A threatening rumble rose deep within his throat, the
sound an animal makes before it strikes. His head
swivelled round, searching, searching with his eyes, his
nose, his ears… but finding nothing.
Cooee, thought the Witch gloatingly to herself.
Cooooeee… You can’t see us, you stupid great fire-spurting
reptile. And you won’t see us until it is too late.
Even Alvin smiled, beginning to enjoy himself
as they drew nearer, and it was clear that the Dragon
Furious could not sense them.
The Dragon Furious’s eyes scanned the entire
Bay without finding anything. His nostrils wrinkling,
he drank in the smell of burning trees, of wet Vikings,
even the faint but distinct stink of the Murderous
Tribe. But nothing else.
The Dragon’s hearing was so acute that he could
hear the soft beating wings of the Neverbirds, even
though they were flying at a very safe distance indeed,
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and the fast beating heart of Hiccup, trembling at his
feet, and the even faster beating hearts of the little
dragons and of Windwalker. But nothing else.
The Dragon gave a great snort and shook out
his wings as if to shake off his ugly anxieties. There
was nothing to be afraid of. He turned his head back
towards Hiccup to continue their conversation…
And then he gave a great yowl of startled surprise.
Alvin’s hook had buried itself in the Dragon’s
hand, and in the shock of the moment, just as if you
or I had been stung by a wasp or a bee, the Dragon
Furious opened his great paw and shook it in pain.
The Dragon Furious’s hand opened, and out of
his hand fell the Jewel.
DOWN
DOWN
DOWN…
… and Alvin kicked his heels into the Stealth
Dragon’s flanks and the Stealth Dragon dived after it.
Hiccup ran across the Reef, barely noticing
the sting of the rocks beneath his feet, slipping and
sliding on patches of slimy seaweed. He saw it all, for
the Stealth Dragon turned visible for a second in his
excitement as he dived, and while the Jewel itself was
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too small for Hiccup to see, what he could see was the
Stealth Dragon diving after something, and Alvin and
the Witch crouching on the Stealth Dragon’s back.
Out on the clifftops, Luna saw it too, with her
sharp dragon eyesight, and she beat her wings in
anxiety.
Valhallarama, watching through the telescope,
asked uncertainly, ‘What’s going on?’
Alvin! thought Hiccup. Alvin and the Witch!
Those traitors… those villains.
Furious has dropped the Jewel! They have made him
drop the Jewel!
And then there was another moment in which the
Stealth Dragon’s excitement briefly turned him visible
again. The Jewel was too small to see, but Hiccup
clearly recognised the moment that a dragon takes their
prey. The Stealth Dragon’s mouth opened, he caught
something in it and soared upwards, Alvin punching
the air in triumph. It was a momentary vision, before
the Stealth Dragon turned invisible again.
The Dragon Furious saw it too, and gave a snort
of fear and fury.
‘NOOOOOOO!’ cried Hiccup in despair, falling
flat on his face in the seaweed. It was so cold beneath
his knees, so cold on his cheek, as he grovelled there,
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helplessly caught up in the slime, and then he looked
up at the uncaring heavens above, where you could still
hear the echoes of Alvin’s triumphant whooping.
‘Noooo…’ whispered the Wodensfang. How could
Fate be so cruel?
Alvin had the Jewel. And he knew what he had to
do with it.
At the very last moment, Alvin the Treacherous
had snatched away the beginnings of hope and turned
it into despair.
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23. TOTAL WAR
‘DRAGON REBELLION DRAGONS!’ trumpeted
the Dragon Furious, all his indecision gone, and
incandescent with rage, shooting thunderbolts and
flames in random directions, hoping to hit his invisible
assailant. ‘BETRAYAL! TREACHERY AND
BETRAYAL! The humans have broken the rules of
single combat! COME TO MY AID!’
All along the clifftops, with screams of fury, the
great and terrible army of Dragon Rebellion dragons,
like many clouds of locusts, launched themselves into
the air and flew into the Bay, or swam up from the
depths, their predatory fins slicing through the water,
spouting fire from their blow-holes as they made their
way to the battle.
Dreamserpents, Flame-huffers, Fire-starters,
Riproarers, Grimlers and Monstrous Nightmares,
Raptortongues and Triple-Headed Rageblasts, Horrors
and Dreaders and Breathquenchers joined the dreadful
invasion that blasted into the Bay.
Rhinobacks lumbered into the air like gigantic
armoured rhinoceroses. Driller-Dragons with their
revolving horns, Razorwings shooting their dreadful
barbed arrows, Tongue-twisters, Savagers, and
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Brainpickers spreading their terrible wings and flying
like nightmares towards the Reef. From the snowy
north came white Polarserpents with their horns
like unicorns, Sabre-Tooth Driver Dragons and
Leviathorgans, launching their bone spears, venturing
south for this occasion only.
Worst of all, there came the horrors from the
greatest depths of the oceans: Sharkworms cutting
through the water with their serrated fins, braving the
cold waters despite the lack of the Summer Current.
Darkbreathers who live so long in the darkness
that their hearts have slowed to a terrible coldness and
they have a longing for the light. Thor’s Thunderers
sending out crackling bursts of electricity, churning up
the waters so that great rolling waves spread across the
Bay and threatened to swamp the Reef.
The dreadful bulk of the multi-eyed Woden’s
Nightmares, nearly as huge as the Dragon Furious
himself, lighting up the sky with their eyebeams, and
pouring out a strange, black substance across the
waters, that they then set fire to, so that the whole of
Wrecker’s Bay turned into a sea of flame.
‘The dragons are breaking the truce!’ yelled
Stoick the Vast. ‘Quick, everyone, get on dragonback to
fight them! My son is out there, all alone!’
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The Vikings rushed for their dragons.
They too, made a dreadful and frightening army
of surprising numbers, seated on dragonback and
screaming defiance, and shooting their arrows, and
yelling their chilling War Cries as they rode into battle.
For many fierce dragons had joined the human
side during the War: the intelligent dragons out of
loyalty to their human Masters, the less clever ones out
of fear or obedience.
Gronckles
, Marsh and Red Tigers, Bullroughers,
Rocket Rippers, Devilish Dervishes, Deadly Nadders,
Common-or-Gardens and Basic Browns, Gloomers,
Two-Headed Gormatrons, the dreadful armoured
Eight-Legged Battlegores that could carry up to ten
Vikings at a time, Bullguard Slavedragons, all carrying
their human masters into battle, or flying by their side,
shooting flames at the enemy.
Stoick on his Bullrougher, and Valhallarama on
her Silver Phantom, Mogadon the Meathead and all
the other Dragonmarker Tribes of the Archipelago;
the Alvinsmen, led in Alvin’s absence by Madguts the
Murderous; the Villains, Hysterics, the Bashem-Oiks,
the Visithugs, Danger-Brutes, the Berserks and the
Uglithugs. Barbara the Barbarian on her Lightwing, her
cat balancing on the dragon’s head.
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Then the humans from further afield: the
Wanderers, the Outcasts, the Nowhere-Men, not to
mention Humungously Hotshot the Hero and his wife
Tantrum the Hero and the Ten Fiancés.
The humans had their own terrible weapons.
Axes, spears, arrows, swords – of course, they had
all these.
But when Alvin and his Alvinsmen had been
besieged every night by the Dragon Rebellion in Prison
Darkheart, that great Fortress in the Amber Slavelands,
they had been forced to develop new and terrible
weapons in order to defend themselves.
From the cliffs of Lava-Lout Island, great
catapults shot rocks at the advancing Dragon Rebellion
army, and strange heavy balls that exploded on impact
and caused terrible injuries.
Even mighty Rageblasts, or Savagers, or
Brainpickers, when hit by those cannonballs, fell
shrieking from the sky.
Such is the destructiveness of the clever human
mind when it turns to invention.
‘I SAW THE FUTURE!’ roared the Dragon
Furious. ‘IF WE DID NOT DESTROY THE
HUMANS, IT WOULD BE TOO LATE! AND
LOOK, IT IS TOO LATE!’
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‘No!’ shouted Hiccup. ‘The Final Battle. The
ultimate confrontation… I saw it in my dream, back
when I was hidden in the underground hideout… This
is everything I hoped would not happen.’
He crawled forward, desperately trying to get to
his feet, with Toothless holding on to him, holding him
tight, just like he used to sleep with him a lifetime ago
in their little bed on Berk, Hiccup feeling his lovely
wriggly warmth for what he hoped would not be the
last time.
Oh please, begged Hiccup. Please let this not be the
end of dragons…
I do not want a world without Toothless…
I do not want a world where I am wingless, crawling
in the mud like this, rather than touching the stars on the
back of the Windwalker…
Up above, it was as if the heavens knew the
significance of this moment. The thunderclouds had
gathered, and it was hard to tell whether the lightning
blasts shooting across the sky were thunderbolts from
the storm, or the Dragon Furious, or the Woden’s
Nightmare dragons, or the Thor’s Thunderers.
‘Giveitmegiveitmegiveitme!’ giggled Alvin,
forgetting his safety in his excitement, and wriggling
along the Stealth Dragon’s neck, gleefully stretching
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out his hand.
The Stealth Dragon, very proud of itself, turned
his head, and gave the Dragon Jewel to Alvin.
‘The Jewel…’ sighed Alvin contentedly. ‘The
real Dragon Jewel, in my hand at last!’ Alvin smiled a
slow and very nasty smile indeed. ‘And now I know its
secret. All I need to do is break it, and the dragons are
destroyed forever!’
‘Oh well done, my darling!’ cooed the Witch. ‘I
told you we could do this.’
And then…
‘Uh-oh…’ as she saw the advancing dragon army
almost upon them. If one of those flames or bolts of
electricity were to accidentally hit the Stealth Dragon,
he might be shocked into visibility.
‘Quick!’ the Witch urged. ‘You need to break the
Jewel!’
Alvin bashed the Jewel against the spiny fin of
the Stealth Dragon’s back. Nothing happened, for the
fin wasn’t really hard enough to break anything. He
bashed it a little harder. Again nothing happened.
‘Break! Break! Break! You stupid thing!’ hissed
Alvin, walloping it as hard as he could, but the Jewel
remained obstinately unchipped.
‘Break it Alvin, break it!’ screeched the Witch,
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biting Alvin on the shoulder. ‘Why are you hesitating?”
‘It’s harder to break than it looks, you old bat!’
snapped Alvin furiously.
Alvin held the Jewel firmly in one hand, and tried
to rip at it with the hook at the end of his other arm,
but the Stealth Dragon swerved abruptly, jiggling his
arm, so Alvin missed the Jewel entirely, and dug the
hook into his own palm instead.
‘Ow!’ howled Alvin.
Trying to smash a Jewel while you are sitting
on the back of a Stealth Dragon that is travelling at
considerable speed and swivelling to evade random
lightning bolts is a harder proposition than you might
think.
If you’ve ever attempted to open an oyster with?
your bare hands while riding sidesaddle on a galloping
horse that is being chased by wolves, you might have
some idea of what I mean.
‘Curses!’ swore Alvin. ‘What I need is a
nutcracker!’ But of course he didn’t have a nutcracker
on him, so that wasn’t very helpful.
He put the Jewel in his jaws and tried to clamp
down on it, but only succeeded in breaking a tooth.
‘Oh for Thor’s sake,’ cursed Alvin. ‘This is
ridiculous.’
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He was running out of time. He would have to
break this beastly Jewel somehow, and fast. It needed
to be smashed between two hard objects, and all he
could think of now was the ground, and his boot. That
would do it. He’d smashed mussels like that all his life.
‘Stealth Dragon! I want you to land on the rocky
end of that Reef, as far away from the Hiccup boy as
possible!’ ordered Alvin.
Obediently, the beautiful dragon landed elegantly
on the Reef. Alvin jumped off the Stealth Dragon’s
back while the Witch stayed crouching in between his
spine fins, clutching the Stormblade.
With trembling excited fingers, Alvin placed the
Dragon Jewel down on the rock.
He raised his boot.
Hiccup saw him.
Saw the outline of his wicked figure, framed
against the flaming sea.
But he was too far away for Hiccup to catch and
stop him, slipping and sliding on the seaweed, though
he was running with all his might.
‘Furious!’ cried Hiccup despairingly.
Furious could have intervened.
But Hiccup�
�s voice was so small and thin, and the
human forces and the dragon forces had now joined in
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bloody
terrible
battle in the
air above the Reef.
The Dragon Furious, way
up above, was being attacked
by the humans, and although he was
searching desperately through the smoke
and the lightning bolts for the Stealth Dragon
and the Jewel, he could not hear the tiny sound of
Hiccup’s voice calling up to him.
‘TREACHERY AND BETRAYAL!’ snorted the
Dragon Furious. ‘TREACHERY AND BETRAYAL!’
Alvin brought down his boot in a swift
stamping motion.
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24. DID I MENTION THAT
THE PAST HAS A WAY OF
CATCHING UP WITH US
EVENTUALLY?
But before Alvin’s boot could land, he was knocked
violently sideways, as if he were being booted himself
by the boot of Destiny.
Hiccup blinked, unable to believe what was
happening.
But there it was, clearly, in front of his eyes. One
second Alvin was bringing down his foot on the Jewel;
the next he was soaring through the air, and landing
on the rock some twenty feet away with an ‘Oof!’ of
infuriated surprise, and remaining pinned there by an
invisible force.
Hiccup watched, open-mouthed, as the air
above Alvin solidified into the Deadly Shadow pinning
down Alvin with its two front feet, and Camicazi and
Fishlegs sitting astride him – Camicazi making the
Bog-Burglar victory salute.
Back on the clifftop, Camicazi’s sharp
Bog-Burglar eyes had seen the Witch and Alvin
sneaking away on the back of the Stealth Dragon, and
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so she and Fishlegs had followed them on the back of
the Deadly Shadow.
One invisible dragon following another.
And the past had at last caught up with Alvin
the Treacherous, as the past eventually has a way of
catching up with all of us.
Fishlegs, on the back of the Deadly Shadow
dragon, wanted some answers.
‘The Jewel… maybe the Jewel is all right… I
How to Train Your Dragon: How to Fight a Dragon's Fury Page 20
