How to Train Your Dragon: Rewrite

Chapter 4: Toothless

This chapter contains minor swearing, bullying and physical abuse.

Stoick the Vast looms over the familiar map that haunts his dreams and reality. He drags his eyes to the corner of the map where there is a drawn illustration of what could be depicted of mist or fog, the illustration even has some drawn dragons in it as well, this is their destination.

"I can almost smell them. They're close. Steady." He declares for the men on his ship.

He looks up to see a large expanse of fog. It spans as far as the eye can see both ways and touches the water lightly only to not see the sky. It's as if there is some kind of mystical force keeping it held back and in place.

The ships that are all part of this expedition skirt along the edge with just the power of the current in the area. They try with all their might to cut the thick fog with their eyes just to find a way in without immediately crashing into a rocky formation and sending them to their watery graves.

All the crewmen wander about, nervously. They know what the chief is hoping to accomplish, but they also know how terrible it has gone every other time. They would never find the nest and would lose too many men and women who came along, hoping to have songs sung about them of their great victory against their greatest enemy, the dragon nest. Even some of the men here today were still hoping for that. Some people were nowhere near optimistic about how this trip would turn out.

Who would die today? Would they make it back to their families? Or, would they find the nest today? Would they be rid of their fiercest foe?

"Take us in." Stoick sees their chance and commands his helmsman, his voice low and tone full of authority.

No one would dare question him.

As the ships enter the whiteout of fog and mist, they become more ansty. Their attention heightens and they all draw their weapons, preparing for the worst possible scenario. A viking on another ship shouts out a command for the other ships to follow Stoick's lead ship.

The fog is suddenly lit up with the orange-yellow glow of fire. The light is enough to make all the dragons flying above them become silhouettes. Many of the vikings start yelling out. Some scream in fear, others with their war cry. The loud popping and cracking of aged wood splintering and shattering echo clear through the fog. There are many sounds of water being breached as some vikings try desperately just to get to a safer ship, one not sinking, they want to see their families again. Once more the area is lit up with the same cursed light followed by more sounds of carnage and screams as the dragons find their targets.

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Hicca had worked her way through the maze to make it over to where Gobber was perched high above and safely outside the arena.

"Hey, uh, Gobber? I just so happened to notice that our dragon book has absolutely nothing recorded in it about Night Furies. Why is that? We wouldn't happen to have another, hidden maybe, small book dedicated to them? A sequel? Oh! What about a pamphlet?" She raises her axe, the one she made for herself because it was lighter.

All of the sudden the metallic head of her axe comes clean off in an explosion, a result of the Nadder finding her. She stumbles a bit, dazed and no longer hearing correctly, before she has the right state of mind to shriek and dash back through the maze, faster than her legs have ever carried her before.

"Foccus, Hicca!" Gobber already sounds exasperated by her antics. "You're not even trying!"

Gobber notices the Deadly Nadder trying to find one of the teens through the maze.