Chapter 10:
(Hiccup POV)
The sky above Berk was a bright, clear blue, streaked with the occasional puff of cloud and the distant cry of a seabird. It was peaceful, the kind of morning that made you forget just how chaotic the village could get by afternoon.
I leaned on Toothless' side, balancing on his back while he tested a new turn I had rigged into the harness. The wind whipped my hair and tugged at my tunic, but I wasn't panicking. Not today. Today I trusted him, and more importantly, I trusted myself.
"Easy," I said, bracing against a sudden tilt. Toothless gave a soft hiss as if to say I know what I'm doing, just try to keep up.
We rolled through the sky, looping over the rocky cliffs and weaving between masts of the fishing ships below. Each loop, each dive, felt smoother. Smaller mistakes were corrected instantly—not by someone yelling at me, not by Gobber or Dad, but by the dragon I had begun to understand.
Below, the fishermen paused, squinting upward. One of them pointed and muttered something I couldn't quite hear. I didn't care. The world felt right when we were like this.
Meanwhile… somewhere out of sight…
Aegis blinked—or what counted as blinking for a creature of his size. His massive head shifted against the stone of the cove, violet-black scales pulsing faintly as he flexed wings that spanned nearly twice the width of Berk's largest longship, roughly 30 meters tip to tip.
Thirty meters. He tried not to think about it too much. The body still felt wrong in places: legs too long, claws too massive for anything in his old human mind to have accounted for, tail heavier than any sword he'd ever held, and wings strong enough to crush a barn if he flapped carelessly.
"Okay," he muttered to himself—though technically, muttering was useless since his mouth now contained rows of teeth long enough to bite through timber. "Just… don't fall on your face. Don't crush anything… maybe avoid small children."
He rose slowly to his knees, claws scraping against stone, and flexed the wings. The air shifted, faint gusts buffeting the cove's mouth. He tilted his head and caught the sunlight glinting off his scales—a mix of black and pulsing violet that seemed almost alive. He'd grown used to the glow. Not used enough to stop thinking it was weird.
Walking was another matter. Every step had to be carefully placed. If he misjudged even slightly, the ground shook enough to send loose stones rolling like miniature boulders. He tested his claws, then shifted back into a crouch to make sure he didn't crush the small stream that fed into the cove.
This body is ridiculous, he thought. And somehow, terrifyingly, wonderful.
(Hiccup POV) I was experimenting with another turn—the "figure-eight loop," which I had roughly sketched in the sand with a stick earlier. Toothless was patient but clearly unimpressed with my handwriting skills.
"Come on, big guy," I said. "We can do this. We can."
He snorted softly and tipped into the first loop, wings slicing the wind with a grace I could only dream of. I flailed slightly but kept my grip, heart racing in a way that was exhilarating rather than terrifying.
When we landed, breathless, I grinned. Toothless chirped.
"You're amazing," I whispered. He nudged me with his head, warm and solid. I laughed.
Astrid, meanwhile, had been watching from the cliff edge. Her arms were crossed, brows furrowed, and her mouth was tight. She had that I'm plotting your humiliation look she always did when I succeeded.
I didn't notice her glare. Not yet.
Back at the cove, Aegis shifted again, trying not to accidentally crush a rock formation while pacing.
Movement was weird. Flight was worse. Every instinct from his human life screamed one way, every muscle from this new body another.
"Flap slowly," he muttered. Slowly? He flexed one wing—roughly the size of Berk's longhouse—and tested the air. The tip caught a gust, then another, and suddenly he was airborne for a fraction of a second before crashing back down into a crouch.
"Okay," he muttered again, voice rough from disuse, "maybe not too fast… maybe not yet…"
He flexed the tail, estimating it at roughly 12 meters from base to tip, weight distributed to counterbalance wings. Each movement was a lesson in physics he'd never had to calculate before. Walking? Manageable. Running? Questionable. Flying? Exhilaratingly terrifying.
I've never been this big before, he realized. And, if he wasn't careful, he could probably wipe out half of Berk by accident.
Which, he thought with mild horror, was exactly why he needed to stay hidden.
Back in Berk, the mundane returned. I was helping Toothless get accustomed to new manoeuvres, loops that curved tighter, dives that ended in controlled rolls. The trust between us grew in almost imperceptible increments, the way it always did. I could feel him reacting to my weight, my balance, even my mistakes, correcting his moves in ways I couldn't.
Ruffnut and Tuffnut were trying to practice mid-flight tricks today. They squabbled constantly, but each time one failed, the other shrieked and laughed until the dragon rolled its eyes—or as close as a dragon could manage.
Fishlegs approached carefully, clipboard in hand, noting every mistake, every success. "Actually, if you adjust your wing angle by five degrees," he said softly to Astrid, "you could increase lift and decrease rotational friction…"
Astrid scowled. "Or you could just fly properly, Fishlegs."
Snotlout crashed into a haystack during a daring loop. "It's part of the plan!" he shouted. Nobody believed him.
And through it all, I was there with Toothless, catching myself mid-flail, laughing more than I probably should, and silently wondering when Berk would finally notice that maybe… I wasn't the weak link anymore.
Even as the village continued its day, fishermen brought in their morning catch and chattered nervously about what they'd seen at sea.
"Two dragons," one said, shading his eyes. "Flying close to the reef, bigger than anything I've ever seen."
"Probably just old stories," another said. "Could be a pair of Night Furies, eh?"
"Or something worse," whispered a third, glancing nervously toward the horizon.
I didn't hear much of it. I was too busy laughing as Toothless did a sharp roll that nearly dumped me into the water. But the words lingered, like a shadow at the edge of memory: something unusual is out there. Something big.
Aegis, perched unseen on a cliff just beyond the village, flexed his wings for the hundredth time that morning. He could smell the scent of Berk on the wind: wood smoke, fish, mud, sweat. He could see the humans in motion, their schedules, their chaos.
And he could see the dragons.
His eyes wandered following their flight path circling to the very edge of the reef before looping again, His eyes narrowed as he racked his brain trying to think about any mention of this cycling through his memories of his childhood surfacing showing a mild mannered boy of mixed descent watching the first movie with his grandmother before attempting to recount how many times he read the original book on his own for English homework and his own amusement.
and yet... nothing, not one mention of these dragons flying close enough to see berk but too far for the residents to take action, Aegis frowned upon remembering no details on these dragons before he finally passed it off as a coincidence and so for now, he watched.
Suddenly he remembered what he had taught himself on what it meant to be a body that could no longer be human, yet had to move in a world built for them. The
And maybe, he thought with the tiniest spark of amusement, he'd have to get used to the giant, clumsy, terrifying fun of it.