16 The Doomfang

16. THE DOOMFANG A great jagged split appeared in the white frozen sea, a split that ran all the way from the Outcast Lands to the north, down to the Bog-Burglar islands in the south. The world broke open like a big white egg. 'Aaaaaargh!' screamed Hiccup. 'Quick! Get into The Hopeful Puffin!' Norbert the Nutjob, Camicazi and Hiccup bolted out of the sleigh, and leapt into the little boat, the ice giving way beneath their feet. 'LET DOWN THE SAIL!' screamed Hiccup, cutting the rope tying the boat to the sleigh. The sail flopped down and the wind caught it, sending it billowing outward like a plump cushion. There was another enormous CRACK! and the ice in the Sullen Sea splintered into millions of tiny pieces. The sleigh slipped gently into the grey-green water and was seen no more, and The Hopeful Puffin was afloat.

Through the jagged jigsaw of ice, between them and the Isle of Berk on the horizon, up rose the Doomfang. It reared out of the sea, showering The Hopeful Puffin with water and shards of ice, telescoping upwards to its immense height, which was impossibly, RIDICULOUSLY high, blotting out the newly risen sun. The SOUND it made was unutterably awful, a sadness so extreme it made you want to weep yourself, a sound that crept up the spine like spiders' feet, and scuttled over the scalp, sending each individual hair on Hiccup's head prickling upwards like the spines on a hedgehog. It was the glossy black of a gigantic, muscly panther, and when it opened its awful Cavern jaws to roar, its serrated teeth were as green as its eyes, and the yellow frothy scum of its saliva steamed and smoked in the cold morning air.

Indeed, its whole body seemed boiling hot, and like the flanks of a horse that has galloped for miles, great clouds of smoke rose up from its tremendous gleaming bulk and into the sky. 'It's come for me…' moaned Norbert the Nutjob, in a tremble of fear. 'No it hasn't,' said Hiccup. 'It's come for ME.' And the Doomfang did seem to be looking directly down at Hiccup. It was as if Hiccup had always known that this was going to happen, that somehow he was never going to get in and out of Hysteria without meeting the Doomfang face to face. 'Don't look into its eyes,' warned One Eye. You should never look into a dragon's eyes. But in this case it was difficult not to– they were so large and so close, like a couple of green suns. Hiccup was hypnotised for a moment, and his head spun so that he nearly lost his balance and dropped off the boat. 'What do you WANT?' Hiccup yelled desperately in Dragonese. The Dragon opened its great mouth and tried to speak. But all that came out was a terrible unearthly howl of horror and SADNESS, and the foam dripped from its jaws in a revolting bubbly waterfall. It tried

again, and the terrible sound came out again, only louder. 'What is it?' asked Hiccup. But the creature could not say, and its struggle to speak made it angry, and it began shooting out with its blue flames, nearer and nearer to Hiccup. 'What does it want me to do?' asked Hiccup frantically. 'We're done for,' despaired Norbert, wringing his hands. Camicazi patted the moaning Norbert soothingly on the back. 'We'll be all right,' she repeated over and over again, 'we always are, Thor only knows how… Hiccup'll have a Cunning Plan…' 'Oh that's right,' remembered Norbert. 'Of course! My father's Prophecy! He is the Chosen One, and he alone can rid us of the Doomfang!' But for once in his life, Hiccup did NOT have a Cunning Plan. 'What do you want?' asked Hiccup again, more to himself, this time. The Doomfang made one last terrible attempt to communicate, coming out with a truly dreadful, garbled cacophony of noise, and then opened its jaws wide, sucking in its breath. Hiccup did not know what they had done for the

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creature to have it in for them. Perhaps it had gone crazy and turned into a Man- Eater? It had certainly killed Norbert's Papa, fifteen years ago, and was it now going to kill them too? Because now it was aiming directly for them, and Hiccup braced himself for the Monster to breathe out its flames and set the boat alight like a little barbecue. But what shot out of the creature's mouth was not a Terrible Burst of Fire, not the frozen flames that would have sent all three of them, and Toothless too, straight to Valhalla in a heroic bonfire. Curling and unfurling, quick and flexible as a gigantic muscly snake, out of the Doomfang's mouth came the Doomfang's TONGUE. One hundred metres long, pink and pulsing, the Doomfang's TONGUE sped straight to Hiccup's left hand, and the wriggling, squirming, revoltingly WET forked end of it burrowed its way into his palm and wrapped itself round the potato.