury and saw a flash of purple hit another watchtower. Heart pounding, I quickly aimed the launcher at a speck of black illuminated by the flames and pulled the trigger. The rebound was strong enough to knock me over, and as I fell, I heard the definitive sound of a bola wrapping around something, and a screech of anger as something fell towards Raven Point.

Disbelief quickly changed to excitement as I realized I had just shot down the one dragon that no one's ever seen. "I-I hit it?! Yes, I hit it! Did anybody see that?!" I had finally done something that even Astrid Hofferson couldn't, but my victory was short-lived.

As I stood up and turned around, I found myself face to face with the same Nightmare that had been at my door earlier.

"Except for you," I muttered.

The Nightmare roared in my face, and I screamed and ran, not caring about anything except getting away from that dragon. I didn't have any weapons on me, and my bola launcher only carried one shot, so I was basically on my own.

I ran towards the plaza and hid behind one of the large torches we used to see the dragons' dark shapes in the night sky. I tensed and crouched as I once again felt the heat on my back. When the heat died a bit, I carefully looked around the pillar, only for something to bat the dragons head away from my other side.

I turned and saw Stoick, my father, hitting the Nightmare's head with his war hammer. The dragon tried to fire at him, but it only managed to spit a few small embers at him.

"You're all out," Dad said as he walked forward and bashed his hammer against the Nightmare's head repeatedly, until the dragon finally shook its head in a daze and flew off, following the rest of the swarm, most of which were carrying animals or baskets of food.

As the dragons retreated, Dad turned and stared at me. I could see the frustration and disappointment in his eyes, and I knew what he, and probably the rest of the village, was thinking; I had screwed up, again.

As if to prove this point, the torch I had been hiding behind creaked and bent where the fire had melted it, crashing into the ground and rolling down the hill. I winced and flinched as villagers cried out and dodged the rolling bowl of flames. "Sorry, Dad."

I wanted to tell him about the Night Fury, how it went down just off Raven Point, how we should send a search party after it, but I knew he wouldn't listen. So instead I just said, "I-I guess I'll head back to the house…"

Dad nodded. "Gobber, make sure he gets there. I have his mess to clean up…again."

I felt Gobber's remaining hand on my shoulder as he guided me up the village to my house. Unfortunately, we passed the other teens, and Astrid looked particularly smug.

"I've never seen someone mess up that badly," she taunted, "That actually helped!"

"Thank you, Hofferson, I was trying," I shot back, face red in shame.

Gobber gave her a dirty look, but no one would dare hit Astrid, at least if they wanted to keep their limbs, or at least their remaining ones.

I wanted to go out to look for the Night Fury as soon as possible, but Gobber held me back at my front door. "Why weren't ya at the forge lad? There were many without weapons for the last little bit."

I looked down at my feet, not wanting to meet his gaze. "I just wanted to prove that I could do something to help…"

Gobber sighed and patted my back. "If you want to get out there and fight dragons, you need to stop all…this." He waved in my general direction."

I looked up at him, annoyed. "You just gestured to all of me!"

He hesitated, hand fiddling with his stone tooth. "Look, lad, I know ya want to prove yerself to tha village, and especially to Astrid and Stoick," I scowled at Astrid's name. "Oh don' look at me like tha' lad, you know it's true." I did, but that didn't mean I had to like it.

"At this rate, Dad probably won't even let me IN dragon training, so he might as well just make Astrid his heir; it'd probably be better for everyone anyway," I grumbled.

Gobber opened his mouth to say something, but I turned around and closed the door behind me, leaned against it, and sighed. I waited until I heard Gobbers footsteps retreating footsteps, then went upstairs to my room, grabbed my notebook and charcoal pencil, and went out the back door; I had a Night Fury to find.