Comet Nights (HTTYD Fanfic)

Chapter Ten: Return of Drago

Hiccup's mind sparked and jumped as he took his leave of the Sanctuary, Astrid tailing him and his Night Fury.

The Mountain of Stars!! So that's where Drago had been hiding all this time. His accursed Bewilderbeast must have swum there and they had taken shelter in the faraway crags and peaks of the cloudbound mountain.

"Hiccup!" called Astrid. The air had stilled itself and flying was easy now, no strong up or downdrafts threatening to push them miles away from their airbound path. "Where are we going?!"

"We're going to a place called the Mountain of Stars! It's only a few hour's journey northward from here, and if all goes well, we'll be there before the sun sets!"

To his shock, Astrid suddenly made Stormfly spiral down to the snowy plains below. He bid Toothless follow her, much to the Night Fury's disdain, and he landed next to her.

"Astrid? What's going on?" She had dismounted Stormfly and had her back to him, her shoulders high and trembling.

At the sound of Hiccup's voice, she turned around and slapped him.

"OW!! Astrid, what in Odin's name was that for?!"

"For this whole stupid thing! I was just locked in a giant ice cave with a whole bunch of possibly hungry untamed dragons, waiting for my idiot of a boyfriend for a whole hour, and then, when I finally see him again, he flies off to go to some mountain in the middle of nowhere, and I have no idea what's going on!! Explain yourself now, Hiccup, or gods help me I will fly off back to Berk and fill your house with fish."

Hiccup gulped. When she put it like that, it did sound rather rude for him to do it.

"Alright. Listen, where I went was a cave called the Hall of Tales, and a lot of dragons come and tell things to an old man and his dragon. He remembers them all and so he told me that the dragons had recently been saying the words Fallen comet at the Mountain of Stars, which means Comet is at Eclipse Mountain. Is that good enough for now?"

"All right, but once we fetch Comet and go back, you've gotta hoick up a lot more information than that."

"Okay. Okay. Just- please, please don't act on that fish threat."

"I make no promises!" she smiled, tapping him on the head as she walked back to her Deadly Nadder.

After the Astrid fiasco, they made good headway, sailing on smooth wind currents and watching the scenery flash by. The trip was not without discomfort, though, and whenever Toothless made too tight a turn or curve, Hiccup winced as pain shot up his legs. He had now spent nearly three days in the saddle, and even though he gained some respite at night when they slept, he was sure there were blisters running down his thighs. Hiccup was just glad that he had less of a left leg to be blistered at all. Poor Astrid must have been in even more pain than he was, even though she never complained.

"Hiccup!" cried Astrid.

"What is it?!"

"Is that the Eclipse Mountain place you were talking about?!"

Hiccup looked up to see a huge behemoth of a mountain, standing alone in a vast snowy plain. He had marked Eclipse Mountain on his map a long time ago, when he had discovered it and him and Toothless witnessed a full lunar eclipse right next to the huge structure. It was made of black, forbidding stone that became more beautiful as you got closer, for the whole thing was speckled with tiny bits of crystal and mica that caught the light and reflected it back. At a time like now, when the sun was setting behind it, it looked like it was covered with miniscule sparks of dawn-pink and eventime-purple.

Hiccup took in the view for a moment, then told Astrid that yes, it was their destination. The exhausted dragons landed in the snow, panting and dragging their wings behind them. They needed a full two days of doing nothing but eating and sleeping, and Hiccup wished he could give it to them, but they couldn't do that now. He sat astride his dragon, his girlfriend did the same, and they went looking for a place to sleep.

They found it not long after, with the moon just peeking over the horizon. A small cave, big enough for all of them if they squished together, but no one minded. The dragons flopped to the ground and curled up in a circular pattern, leaving a snug space between them for their riders. Astrid took a sheepskin blanket from Stormfly's saddlebags and climbed inside the nest, spreading it out and tucking herself inside carefully. Hiccup came in next and pressed himself against her. She was already half-asleep, and he could feel slumber pulling him down too, making his thoughts slow and sluggish. He tried in vain to plan for the next day, but he was so comfortable, tucked up in their makeshift camp, that he gave up and closed his eyes...

Outside, snow started to fall.

I do not like this. I do not like this at all. I do not like this...

Hiccup had been repeating the two phrases in his head over and over since they had entered the tunnel. The day had started okay- the convenient discovery of a tunnel entrance at the back of their cave and a fresh meal caught by Stormfly helped a lot- but the winding passageway was horrid. The stone retained none of its glinting quality on the inside, and the black, rough walls were dripping with water.

Not only that, but the rock around him amplified and echoed any sound to creepy intensity, making Hiccup flinch every time a water droplet splashed on the stone floor. No, he did not like what was going on.

He held his sword in front of him, illuminating Astrid and, in the distance, Toothless. There was no one behind him, Stormfly was too wide to fit in the tunnel. She was out in the cave, napping. At least that promised there would be no one behind him at all, especially the unfriendly kind of no one.

Suddenly, ahead of everyone else, Toothless stiffened. He had caught the faintest sound- a soft cry from in front. The cry was unmistakeable.

It was the cry of a wounded Night Fury.

Toothless leaped ahead, forging through the darkness like a living shadow. Astrid and Hiccup scurried to catch up, barely able to keep up with the Night Fury's pace.

After at least 30 minutes of rushing up the now-sloping tunnel, the trio unexpectedly found themselves perched above an incredible sight as the tunnel widened into a open-air cave.

At the top of Eclipse Mountain was a dish-shaped crater, open to the morning sky. At the bottom of the formation was a turquoise lake, shimmering in what little light made it from the top of the structure. A huge, pockmarked boulder, the size of an island, was half-submerged in the water, sticking out like a whale's back from the crystalline liquid. Everywhere else seemed to be made out of the same star-speckled rock as the entire mountain, but wherever you looked, lush green vegetation flourished in the basin. Fruit-laden bushes, mighty trees, clumps of exotically colored flowers, every type of plant seemed to love living in the crater. Hiccup even spotted the brightly-colored forms of tiny dragons flitting through the trees, nibbling on the myriad fruits suspended in branches.

But curled around the meteor in the lake was something Hiccup knew all too well- the corpse of Drago's brown Bewilderbeast.

Then, a dragon's furious cry, a flurry of shadow and scales, and Astrid screaming...

A net dropped over Hiccup's head, and he barely registered the trussed-up forms of his friends before a sharp pain appeared in his skull.

Everything went black...