the weeks fly by

Over the ensuing weeks, life got better for basically everyone except Astrid

Hiccup had begun using his knowledge as it accumulated, rising quikly to a level of success in the arena that match Delvins own record, except he was becoming far more famous due to him going from being the clumsy disaster to a skilled dragon fighter, taking out dragons in the ring so fast that poor Astrid had found herself unable to catch up, despite her complete physical supremacy

She had been training herself ragged, constantly dragging Delvin into the woods and training grounds to spar and train, creating targets and training dummies only to later decimate them. She stayed up day and night, swinging and throwing her axe, forcing Delvin to kick her ass in the ring until she could fight him equally. Under normall circumstances, the rate of his cousin's growth in both skill and fighting ability would make her a prize of the village, second only to himself who exceed her in that skill set

And normally Astrid would accept that, using her inferiority as a fuel source to push herself forward and rival Delvin happily. But Hiccup, oh the poor girl couldnt stand the idea of being worse than the same boy who had almost died in the arena more times than she could count

In her own words "it's unnatural how much better he's getting". Which was entirely true, Hiccup was constantly learning new methods of placating dragons thanks to his time with toothless, the same tactic Delvin had used to rise where he was now.

Except, the difference between them was that Delvin had killed a dragon at 10 years old and Hiccup had nearly killed 10 Vikings through just accidents caused when he was trying to kill dragons, this year alone.

Delvin had actually been forced to slip sleeping herbs into Astrid's dinner at night just so she would actually sleep and not train all night. Her mother Aasa had actually agreed with him on this, knowing that her daughter would get nowhere if she kept growing at the rate she was

Delvin had been tempted at multiple points to just show her toothless so that she could stop being so hard on herself but he had promised hiccups to keep his mouth shut if he raised village morale and hiccup had kept his end of the bargain

Speaking of the boy, Hiccup had recently enlisted his help for a new project, just like the old days. Except this idea was far more insane than the idea of dragon-scale armor

They were building a saddle for toothless!

The crazy bastard had already created a prosthetic tailpiece for toothless by the time he came to Delvin, requiring assistance in creating and designing the saddle in secret. It required a pulley system within it that allowed for the prosthetic tail to be pulled in multiple directions to allow for flight and while hiccup was fully capable of creating it on his own delvins help was certainly useful

They started off with a continuous process of controlled flights, staying within a few feet of the ground and using the wind to lift off, adding and altering the design as they failed and succeeded.

They started off with a simple pull system that hiccup moved with a rope attached to his wrist and eventually evolved the saddle into a fully synchronized gear system, equipped with multiple safety devices

There had been a few hiccups along the way of course (get it!) such as when a hiccup had ended fastened to toothless by one of the safety ropes in a failed controlled flight, resulting in a point where they had to sneak into gobbers forge at night without anyone noticing the large dragon with them

Thank the gods that toothless had begun to trust Delvin at this point because he really didn't want to have to deal with an angry dragon in the enclosed forge.

There had also been a few incidents where Astrid had spotted Hiccup during one of their many training sessions in the woods but thankfully she never kept sight of him for long, thanks to either the boy's gift at hiding or Delvin's intervention

On a side note, Stoik and the other Vikings had returned from their hunt for the nest, unsuccessful as expected but on a happy note, Delvin's scheme had worked and people were too busy celebrating the change of hiccup to think about how they needed to keep worrying about dragons and lost ships

Stoick and hiccup had even gotten closer through bonding over their dragon-catching methods with hiccup who, at Delvin's insistence, talked to his father about all the new tricks he had learned while his father was gone. Stoick particularly liked the "discovery" of dragons' fear of eels, using them to keep the dragons from the main food storages

However, the main event that had occurred over the past few weeks was Hiccup and toothless's first proper flight. They had set off one of the cliffs, with no restraints and no supervisors other than Delvin. And while Delvin did have Snap-pine, hiding in the shadows, prepared to pounce in the event of an accident, Hiccup didn't know that

The flight had gone remarkable well aside from an early issue where hiccup fell off toothless at maximum altitude and then plunged down for a few hundred feet in free fall, which was not fun for Delvin who had to watch, prepared at a moment's notice to send in Snap-pine

But thankfully it worked out and nobody died, by the end, the three of them had sat at a cliff eating some fish and keeping an eye on the terrible terrors that tried to snatch their food, although one did bond with hiccup causing the boy to look lost as he remarked that "everything we know about dragons… is wrong"

Delvin wasn't sure if he agreed or not, so instead of thinking too hard he focused on another though

He needed a saddle for Snap-pine