Symphony of Shadows

22. Breathe

Scouring the chaos down below, Hiccup looked for any sign of a blonde fighter. He found many—but not the one he was searching for.

Astrid was nowhere to be found which was concerning since her expertise typically drew her to the center of the fighting. He'd already scanned near the docks but only found her boat, so she had to be somewhere on Berk. Now he just needed to find her.

But first he would stick to his prior decision and call off the flock—he had to. Just by looking down below Hiccup could see how unorganized the raid was and the destruction that it would cause as a result of rowdy dragons. Without Toothless' guidance, there was no structure in the dragon's activity and it was every dragon for himself as angry vikings fought them off. Hiccup had to do the right thing to minimize the damage on both sides.

"Okay bud, this has gone on for long enough. Time to call them off, Toothless."

Hiccup patted the Night Fury's side and they flew over to where a majority of the fighting was occurring. Toothless let out a roar and several irritated growls, alerting the other dragons to stop whatever they were doing and that it was time to go home. Reluctantly, the dragons let go of the sheep and stopped burning down houses to return to their island.

From the light of the burning buildings, Hiccup could see the confused faces of the vikings who had been fighting one minute and then been left alone the next.

Shit, Hiccup thought, will they know that Toothless is the leader of the dragons? Will they target him now?

But he had no time to worry, he would save that for later. He had to find Astrid. He knew she could handle herself but he would never forgive himself if something had happened to her because of him. For the most part, the dragons were harmless, curious beings who saw herds of sheep all in one place as an easy meal. Yet, Astrid saw the dragons as invaders and that she needed to protect Berk from them—creating a dangerous situation for both her and the dragons. But she would learn, Hiccup would show her, he just hadn't figured out how yet.

Circling the island to make sure there weren't any stragglers, he felt his heart stop. There in the Eastern Woods, a wild fire was ablaze. Clearly the culprit was a gigantic Titan-wing Monstrous Nightmare that was now flying over the fiery scene. It was obviously flushing something, or someone, out of hiding and Hiccup knew deep down that Astrid was in those woods.

Panicking, he raced to put a plan together. He would need to either scare off or distract the dragon to stop it from attacking them once Astrid was safe. A nasty Monstrous Nightmare wouldn't stop until they got what they wanted. They were notoriously stubborn dragons.

"Okay, Bud, we need to spook this guy and get him out of here."

Toothless knew what to do and shot a plasma blast at the dragon, egging the Monstrous Nightmare to give chase and forget about the Viking in the fiery forest.

Sure enough, the angry dragon roared and flapped its wings, making a beeline straight towards them. Toothless took off into the sky, hoping to lose the bigger dragon in the dark cloud cover, a tactic that had been successful in the past with the Red Death. Hiccup could hear the powerful beats of the dragon's wings behind them getting closer and tapped Toothless' side to signal him that it was time to disappear.

The night fury took a hard right and glided into a thicker column of cloud, disappearing into the darkness that covered the night sky. The Monstrous Nightmare roared frustratingly and Hiccup made sure they were facing towards Berk before he signaled with a point of his hand for Toothless to shoot a plasma blast in the air near the dragon.

The massive dragon took the bait and flew quickly in their direction, however they banked right and down under the clouds, managing to not stir the clouds—successfully tricking the Titan-wing Monstrous Nightmare into thinking they had flown away from the village instead of towards it.