How to Twist a Dragon's Tale (Hiccup) (13 page)

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Isn't
Fate artistic?

But what this all meant was that Hiccup was in trouble up there on the mountain, and that Hiccup had never in his life been more in need of his Bardiguard.

Humungously Hotshot the Hero pulled the bracelet onto his own left arm.

He leaped onto the back of his White Dragon, drawing his sword and shouting, "Come on, Windwalker! Hiccup needs us! This IS our fight! TO THE VOLCANO!"

"Oh, b-b-brother," moaned Toothless, sprawled on the deck, "we aren't going up again, are we?"

The Windwalker swallowed hard, and picked Toothless up in its mouth, and took off up to the Volcano after Humungously Hotshot.

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16. ANOTHER FIGHT

"AT IAST!" gloated Alvin the Treacherous, smiling down at the petrified Hiccup.

"Now, see where your precious Heroism has gotten you. DEAD before you even get your first chest hair. Where is the Fire-Stone, before you die?"

Hiccup looked straight up into Alvin the Treacherous's murderous, scarred face.

Now that he knew he was about to die he wasn't scared at all, and he wasn't going to give Alvin the satisfaction of thinking that he was frightened.

Hiccup began to sing.

And for some reason the first song that came into his head was that ridiculous song that was one of Stoick's favorites, which just happened to be the lullaby that Hiccup's mother Valhallarama used to sing to him as a baby, when she was rocking him to sleep, snuggled up to her armored breastplate.

It was a song that was said to have been made up by Great Hairybottom himself, many, many centuries before, when he first settled in the Archipelago.

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"I didn't mean to come here...

And I didn't mean to stay...

It's just where the sea wind blew me

One acci-dental day..."

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Alvin nearly dropped Hiccup, he was so surprised.

Alvin expected a person facing death to beg, cry, plead for mercy.

He didn't expect them to start singing songs as if they were casually sitting around a campfire.

"... I was on my way to America

But I took a left turn at the Pole

And I lost my shoe in a rainy hog

Where my heart got stuck in the hole

Above them the thunderclouds were so dark they were almost blue, and lightning crackled between them. Below them the Volcano rumbled ominously in reply. It was almost as if the small boy's voice was trying to placate the storm from above and the storm from below.

"What are you doing?" hissed Alvin in baffled and furious astonishment, his arm holding the Stormblade hesitating above his head. "What ARE you babbling about? You're about to DIE here, you fool..."

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Beyond Alvin's shoulder, Camicazi and Fishlegs, pinned under the swords of the Exterminator, joined in the song:

"... I've heard that the sky in America

Is a blue that you wouldn't believe

But my ship hit a rock on these boggy shores

And now I'll ne-ver leave...

Alvin began to bring the Stormblade down, furious that Hiccup was going to die while apparently happily singing and enjoying himself, rather than afraid and alone, and as his arm carrying the wickedly sharp Stormblade swung down...

...ZZZZZZZZING!!!!!!

[Image: A man and woman.]

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... out of the billowing mustard-yellow smoke belching from the Volcano behind Alvin's shoulder a white feathered arrow came singing, straight and true, toward Alvin's upper arm. The white-feathered arrow sank deeply into the weak human flesh of his bicep, and he dropped Hiccup onto the ground with a cry of agony.

The pure, clear noise of the young Vikings' singing rose up and cut through the thunder.

And then another voice joined in.

A much deeper, rather painfully LOUD voice, WILDLY out of tune, and yodeling and zigzagging up and down the scale like a gigantic crow having a fit.

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Oh dear,
thought Hiccup in surprise,
something terrible really did happen to Humungous s voice when he was in the Lava-Lout Jail-Forges...

That sounds terrible!

Through the smoke of the Volcano, Humungously Hotshot the Hero came riding.

He sat up straight and tall on the back of the White Dragon, putting away his bow now, and drawing his swords.

On his left arm he was wearing Alvin's bracelet, snaking brightly around his arm.

"Arm yourself, Alvin, you TREACHEROUS SNAKE!" shouted Humungously Hotshot.

Alvin whipped his head around to see Humungous riding straight for him. His great swords the Fireflash and the Mooncut were held sternly above his head.

Alvin started in horrified surprise and yelled out, "EXTERMINATOR!"

The dreadful dragon heaved his claws out of the ground around Camicazi and Fishlegs and came bounding toward his Master.

Alvin leaned down and dragged the arrow out of his arm with his teeth.

It was not, unfortunately, a deep wound, and

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although it bled quite a bit, it did not stop Alvin from leaping aboard his Exterminator's back and up into the air.

And in the swirling smoke of the Volcano, the two Warriors faced each other for the first time. Alvin pulled down the visor on his Fire-Suit. The dragons, one white, one black, wheeled around each other through the sulphurous smoke, watching for an opening, waiting for a moment to attack.

"Now, now, Humungous," Alvin wheedled. "Don't forget, I'm your old pal, Terrific Al. You wouldn't hurt an old friend like me, would you?"

But Humungous was full of righteous wrath.

"Friend? HA! You never delivered my ruby heart's stone! You kept it for yourself!"

A ray of sun poking for a moment through the rain-laden clouds bounced accusingly off the ruby in the bracelet, which was now around Humungous's arm.

Both men let out a terrible scream, simultaneously, and they leaped together, the two Warriors' swords meeting with an awful clang of metal against metal, Stormblade against Fireslash.

At exactly the same moment, there was a great CRASH of thunder, the heavens opened and it began to POUR with rain.

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Fishlegs and Camicazi ran toward Hiccup, and all three Vikings huddled together straining to see what was happening up in the sky, who was winning the Battle in the Smoke.

The Windwalker appeared out of nowhere, and dropped Toothless on top of Hiccup's helmet. Toothless looked into Hiccup's eyes upside-down, exhausted but thoroughly overexcited.

"L-l-look, I brought H-H-H umungous, Toothless saved the day, Toothless a Hero, Toothless a Hero!" chanted the little dragon jubilantly, letting out a gloating cock-a-doodle-doo of triumph.

"GUYS!" yelled down Humungous, performing the Grapple-lunge with full twist, as he fought all ten of the Exterminator's sword-claws AND the Stormblade and Alvin's hook on top, "DON'T FORGET THE QUEST!"

(This may seem like rather obvious advice, but trust me, in the heat of the moment it is quite easy to forget what you came for in the first place.)

"YOU'VE GOT TO GET THE FIRE-STONE IN THAT VOLCANO
NOW,
OR WE'RE ALL DONE FOR!"

"Yes, well done, Toothless, but we're not safe
yet,"
said Hiccup shakily, trying to find where Camicazi had left her waistcoat, but it was difficult to see in this

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driving downpour. "We have to throw tie Fire-Stone in the Volcano..."

"I think I put it somewhere over there ..." said Camicazi, uncertainly, pointing vaguely to the right, "... or was it somewhere else ... I can't quite remember ... I mean honestly you put something down for
one
moment and ..."

"N-n-no, you're right!" screeched Toothless, wild with excitement, "Toothless get tie fire-Stone n-now... Toothless be tie H-H-Hero for once!"

"No, Toothless, hang on ," said Hiccup, clinging on to one of Toothless's legs. "
We'll do
it, Toothless, don't worry, we'll do it."

[Image: A woman.]

But the glory of Humungously Hotshot

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telling him what a great Hero he was had gone quite to Toothless's head.

"Hiccup not
t-t-trust
Toothless, that's it, isn't
it?"
squeaked Toothless huffily. "Toothless s-s-save Hiccup's life and still HICCUP want to be the big Hero all to himself... Weil Toothless a Hero now too... and Toothless can do
it
ALL ON HIS OWN, j-j-just you see..."

Toothless leaned down and gave Hiccup a painful little nip on the knuckle, so that Hiccup let go of his leg with a sharp cry, and Toothless spread out his wings and soared through the rain, with Hiccup running after him shouting:

"No! Toothless! Wait!"

But Toothless didn't quite catch the last bit because he was searching the ground for the Fire-Stone.

"It's here somewhere... s-s-somewhere... Aha!"

[Image: Toothless can do this all on his OWN.]]

The little dragon spotted the already sodden waistcoat with a gleam of gold in it lying sitting in what

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was now mud, not very far away, and he swooped up to it, claws outstretched.

C-C-C-C-C-CRASHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

A great crack of lightning skewered through the black sky above.

A tremendous rumble of
something,
it could have been thunder, it could have been the Volcano ...

"GUYS!!" shouted down Humungous, swooping down on a cringing Alvin, and performing the Grimbeard's Grapple, the Piercing Point, the Half-turn Demi-Plunge, and the Deadly Double-Act, four entirely different and immensely difficult sword-plays in quick succession.

[Image: Toothless and fire stone.]

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING DOWN THERE? YOU REALLY, REALLY

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NEED TO GET A MOVE ON!"

Toothless unwrapped the Fire-Stone from the waistcoat and took a good hold of it.

He looked over his shoulder.

Hiccup, Fishlegs, and Camicazi were running down the mountainside toward him through the driving rain, Hiccup still calling out: "BO! TOOTHLESS! I'LL DO IT! IT'LL BE~"

Toothless gave a defiant little snort and a toss of his head.

"Toothless d-d-do it on his OWN," he said, and lifted the Fire-Stone up in his claws.

But the smooth, golden surface of the Fire-Stone had become slick and slimy in the driving rain. And Toothless's sharp, pointy little claws didn't have the grip on it that they might have done when it was dry.

"~ SLIPPERY," groaned Hiccup.

[Image: Toothless and fire stone.]

Hiccup, Camicazi, and Fishlegs reached the

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waistcoat just in time to get an excellent view of the Fire-Stone sliding from Toothless's clutching talons and beginning to roll down the mountainside that they had so painfully, so slowly, so bravely come up.

"Whoops!" squeaked Toothless guiltily. "S-s-sorry?... what a butter-claws I am... Don't worry... don't panic... m
-
m-me get it..."

And he made another dive for it, getting in the way of Camicazi, who was just trying to tackle it from the other direction.

"Got it!" cried Camicazi, in a split second of triumph, before Toothless crashed into her face, and knocked the muddy golden Stone out of her fingers.

"Whose side are you
on,
Toothless?" howled Hiccup, as he passed Camicazi and Toothless sprawled in the mud, and pelted after the rolling Stone, now gathering speed and bouncing merrily down the steep slope through the soaking, drenching, drowning rain, lightning crashing all around it.

On and on it rolled, and with every foot that it bounced, the success of their Quest was rolling further and further away from them.

Up in the air, despite being mounted on a far superior dragon, Alvin the Treacherous was being

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[Image: Toothless and fire stone.]

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THOROUGHLY beaten in the sword-fight by Humungously Hotshot the Hero.

Humungous had already thrust his spear into one of the Exterminator's hearts, and although the Creature could still fly because it still had the other heart to keep it going, some of the fight had gone out of it. Can you blame it?

Alvin was preparing to desert, for if ever a person knew how to run away when things looked bleak, it was Alvin the Treacherous.

But Alvin looked down, and he saw the golden globe rolling down the mountain, with the three little figures and their dragon scrambling, sliding, and falling after it.

Alvin saw a chance to snatch Victory from the jaws of Defeat.

To Humungous's surprise Alvin stopped the Exterminator mid-charge (this was most certainly NOT considered good Barbarian Behavior, running out on a fight) and wheeled his dragon around, and swooped after the rolling, fleeing figures and the Stone.

The ground was flattening out a bit, and