"Who is planning the rebellion?" Magnus shouted, his grip on the mace tightening.

Hiccup ground his teeth together, turning away from the jailer as much as he could. The idea of telling Magnus he didn't know—a lie, if you recall Astrid first telling him that her father was thinking about rebelling—came too late. The only answer Magnus would take now was a name. And it couldn't be a made-up name, either. Magnus knew every single person in Berk by name, face, address, favorite color, etc.. Hiccup's only options were to either tell the truth—which really wasn't an option—or die, which was quickly becoming a very likely possibility. Frankly, Hiccup didn't want anything to do with either, but if there was no good choice, best to pick the lesser of two evils, right?

Now if only he could just get there. . . .

Magnus slammed the mace into Hiccup's body again, forcing out a cry of pain. "You answer me when I talk to you, boy. Who's planning the rebellion? When is it going to happen?"

That was something Hiccup truly didn't know. Last he'd heard about it, Gobber had told him the villagers had everything settled except for the when of the whole thing.

Magnus' hand gripped his throat, lifting him off the ground. Hiccup tried to scream, but his lungs were stuck in neutral, unable to either pull in air or push it out. The jailer's glare seared into him, burning with an almost demonic ferocity that Hiccup had never seen before. "I still remember you talking to Miss Hofferson that morning. It would seem strange if she told you what was getting ready to happen and she wasn't involved somehow. Perhaps, since you're being so stubborn, I should go back to Berk and ask her."

Hiccup's heart stopped. He thought Astrid was safe, that the potential wrath of her clan would be enough to keep Magnus at bay! But as he stared into the jailer's glittering eyes, he realized that even if he didn't break, Magnus would return to Berk and go after Astrid, torture her if he had the chance. And then, once he was done with her, the rest of Berk was next.

"You can't kill off the entire village," Hiccup said. "Even an acting-chief needs people to lead."

Magnus' face contorted with rage and he dropped his prisoner, swung the mace again, landing squarely on Hiccup's injured shoulder. Two screams split the air, one in pain, the other in fury. Magnus hefted the mace at least five more times before pausing and picking him back up in another valiant effort to strangle him. "I am the chief of Berk! I am, you hear me?!"

Hiccup's ears were ringing and his head throbbed; he barely heard what the jailer was saying. He shook his head, more in an effort to relieve the pressure on his throat than disagree with Magnus.

Unfortunately, Magnus took it the wrong way. His eyes narrowed and he tightened his grip. Hiccup choked but kept going. "My father never gave you the throne. You've never been chief." The raspy croak his voice had become terrified him.

"Your father is dead and gone, you worm!" Magnus bellowed in rage. "I AM THE CHIEF!" With that, he let his prisoner fall, then swung the mace once more, delivering a solid blow to the chest. Hiccup screamed, a long, lost, piercing sound. He tried to roll away, but he felt something shift inside—broken collarbone, most likely—and the pain doubled upon itself, leaving him stunned and paralyzed. He shut his eyes, his overwhelmed brain thinking that maybe if he played dead, or at least close to it, Magnus would leave him alone.

This was not the case.

Letting out one more roar of pure, unparalleled wrath, Magnus picked him up and threw him across the clearing, just missing the campfire. The jailer stalked over and threw him again. His head slammed into a tree trunk and as he hit the ground, the world spun and tilted in alarming ways. A strange black hole opened up on the ground near him, as black as the skin of the Night Fury who had saved him. He stared into it, watching the hole widen, edging constantly toward him. His brain couldn't process fear anymore; he already had enough to deal with with Magnus.

As the hole ate up the ground he was on, he felt extremely lightheaded. He had just enough presence of mind to wonder why Magnus kept beating him up, paying no attention to the mysterious void in the grass. Then the hole swallowed him up and he remembered nothing more.

***

Twig flew back to the herd as fast as she could, hoping to get there and back to the clearing before the boy died. It occurred to her that she did not even know the boy, nor did she have any proof that the man attacking him truly was Magnus the Destroyer. But dragons are smart creatures, born with an innate sense of honor, an instinctive drive to defend what they think is right, and Twig felt that even though she didn't have very much to go on, this was something she had to do.

She flapped her wings, pushing herself up and over the treetops to make flying easier. She had to conserve her energy if she wanted to get back in time. Panting, she angled herself downward into the meadow where the herd resided, and toward the tall rock spire that the Alpha used as a perch. She crash landed in front of the spire, immediately crouching down in submission. She could not see the Alpha, but she knew he was there. "Lord Alpha, I bring urgent news. I must speak to you."

"Please report," said the Alpha's voice somewhere above her, as most voices were.

Twig took a deep breath—she could feel the stares of the other dragons and how they were already starting to lean in, ears straining to catch the news—and presented her case. "I have seen two humans in the woods just a few minutes ago. They docked their ship on the southern coast and headed inland. About a mile in, they stopped. The smaller one was tied to a tree, and he seemed to be injured. The larger one began questioning him about a rebellion or some such human problem. The boy did not answer, and the man began to beat him with a mace. It got to the point where I feared for the boy's life."

"He could already be dead," suggested an old Timberjack with numerous claw marks on his snout.

"Silence!" the Alpha growled, immediately shushing him. "Twig, continue."

Twig curled her tail nervously. This was the tricky part. "Lord Alpha, I could not be sure, but I have reason to believe that the man attacking the boy was none other than Magnus the Destroyer."

The meadow exploded with deafening roars of fury from all sides. Most of the dragons here had all suffered Magnus' wrath in one way or another, and the thought that he might be on their island now was almost too much to bear.

Twig heard a snarl and a wave of heat come from the spire and chanced a look up. The Alpha stood tall and proud on his perch, his ebony black wings spread wide and his head thrown back, shooting a burst of blue-white flame into the charged night air. The herd quieted down at the display.

The Alpha returned his gaze to Twig, and she tensed when she saw the slight coldness in his piercing green eyes. Now that Magnus was involved, things were deadly serious. "What do your instincts tell you, Twig?"

That was easy. "Lord Alpha, my desire would be to rescue the boy, perhaps have him stay here with us until we can find a home for him."

"Begging your pardon, Alpha, but no human has ever known of our existence here," said a deep red Deadly Nadder covered head to tail in wicked battle scars. "This is our sanctuary. Even if the boy survives Magnus, if we take him in, he can no longer return to the humans. He must either live the rest of his life with us or he must die."

The Alpha sighed, then nodded. "Agreed. Find two other trackers and as many fighters as you deem necessary."

The Nadder dipped her head once and hurried away. Hardly a minute later, she came back with another Nadder, a Rumblehorn, two Monstrous Nightmares, a Zippleback, a Skrill, and the old Timberjack who had spoken up earlier. The battle-scarred Nadder looked at her entourage and then at the Alpha. "We're ready, sir."

***

When Hiccup finally regained consciousness, the first thing he was aware of was that everything hurt. Especially his chest. Groggily, he opened his eyes and discovered one of the reasons why he was having difficulty breathing.

There was a dragon sitting on him.

He meant to cry out, but all he managed was a gasp. His vision was blurry, probably due to the pain, and he felt paralyzed, even though he knew he wasn't. The dragon, about the size of a cat, and clearly noticing that he was awake, sprang up in some sort of strangely adorable popcorn motion and landed by his head, still shockingly close. Was this dragon even wild? Why wasn't it keeping its distance?

The dragon—a Terrible Terror, he realized, now able to identify the breed—cocked its head and made a high-pitched sound in the back of its throat. At first, Hiccup thought it was about to breathe fire, but the name of the sound registered in his mind. Purring. The dragon was happy.

As Hiccup struggled to wrap his mind around this, the Terror turned its head to look behind him and squawked, as if to encourage something else to appear. Sure enough, the next thing to enter his field of vision was the beaked muzzle of a Nadder. It tilted its head at him, scrutinizing him with one sharp eye, then lowering its head to investigate something on his boots. Unlike the Terror, this dragon made no sounds that seemed indicative of a good mood, or any mood at all, for that matter. But it wasn't trying to eat him, and that was a good thing, right?

While the Nadder sniffed at his feet, the Terror squeaked at him, pawing at his good shoulder, and he turned his head. The itchy grass tickled the back of his neck and he wanted to scratch at it, but he couldn't find the energy. The Terror cooed and ducked its head in a shoveling motion once, twice, three times. Up, up, get up, it seemed to be saying.

Drawing in a deep breath, Hiccup slid his hands behind him in an effort to push himself up—and ended up shrieking in pain as both of his hands exploded in protest at the exact same time, his body ending up right back where it started. The dragons jumped, but they didn't retreat.

Wincing, Hiccup lifted his hands to inspect them, and then groaned as his list of injuries lengthened. Rope burn. Rope burn everywhere. On his fingers, his palms, the backs of his hands, his wrists. He remembered Magnus yanking him off of the tree, but he hadn't thought it was that bad because he hadn't felt anything. Now, of course, it definitely was that bad, and he wasn't going to be forgetting it any time soon. Some of the burn marks had gotten in between his fingers, adding dexterity to his problems, as if he didn't have enough.

Both the Nadder and the Terror sniffed his hands, but neither seemed to have a solution. An official one, at least. The Terror tried to help by licking them, but all that did was make his hands slimy and stinging.

The Nadder drew its head back sharply, hissing, wings up and spiked tail lashing back and forth. Hiccup didn't understand what had offended it . . . until the wind blew upwind of him and he smelled the faintest trace of Magnus' scent. Involuntarily, he started to tremble. It was like Magnus was standing right there, breathing down his neck again. He could almost hear the clinking of chains in the basement, the whip cracking over his head, pain flooding through his body, relief and safety being nothing more than childish fantasies—

A dragon's roar saved him from delving too deeply into his darker memories. His mind snapped back to the present, and he realized that the Nadder had reacted to Magnus' scent, as well.

But in a completely different way.

Besides getting rescued by the Night Fury, Hiccup couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a dragon, let alone an angry one. But he didn't need experience to know that that was what he was looking at right now. The Nadder's eyes were filled with rage, its teeth were bared, and fire glowed in the back of its throat. The poisonous spikes on its tail stood erect, its wings spread to their full width. It was absolutely terrifying.

Just as the Nadder leapt to attack him, ignoring the Terror's squeaks of protest, another cry halted it in its tracks. Still brandishing its tail warningly, the Nadder twisted its head around to look at what had distracted it, and yet another dragon stepped into the scene.

A Night Fury.

Carrying itself with a natural, regal bearing that rivaled even the most famous of kings, the black dragon stepped up to the Nadder and looked it right in the eye, as if to say, Now see here, that's no way to treat dinner. The Nadder held the gaze for a moment, then broke eye contact, lowering all its defenses, and backed away from Hiccup. The Terror, still parked firmly by Hiccup's side, had its head down and tiny wings spread out over the ground.

Propping himself up on his elbows, Hiccup looked around and saw that there were other dragons here, as well. Their eyes watched the Night Fury as it approached Hiccup, who was so surprised by the boldness of these dragons that he fell back once again. He wondered, for a moment, if this was the dragon that had saved him from the lion—but that was impossible. It was dead. Magnus killed it himself.

The Night Fury slowly circled him, nosing his knee, his ribs, his hair. It was almost like these dragons saw more of the world through their noses than their eyes.

A particularly rough bump against his bad shoulder, whether it was intended that way or not, made Hiccup cry out in pain, his hand flying to protect the injury, but since he couldn't reach it there was little point. The storm dragon jumped back with a startled snort but came back a second later. It was so close Hiccup could feel its warm breath on the harpoon wound, a strange but not unwelcome sensation. Surely it could smell the blood. But there was nothing predatory about its movements.

Out of nowhere, the dragon's tongue tackled the back of his shoulder, sliding upwards. Hiccup craned his neck to try to see what the dragon was doing—and found it staring at him intensely. Those green, fire-filled eyes captivated him, burned clear through his soul, with an expression to match that firmly stated the obvious. Stop running head first into trouble!

And then Hiccup realized that he hadn't thought up those words on his own, he had actually heard them! They were not figments of his imagination. They were as real as the star-riddled skies above.

The dragon spoke.