The Riders and dragons returned to Berk around 4:00 am, exhausted. They had to find another way out of the Chamber that did not require flying because of Toothless’s ripped tailfin.
When they reached the village, the Riders broke off from one another and went directly home. While they had a lot of planning to accomplish, they were too tired to do anything else—Hiccup and Toothless especially.
They almost dragged themselves to Hiccup’s hut.
Once inside, Hiccup pulled off his satchel containing the crystals and Dragon Eye and tossed it on the ground. He was too tired to fix Toothless’s tail. He would do that later.
On his way to his bed, though, something happened. A golden light flickered throughout his body, and he fell to his knees, suddenly too weak to stand.
Seeing that, Toothless snapped up his head and hurried to him. He nudged him with his nose and growled worryingly. The flickering was not the only thing that alarmed him, though. Hiccup also seemed out of breath, and his skin looked paler than usual.
The dragon’s eyes rolled back down to his left arm, and his pupils widened.
Hiccup glanced at him. “Don’t worry about me, Toothless. I promise it’s just a scratch.”
Toothless let out a sarcastic laugh. That arm injury was not just a scratch. There was something else going on, something terrifying.
Hiccup tried to stand, but halfway to his feet, his body flickered again.
Toothless caught him on his nose before he hit the ground and let out another worried growl.
“I’m just tired,” Hiccup told him.
Toothless hoped so, but he wasn’t sure. Hiccup’s skin was growing paler by the second as Naga sucked the warmth and light out of his body.
The Night Fury helped his friend to his bed and plopped him down.
“Thanks bud. I’ll be okay. I just need to sleep the day off,” Hiccup said. He patted his dragon and pulled off his sore, metal leg. Yawning, he grabbed his bed covers with his right hand and plopped down on his pillow. As soon as his head hit it, he fell fast asleep.
Seeing him asleep made Toothless realize just how tired he was, too. Yawning, he approached his stone mat, scorched it, and lay down. As the concerned dragon fell asleep, his eyes did not leave Hiccup.
For the second round of the night, Hiccup slept better than Toothless.
Only three hours later, Stoick the Vast broke down the door to his son’s hut and shouted, “Son! Get up!”
At the sound of his voice, Toothless snapped awake and took his head off his paws. His ears stood straight up.
Hiccup groaned from his bed. Only three hours of sleep. After everything that happened to him, that was nowhere near enough.
Stoick stormed to his bed and continued to shout. “I’m not going to ask you again!”
“Dad, please. Five more minutes,” Hiccup begged under his covers.
“No! Five minutes won’t cut it, son! As heir of Berk, this is important!” Stoick peered over his shoulder at the bewildered Toothless and told him, “Get him up for me, Toothless.” As he marched out of the hut, Toothless heard him mumbling, “I’ve had it with teenagers,” to himself. Stoick rarely said something like that unless he was stressed out.
Toothless stood on his mat, and his eyes landed on Hiccup’s bed.
The young man slowly sat but kept his blanket over his shoulder.
Gulping nervously, Toothless approached him. At the sight of his friend, the worry inside him switched to fear.
In the three hours Hiccup slept, he changed drastically. Not personality-wise but appearance-wise. His skin was now almost as white as snow, and an infection appeared on the arm that the Light Dragon injured. Toothless saw it through the tear in his dragon-scale armor.
Hiccup also looked more tired than usual. He shivered as Naga continued to steal the warmth from his body. He felt horrible. Why did Stoick have to call him outside? What was so important that he had to interrupt his beauty sleep? Hiccup thought the sick had to stay in bed or visit the barber-surgeon.
Whatever the case, he rolled out of bed. After reattaching his prosthetic leg, he and Toothless headed to the hut’s door. On their way out, they noticed a group of people and dragons standing before it. Villagers. Something must have been going on, or they wouldn’t be standing around the chief’s side of the island.
Seeing them, Hiccup gulped. His eyes rolled down to his pale hands, and he examined them. He almost was too scared to step out. Surely his dad would notice his sickly form, but how would Daddy react when he learned the Light Dragon injured him, the prince of Berk? Hiccup knew his dad well enough to know he most likely would go insane.
Toothless felt his nervousness. With the hope that Hiccup’s condition would improve later that day, he held his wing up to him, covering everything except his shoulders and head. Once ready, the two stepped outside.
Astrid, Ruff, Tuff, Snotlout, Fishlegs, and their dragons were part of the villagers standing before the chief and chief son’s huts. They stood on either side of Stoick, and all of them stared at the sky.
Toothless headed over to them, and Hiccup asked, “Hey. What’s going on?”
“We’re losing,” was all Astrid said.
Stoick clenched his fists. “The Light Dragon is winning.”
“What do you mean?” Then Hiccup saw it—the Sun. What happened to the Sun? No longer did it glow as bright as it usually did. It also looked smaller, as if a whirlpool was sucking it down to the bottom of the ocean. All around Berk and its surrounding islands, the world was darker and colder.
Children hid behind the wings of a few dragons while one voice popped out of the crowd. '“Chief! What’s happened to the Circle of Light?”
“Is it sick?” another voice asked. “Will it get better?”
Just staring at the dimmed, shrinking Sun, a slight pain hit Hiccup’s head as the Light Dragon tried to communicate with him. “Hiccup. Hiccup.” The panicked voices of the villagers snapped him out of his trance.
“What should we do?”
“Do we need to abandon Berk?”
“Our dragons will freeze!”
“Not only the dragons but us too!”
“This is the end of the world!”
“Quiet!” Stoick shouted at his people.
Immediately, everybody shut up, and their eyes landed on their chief.
“Now that we’re all loosy goosey with fear that our world is ending, I think it best to ask my son about what’s happening,” Stoick announced.
“Huh?” Hiccup asked. Why did his father put him on the spot?
Stoick stepped aside, exposing him and Toothless to the frightened villagers and dragons. “Go on, son,” he sternly spoke. “Tell them. You obviously know more than we do.” Now, all eyes were on Hiccup.
His knees knocked together, and he could hear his teeth chattering from nervousness and cold. He hid his pale body even more behind Toothless’s wing until only his head showed. “Uh, uh,” he stuttered.
His friends also expected him to tell the villagers and Stoick what happened between him and the Light Dragon overnight.
Many faces glared at him, and angry voices asked:
“What did you do this time?”
“Why are you involved every time a calamity comes?”
“Why is that Night Fury still friends with you?”
“Are you the one behind the Circle of Light’s illness?”
Just hearing everybody call him out, Hiccup’s stress went up a whole other level. For the love of Thor, he was injured! He didn’t have time for all this rubbish! He had other pressing priorities and ended up sharing them and mouthing off at the villagers. “Enough! Fine! I’ll tell you! The Light Dragon! The Light Dragon’s risen from the dead!”
“Light Dragon?” voices mumbled in the crowd, and a few dragons growled with concern.
“Oh, please! Don’t act like you don’t know what it is!” snapped Stoick’s son. “Don’t throw your anger out on me! I am not the chief, yet everyone is gaining up on me as if I know how to fight this threat! Well, let me tell you something! I don’t! Toothless and I failed to defeat the Light Dragon last night!” Oops. He spoke too much.
Stoick’s eyes landed on his son, and he asked, “Last night?”
Hiccup ignored him. “I’m tired of you treating me like I’m the only Dragon Tamer here! There are other tamers! Others who are better than me! I am not the chief! My father is, and I’m not like him!” With that, Hiccup stomped his foot and grabbed his injured arm. With Toothless by his side, he stormed into his hut, slammed the door shut, and put a Do Not Disturb sign on it.
The villagers, dragons, Stoick, and Hiccup’s friends stared at the hut in complete silence.
Astrid felt somebody tap her shoulder, and she turned to see who it was.
“Come with me, lass,” Stoick gently spoke. “I need to talk to you.”
***
In his hut, Hiccup rested on his bed with the top half of his back hanging off the edge of it. With eyes closed and knees bent, the first cluster of crystals he found the day before in the tunnel was on his chest.
Toothless stood beside him and nudged his friend with his ripped tailfin half.
Feeling it, Hiccup opened his eyes and said, “Sorry, bud. I meant to fix your tail earlier. I am just not myself. There is too much going on right now.” Pushing up on his backside, he set the crystals down on his lap and patted Toothless’s head, “Why is everybody pushing me to become chief? I’m not ready. Believe me, bud, I want everything to go back to normal. It’s hard to believe that none of this was happening just yesterday morning. Everything changed when Astrid and I had the same dream.”
Dreaded thoughts haunted Hiccup as he took Toothless’s tailfin and fixed it. He dedicated another desk in his hut to just his craftsmanship.
After polishing Toothless’s prosthetic tail, he reattached it to the missing half and asked, “How does that feel, bud?”
Toothless flapped the tailfin to test it and nodded to say it was fine.
With his hand on his left arm, Hiccup said, “Good boy,” and headed back into his room.
Toothless, knowing what he was about to do, carried a bucket of water with a rag after him.
Hiccup wanted to look at his injured arm. He felt like the pain worsened during the thirty minutes he fixed Toothless’s tail and felt no better than he had earlier. In fact, he felt worse. His skin continued to whiten. Before long, it would be the color of freshly fallen snow.
Toothless sat like a dog beside his friend, his ears standing straight up.
Hiccup pulled off his dragon-scale armor, revealing his red tunic under it, and pulled the left sleeve up to his shoulder. At the sight of the infection, he could only say, “Oh no.” He knew the injury was severe, but he had no idea it was that serious. Almost his entire upper left arm was slightly swollen, bloodied, and mixed in with the red infection, which was light yellow, proving it was a Light Dragon-infused injury.
The young man felt nauseous just seeing it, but he went ahead and cleaned the wound with the rag in the water-filled bucket. He flinched the whole time he worked.
Toothless spat a Plasma Blast into the fireplace—he noticed Hiccup shivering—and again sat like a dog. He curiously watched as his friend cleaned the wound and bandaged it.
Once finished, he pulled his dragon-scale armor back over his head. Lucky for him, his brown shoulder pads covered most of his upper arms, so the injury was hidden, which was what he wanted.
There was a knock at the hut’s front door, and Astrid’s voice rang out from the other side. “Hiccup? Come on, I know you’re in there.”
“Astrid?” Hiccup asked in a slightly panicked voice.
“Yes, it’s Astrid. I need to talk to you.”
“Could you come back another time?”
“No. It needs to be now.”
Hiccup inhaled. “Okay. I’m coming.” He rose off his bed on shaking legs but only took two steps before he collapsed onto Toothless’s head. Walking suddenly took a whole lot more energy.
Frightened, Hiccup asked his dragon, “What’s happening to me?”
Before Toothless answered, Astrid again banged the front door. “Hiccup!”
“I’m coming!” Hiccup called back, pushing himself off Toothless’s head. Approaching the door, he reached for the handle.
When his fingers were only an inch or two away from it, Astrid suddenly kicked the door down, pushing Hiccup against the wall behind it.
“I beg your pardon,” he said as his world started to spin, and he fell onto his back.
Astrid marched around the hut and yelled, “Where are you?”
“Down here,” Hiccup mumbled from where he lay. He pushed himself to a sitting position and watched as Astrid approached him.
She placed her hands on her hips and sternly said, “I need to talk to you. What is going on?”
“You just shoved me against the wall!”
From where he stood, Toothless laughed deep in his throat at Hiccup’s response.
Astrid grabbed her friend’s good arm and pulled him to his feet. She pointed at his desk. “Sit down at your desk and tell me what you’re not telling me!”
“As if! You’re not the boss of me!”
That time, Toothless rolled his eyes and covered his ears with his paws. Teenagers. They always found time to argue with one another.
Even though he refused, the look on Astrid’s face scared Hiccup, and he quickly sat down. Who knew a woman could be that frightening? Well, Astrid was that kind of person.
She paced back and forth before Hiccup and explained, “Whatever. Your father wants us to fly out and look at the Sun. Considering we are the two heroes, he thinks we have the strongest connection with Naga.”
“He wants us to fly to the Sun? I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Well, it’s worth a shot. If we’re going to bargain with Naga, then that’s probably where we’ll find him.”
“You’re crazy.”
That line really offended Astrid. Nobody, not even her best friend, told her she was crazy. “Say that again, Hiccup, and I won’t be so nice. You are obviously hiding something, not only from us but also from your father. Look at yourself. Why are you so pale?”
“Lack of sunlight leads to paler skin,” was Hiccup’s answer.
Astrid shook her head as his words sunk in. “Which is why we need to fly out and confront Naga. Come on. We’ve wasted enough time already.” If not evident, she was still angry at Hiccup for what happened overnight.
The young woman marched over to Toothless, faced Hiccup, and crossed her arms.
After more arguing, the two friends climbed aboard the dragon and took off on their quest. Hiccup steered Toothless, and Astrid sat behind him.
She wrapped her arms around him and peered down at the endless ocean, rocks, and islands surrounding Berk.
Due to Hiccup’s arm injury, he did not put as much effort into his steering as he usually did. As a result, Toothless moved slower and wobbled a bit since his prosthetic tailfin did not have as much leg and arm support.
Astrid noticed the dragon’s wobbly flight and asked Hiccup, “Why is Toothless wobbling so much?”
“I just fixed his tailfin, and he’s trying it out.” That wasn’t even close to what was happening, but Toothless couldn’t exactly correct his friend. After all, he communicated through dragon language, not human.
“What are you doing?” Astrid asked Hiccup only ten minutes later. “I thought we were flying to the Sun.”
Hiccup peered back at her and admitted, “Astrid, I don’t think we’re going to be able to reach it. Toothless and I can only fly so high.”
“Then how are we supposed to bargain? That’s our quest, what Stoick expects from us.”
“Look, Astrid. Naga is a very complicated dragon. I do not know if he is either a friend or a foe, nor does Toothless. Who knows, a bargain between us may not even be necessary.”
Astrid laughed sarcastically. “Look who’s talking crazy now. You’re hilarious, Hiccup. Here we are, sitting on top of a majestic Night Fury, and you’re saying that Naga is not an enemy when he is obviously stealing the Sun.”
“But what if he was the one who gave us that crystal in the Chamber of Mystery last night?”
“Oh, shut up. You’re only making this worse.”
For the second time, Toothless rolled his eyes, but then he sensed something, and his ears stood straight up. The dragon came to a screeching halt in the sky and threw Astrid into Hiccup’s back.
“Wha-What is it, bud?” Hiccup nervously asked him.
Astrid wrapped her arms around his body again and searched the darkened area. “He senses something.”
“I know he does,” said Hiccup, “but what is it?”
A low growl came from the rough ocean below. Waves crashed amongst rocks and sprayed the teens and dragon with seawater.
Toothless snapped his head in the direction of the growl. Glaring, he showed his teeth and growled back. His ears moved back and forth, and he listened for whatever stalked him and his friends.
Hiccup and Astrid looked down at the ocean with him, and Hiccup whispered, “Stay quiet.” His heart raced as the sea turned rougher. Two eyes appeared in the water—heterochromatic eyes.
Astrid tightened her grip on her friend. “What is that?”
As the eyes moved closer, they grew larger but disappeared. The teens and dragon were again looking at a so-called empty ocean.
Hiccup patted Toothless’s neck and told him, “Toothless, prepare a Plasma Blast.”
Toothless nodded and opened his mouth. The familiar blue light appeared in it, but he held it in place while waiting for something to shoot at. There was an eerie, dead silence.
Hiccup and Astrid tried not to breathe.
Astrid tapped Hiccup’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. “Naga is stalking us.”
“I know he is,” Hiccup whispered back. “But where is he? Toothless, can you hear anything?”
Toothless shook his head no. Like any Mystery Class dragon, Naga was very stealthy and sneaky, and like any Tidal Class dragon, he lived in or near water. Toothless needed to figure out where to aim his Plasma Blast.
Then, it happened. Things went from zero to one hundred very fast.
The Light Dragon’s thirty-foot-tall body exploded out of the ocean, and he ripped Hiccup and Astrid off Toothless’s back!
The Night Fury cried out in panic. He flapped his wings as hard as he could but could not save himself from falling toward the ocean. No Hiccup meant no flying. Toothless could not fly on his own.
Hiccup held onto one of Naga’s horns and called, “Toothless!”
Astrid slid down the dragon’s back but grabbed a sharp crystal at the end of his tail to break her fall.
Hiccup banged Naga’s horn and cried, “Drop me! He can’t fly on his own!”
Naga refused. He twisted his neck and glanced back at Astrid. Growling, the dragon snapped his tail forward and flicked her right off him. It was as if she were a fly or something.
Astrid screamed as she, too, fell toward the ocean.
Hiccup held his hand out to her. “Astrid!”
Both Toothless and Astrid splashed into the rough sea below.
“No!” Hiccup shouted.
Toothless hurried to the surface and tried to lift himself out of the ocean, but he failed. With every attempt, he fell back into the water.
It wasn’t long until Astrid emerged at the surface, and seeing the distressed dragon, she swam toward him.
“Drop me! Please!” Hiccup begged Naga.
Naga shook his head, and that gave Hiccup no other choice.
He pushed himself up on his back, ran down his spine, and jumped off his tail. The young man screamed as he, too, started to plummet.
“Hiccup!” Astrid shouted from down below.
Naga roared and flew after the young man. He almost caught him, but then Toothless launched his Plasma Blast attack. He aimed it right at Naga.
At the sight of it, the frightened dragon’s first instinct was to hold up his wing like a shield. The Plasma Blast hit him smack dab in the center of his upper left wing and knocked him back.
Hiccup splashed into the ocean but sank below the surface because he did not have the leg support to stay afloat.
Toothless dove underwater after him as Naga tried to recover from the Plasma Blast.
Underwater, at the sight of his dragon friend, Hiccup grabbed him by the saddle collar, ignoring the excruciating pain in his arm. He put his feet back in the stirrups as soon as he had a firm grip. He and Toothless rocketed out of the ocean, picking up Astrid, and headed toward Naga.
The teens and dragon watched in terror when they saw how angry he was.
Toothless’s attack succeeded in cracking the Light Dragon’s wing. The cracks appeared in the prisms on it, and he lost light energy from them. Now, his upper left wing was dimmer than his other wings.
Furious, Naga faced the teens and dragon and roared an even more terrifying metal-screeching roar at them. He dodged Toothless’s next Plasma Blast and soared toward the dimmed Sun.
Toothless, Hiccup, and Astrid chased after him, and Hiccup yelled, “Go, Toothless! We can’t let him steal the sunlight!”
At the sight of them, Naga came to a screeching halt and again roared.
Astrid and Hiccup slapped their hands against their ears and backed away from him.
The Light Dragon wrapped his wings around his body and crouched over.
Only a short time later, Hiccup, Astrid, and Toothless witnessed something they never hoped would happen. Naga stole the Sun right in front of them! Light rays escaped it and made their way down to the dragon.
Just like overnight, Hiccup’s body also flickered, and he yelled as he fell forward.
“Hiccup!” Astrid shouted, grabbing his shoulder.
As Naga fed off the sunlight, it grew darker and colder, and he also started to grow. Light energy found its way into the cracks on his wing and healed it.
Terrified, Hiccup, Astrid, and Toothless’s eyes did not leave the angry, growing dragon.
Only a short time later, he was no longer thirty feet tall. Instead, he was a hundred feet tall! The sunlight danced around his crystalline body, and numerous rainbows flickered.
Hiccup and Astrid broke down in a sweat, and Astrid frightfully asked her friend, “Are we dead now?”
“Yes,” Hiccup squealed, kicking Toothless’s sides. “Retreat! Retreat!”
The message was clear after the first “Retreat!” Toothless flapped his wings and took off as fast as he could away from the angry Light Dragon. He soared close to the ocean and headed back toward Berk, which was only a dot on the horizon.
The now one-hundred-foot-tall dragon played Follow the Leader with them.
“Go! Go! Go!” Hiccup shouted when he saw he was preparing for the attack that injured him overnight. Naga aimed the Devastating Blast at the ocean and let it go.
A massive wave of water crashed into Toothless's back and pushed him and his friends toward Berk.
They yelled and grabbed each other as they held on for dear life.
“I’m sorry!” Astrid cried as tears streamed down her cheeks. She set her head down on Hiccup’s back and sobbed like a little child. “Just get us away from this thing!”
With one last Devastating Blast, Naga again ripped the friends off Toothless’s back. Both amputees lost their prosthetic body parts in the process, and all three friends washed up on Berk’s beach.
Naga dove back into the ocean, creating an enormous splash when he did.
The leftover water ripped the three friends off the beach and chucked them back into Berk’s village.
Toothless wrapped his wings around the two teens, and they all crashed at the feet of Snotlout, Ruff, Tuff, Fishlegs, and their dragons. They learned a vital lesson that morning. Do not make the Light Dragon mad.
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