Darkheart

Chapter 23

Snotlout felt... nothing. Just nothing. No movement to signal that Astrid was alive, not even any warmth.

"No!" Snotlout instantly sat up and began to push hard on Astrid's chest. One, two, three, four, five pushes, then blew into her lungs. In any other situation Snotlout would be pleased to have this kind of intimate touch with Astrid, but now he paid it no heed. Thirty compressions - breath - thirty compressions -

Frantic footsteps behind him would have told Snotlout that the Twins had arrived, but he was too focussed on the task at hand to pay them any attention.

"Come on, Astrid..." He muttered, continuing trying to revive her. Ruffnut and Tuffnut stood behind him, frozen in horror and unable to move a single muscle between the two of them.

The sky was an icy black above them, the once merry seeming stars now steely and sharp. The moon was a thin crescent, barely visible and doing little to illuminate the disturbing scene below it.

Snotlout continued his compressions. Maybe next time, next time, she'll wake up next time for sure, come on Astrid...

He was well into the 50th repetition when he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder. Jerking his shoulder  violently to shove the hand off, he continued with a driven fervour.

"Snotlout..." It was Ruffnut's voice, hoarse and faint, that made him freeze in place, suddenly unable to move. "It's too late." Snotlout had never heard either of the twins sound so serious, or so... sad.

He stayed frozen in place, unable to move, unable to even think...

"I'm going to kill him." He ground out.

"What?"

"I am going to kill him." Snotlout stood up, grim determination set on his face, and began to walk away. "Hiccup did this."

"No, he can't have done. He would never do this." Tuffnut argued in a rare fit of reason. But he hadn't even quite convinced himself.

Snotlout continued walking away, ignoring Tuffnut's input. The latter, however followed him. "He was probably attacked by a feral dragon or something like that. You can't ju - ugh!" Tuffnut's reasoning was cut short by a hard elbow making even harder contact with his stomach. Ruffnut ran up, shock plastered on her face.

"Snotlout?" She asked timidly. Snotlout was already out of earshot, heading for the centre of the island. He soon disappeared among the trees. Ruffnut turned to her counterpart, completely serious. "What do we do now?"

#

Hiccup didn't feel real anymore... He was floating gently in a void of nothingness. Nothing to sense, nothing to think about, just emptiness. Pure, blissful nothing.

Before he really knew what was happening, a splitting headache drove its way into his head - so horrible it dominated everything. He couldn't think about anything but it. Kicking his legs out in pain, reality sharply made itself felt. He was underwater, under icy cold water and he couldn't breathe! Kicking as hard as he could, Hiccup felt nothing at all happen. Wonderful. He beat his tail up and down along with kicking, and slowly - ever so slowly - he began to move. Closer, closer to the surface... Hiccup began to see a glimmer of white light. It was insanely beautiful; a shining white beacon of oxygen and life.

So close to the surface... Hiccup's limbs were straining, hardly able to keep going, his head pounding so hard it felt like it would split in two. The light was beginning to blur as black streaks crept in from the edges of his vision. So beautiful, so white... like Astrid's hair. And she was there, just above the water's surface, beckoning to him enticingly, that beautiful smile playing lightly at the edges of her lips.

Maybe... maybe if he called to her she would come and pull him out. Hiccup drew a deep breath only to find water flowing into his lungs, burning worse than fire on the way down. Instantly he tried to expel it, but became caught up in a vicious cycle of blowing water out and then breathing it in again right away.

The black had almost completely covered his vision now. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. He couldn't think. Astrid smiled enticingly down at him, strangely sharp and clear looking as the rest of the world grew blurry and dim.

As Hiccup began to sink down from mere inches below the water's surface, he reached a weak paw up to Astrid and opened his mouth in an attempt at a pleading whine, as she disappeared along with the remainder of his vision. The last few tiny bubbles trapped in his mouth flew up and escaped, as Hiccup sank on his back gently, great wings trailing limply in his wake.

🦅-Aquila