Chapter Text
When Hiccup finds the spot where the Night Fury landed, there's only blood.
The trail of broken branches over a deep gouge in the earth is marked with it. A tree, cracked in two and kept upright only by its neighbors, is painted red on the sharp edges of the shattered wood. One piece longer than his arm lies at the bottom of the shallow impact crater, soaked through over half its length, surrounded by torn rope and metal weights. The smell of dragon's blood is thick in the air.
"You're hurt..." Hiccup muses, as though his quarry is there to hear it.
He tiptoes into the disturbed earth and kneels next to the bloody wood, picks it up by the dry half. There are teeth marks under his fingers; the dragon pulled this out of itself.
"You're hurt bad." He gasps. "I might've actually pulled this off."
There's another trail of it leading away from the crash site. Hiccup drops the piece of wood, pulls out his dagger and starts to follow it with a deep breath. He quickly finds footprints, and particularly the front right paw stands out because it grows bloodier with every step the beast took.
This is both good and bad. A dragon injured this badly might not have flown off, but a cornered, pained animal is often more dangerous than the alternative.
It'll be fine, though. Yeah, definitely. It'll be fine! He's going to find the Night Fury, he's going to finish it off, he's going to bring proof back to the village, and then everything will be okay!
His fingers tighten around the dagger.
The blood trail meanders through the forest, around trees and boulders, always through the path of least resistance. Sometimes there's blood left on the undergrowth that Hiccup avoids. There's no sign of flight either, no broken branches any higher than his head. The dragon must be grounded.
Yep. Lucky him. Just a downed Night Fury who's definitely going to be very hurt and very angry. He's just... the luckiest viking ever.
A break in the trees approaches ahead. Hiccup slows down and ducks lower as he creeps up to it. It's not a clearing, exactly, but a hole in the ground, deep, with steep stony cliffs all around and a wide pool of water taking up at least half of the bottom.
The blood trail goes right up to the edge, then over it. Red smears and splatters tumble down the rocks and drag across the grass below, all the way to—
A Night Fury!
Hiccup ducks out of sight by reflex. There's no response, however. He risks another peek.
The Night Fury is there, unmoving, not even seeming to breathe from this distance. It lies partially on its side, back facing him, one wing splayed out behind it at an awkward angle.
Hiccup smiles, he can't believe this! He wants to shout his triumph to the heavens, he even breathes in for it, but he stomps himself.
No, not until he's sure the dragon is dead. It's not tied up, it might wake up and attack him.
He edges forward a little, he needs to get closer, but the cliff is too steep to climb. He creeps along the edge of the pit, one eye on the dragon, until he comes upon a breach in the walls, a narrow path leading down to the bottom. Following it means stepping away from the edge and losing sight of the beast, but thankfully the dragon hasn't budged an inch when he spots it again.
Carefully, Hiccup emerges into the pit. He approaches like the earth itself might split open and swallow him, every step slow and methodical, dagger held out in front with both hands (which are definitely not shaking).
The smell of dragon's blood grows stronger. A noise also registers in his ears, something he doesn't understand until he notices the beast's back and shoulders moving.
It is breathing. But it's weak, fast and shallow breaths.
His steps gradually arc to the side, and his gaze moves across the dragon's body and its incredible length, easily ten times his height.
He sees the sleek black scales, barely distinguishable from one another except for some larger scutes clustered here and there. He sees the thin struts of bone across the open wing— one of them is bent wrong, shiny with blood on the broken spot. He sees the spines along the back and atop the skull, though smaller. He sees the head, broad and flat, the rounded ears, the matching frills of progressively smaller protrusions all along the back and underside of the jaw.
And he sees the eyes .
The Night Fury's eyes are blue. They're also tired, he can only see a sliver of color and a thin slice of black pupil. Those pupils turn to him, unfocused yet undeniable.
Hiccup stops. His grip on the dagger falters. He stumbles back a single step.
"I did this..."
The daggers falls.
From this angle he can see the blood continuing to pool out from under the dragon's other wing. It covers most of its body, but it can't cover the bloody tear along the base of its membrane, or the tip of what must be a devastating wound on the dragon's shoulder and flank. The blood is only discernible from the black scales by its wet shine, yet it's clearly visible painting the dragon's neck in thin rivulets.
The dragon is going to die no matter what he does now. It's watching him through the haze of blood loss, and it looks so human in its pain.
Hiccup takes a tentative step forward, then another. The dragon rumbles, maybe in an attempt to growl, but it's barely audible. He keeps moving closer, he reaches out even before he kneels right in front of the Night Fury's nose. Its breath hits his knees weakly, barely warmer than his own body.
That more than anything is what truly convinces Hiccup that the dragon is at death's door. Fire-breathing dragons only cool down when they're dead.
"I'm sorry. I... I'm sorry."
He lays his hand on the Night Fury's nose, and everything goes wrong.
The dragon erupts in flames. Blue, purple and orange swallow Hiccup in an inferno so fierce it drowns out his scream.
Child! Child, listen to me, we don't have much time.
What? What's happening?! Who are you?!
His skin peels away, he feels it being shredded like rotten fabric, but it doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts, or maybe everything hurts so much he can't even process it, and there's a voice in his head that's the only thing he can focus on amidst the deafening fire consuming his every nerve.
I am the one you killed.
You're being cursed, the Night Fury is a curse.
Only one exists at a time, it passes down to whoever kills it.
His flesh itself is ripped from his bones, and these are warped by the heat, twisted into new shapes. His whole skeleton expands. His vertebrae multiply into a tail, his shoulder blades splinter into brand new limbs, his skull shatters into bestial jaws.
I don't understand!
You don't have to.
I'm sorry, child, there's no turning back.
I've been alive for over 200 years, I've never found a way.
New muscle and tendons and sinew wraps around him. Like blood-soaked ribbons, it blooms from his back and twists and weaves across his transformed bones. It crawls up his hew wings and connects threads between the struts, anchors into the sides of his keeled sternum, whirls down his tail and limbs and falls across his face.
You've- What?
The curse will keep you alive forever.
You'll die only if something kills you, something other than yourself.
Believe me, I've tried.
A single black scale solidifies on his back. Within a mere moment it multiplies exponentially as skin spreads and covers the newly-minted flesh. On the wings and fins it folds in on itself, thicker, stronger, more flexible than any leather.
I'm sorry, child.
Use your tail when you fly.
The new skin flows down to the very end of every extremity, where it hardens into claws at the tip of each digit.
Good luck.
Eyeballs fill his empty sockets.
I'm sorry.
Teeth slide into place.
Then, just as quickly as it began, the inferno dissipates, leaving behind a massive scorch mark around...
Hiccup pants.
He doesn't recognize the sound of his own breathing. He doesn't recognize anything about his body anymore. He groans, and it comes out like a deep warbling sound. His every sense is sharper, overwhelmingly so. He tries to open his eyes, but it's too much.
Okay. It's okay, he's...
He's a Night Fury. Right? Is he? He can't be, he can't ...
Everything feels wrong. He moves his arms, his legs, but they're too short, too thick. His hips are heavy, there's too many things touching him. Too much of him touching other things?
A pitiful whine bubbles out.
Alright. Okay. One step at a time. Don't think about your skin, scales, whatever it might be, don't move, just...
Breathing. He's breathing. He's smelling things. Charcoal. Dirt. Grass. Water. Stone. Forest. Every scent is identifiable, yet it unfolds into a dozen new facets he never would've imagined, like opening a book he's only ever been able to read the cover of.
He's hearing things. Birds in the trees. Leaves in the wind. Wood creaking. Rock groaning. Insects buzzing. A fish making ripples in the nearby lake. The... village? He can hear the village from here? Distant shouts of people working, so muffled and distorted he wouldn't be able to recognize them if he hadn't grown up with those voices.
Right. Okay. That's... normal.
Yep. Totally normal. Don't think about it too hard.
He dares to peek through his eyelids. He blinks wider and wider, taking in his new sight little by little. Everything is brighter. The colors are more intense. The contrast of light and dark is starker. The image itself is sharper. Little details that he never would've noticed jump out at him, serrations on the blades of grass, minuscule insects, individual strands of the roots hanging down around him.
Hiccup doesn't want to look at himself. The simple movement of his neck is alien, however. He can't ignore it.
He looks down at a pair of thick, meaty paws. He looks back, over his shoulder, at wings splayed out to the sides and a tail that stretches out behind him.
Oh gods. He's a Night Fury.
His shout is just a wordless animal cry. He tries to stand up by reflex and merely topples himself sideways.
Okay, okay, stop! Don't panic!
He rolls himself back onto his belly. His claws are clenched into the scorched earth and he's breathing hard, riding on a knife's edge of adrenaline. He rests there while his heartbeat thunders in his ears.
Slowly now. Piece by piece.
Starting from his nose down to the very tip of his tail(!), Hiccup tries to map every new muscle he has. He squishes and pulls his face around, ears and tongue included. He twists and turns his neck. He pushes his torso off the ground and moves each limb separately, stretching it out, curling it in, rotating it, flexing the claws and digits to their fullest extent.
The worst parts are the ones he never had as a human. The one that's more confusing than discomforting are his gums, which are so thick they cover his teeth completely when he's not actively retracting them. Trying to move his tail is just indescribably bizarre and alien and wrong , but he finds it surprisingly strong, enough to lift his legs off the ground.
The wings start off the same, except he gets caught up in the sheer wonder of biological engineering that they are. The membrane is so thick yet flexible, it doesn't fold so much as it retracts into a smaller surface area. He's handled dragon corpses before, of course, but actually feeling the delicate balance between resilience, flexibility and elasticity, it's something else entirely. He can even lock them, there's some mechanism inside the joints that makes it very easy to keep them open when they're fully stretched out and flat.
They don't stay folded by themselves, though. He has to remember to hold them in. Like holding one's pee.
Okay, that's a weird analogy. Moving on.
Quite literally, in fact. It's time to move around. He awkwardly folds up his wings.
His first steps are tentative, a little unsteady, but he gains confidence quickly. This isn't that different from crawling around on his hands and knees. Weird to have his legs straight under him without putting his butt way higher than his head, but manageable. Walking out of the bare, burnt earth and onto grass also gives him a whole new host of sensations to focus on.
His sense of touch is different through the scales. Muffled. Not weaker, just less detailed. Not all of his senses can be sharper, apparently.
His tail drags behind him. The sheer weight of it keeps catching him off guard. He doesn't mind the addition of the wings nearly as much as that, he can't explain why. His mind just recoils from it. Makes it very easy to ignore.
Hiccup does laps around the scorch mark. On the first, he walks. On the second, he starts to speed up. On the third, he trots. The fourth he doesn't complete because he runs off toward the nearest boulder, but his paws slip on the moss and send him flailing down the gentle slope to the water.
He stops before he hits it, at least, close enough to see his faint reflection.
The green of his eyes is the same. Everything else is...
A Night Fury.
He brings a hand to his face. The reflection raises a paw to its mouth.
He really is a Night Fury.
The Night Fury.