27 The Story Ends as It Began

27. THE STORY ENDS AS IT BEGAN... This story, you see, began with Hiccup being ambushed by his mother, Valhallarama. And that is also how it ends. Nobody can track a Deadly Shadow dragon. Nobody except for… Valhallarama. Nobody can see one, so beautifully camouflaged are they… But Valhallarama, that indomitable breath-holding action woman, flew so high, to such airy pinnacles of thinning cloud, that she was looking down at them, not up, and she saw, not the Deadly Shadow, but the three little humans clinging to the back of nothing. The three friends did not see her coming. The Deadly Shadow's senses were dulled slightly, perhaps by the exhilaration of the moment, and the fact that it was not expecting danger. Deadly Shadows do not expect to be attacked, because something so scary very rarely is. Perhaps Arrogance caught a shining silver streak of movement, screaming just above his eye- level that caused him to stiffen and look up. But it was too late.

Valhallarama and the Silver Phantom, hiding high in a cloud-bank, swooped down in a rocketing silver howl, like a bright avenging Fury, the unstoppable, relentless, screaming hand of Fate. Valhallarama's metal arm reached out and she plucked her son from the back of the camouflaged Deadly Shadow with the casual ease that she had plucked him, two weeks before, from the back of the Windwalker. The Silver Phantom rocketed on towards Darkheart, unstoppable, uncatchable, for in open skies the Silver Phantom was the fastest riding-dragon in the entire world. Guiding the Phantom with her knees alone, she held Hiccup with one hand, and with the other she took the Dragon Jewel on its necklace from around Hiccup's neck, and placed it around her own. Hiccup, swinging from his mother's stern unyielding arm, was as shocked as if he had been dunked suddenly in a tub of ice-cold water. And once he had got over that, he was angry. Oh, by Loki's little lunatic leg-warmers, he was angry. 'What are you DOING?' Hiccup roared up at that unforgiving metal mask looming over him, looking sternly, unwaveringly down at her target of Darkheart.

'I am not a child any more, how dare you treat me like this? 'I mean I don't expect you to be HELPFUL or anything, why would I expect that? You've never BEEN THERE! Years and years of leaving my father and me on our own, YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS! Not always answering my letters… Going away even when I beg you not to… Not listening when I speak…' Purple in the face, kicking out with his legs, Hiccup yelled, 'I've got used to that over the years!

I've had to get used to it! But the one thing I don't expect,' bellowed Hiccup, 'the one thing I don't expect, is for you to actually BETRAY me… Is that really too much to ask?' And there was a great deal more where that came from, for when fourteen years of frustrated fury comes out, it tends to come out in a rush. But Valhallarama did not answer. She carried on, regardless, grim, unyielding. They blasted through the sky in a blinding silver rush of Hiccup's boiling anger and Valhallarama's righteous determination. Nothing was going to stop her. She was taking Hiccup back, back, back to face the music in the Prison of Darkheart.