6 Training (time skip)

Dragon rearing

Over the course of 4 years, that and training was all Delvin did, his days consisted of training eating, and then climbing up the mountain to train and research his dragon.

Once the dragon, or to be more accurate the Seregios had hatched he learned of the species from the book of dragons. The book had both very little and a lot of information on the species.

Seregios are rare dragons known to inhabit very small isolated environments that are not well documented. Seregios are highly developed aerial hunters. fierce and aggressive towards both prey and foes alike. they are known to attempt to overtake the territories of other dragons and assert an apex role over the nearby environment. They are said to be so territorial that they often will patrol their territory and attack any creature in sight

One of their main features is their lustrous gold scales which can swivel individually as it will use them to perform a rattling display when agitated. Large gatherings of scales exist around the neck, mings, and feet and Seregios can fire its quill-like scales at attackers as well as use their powerful feet and talons to slash and grasp prey and foes alike.

The first time Delvin actually encountered this feature of theirs the small Seregios in his keep had been only a few days old and one sneeze had led to him picking razor-sharp scales out of his skin. The scales were diamond in shape and caused the dragon to look kind of like a pinecone when it grew agitated, hence why he had dubbed it the name Snap-pine.

Another interesting feature of the dragon was its blade-like horn that sat on the tip of its snout. It, like the rest of the dragon, was razor sharp and luckily for him broke off during molting so over the past four years the dragon had dropped three, leaving him with two new swords and a dagger, each varying in length to the year it moulted

One important thing of note however was Snap-pines behavior. Snap-pine did not exclude nearly the same personality traits of his species or at least not to the same extremes. While he was noted to portray territorial behavior, attacking any dragon that attempted to enter the cave in which Delvin had raised him, he was almost completely docile to Delvin, which was strange as Seregios are known to even cannibalize their own species in defense of their territory

But Delvin was hardly complaining

Concerning training, Delvin had taken a relatively strict yet gentle approach to training Snap-pine, creating a relationship of mutual respect and benefit, after all, if you kick a dog it may bite. And he did not want to be bitten by a dragon that had teeth sharper than his scales, scales that could pierce through trees like butter

For the first year after Snap-pines birth, Delvin had worked tirelessly to both hide and create an emotional connection with his dragon, keeping him in the same bag he had when he was in an egg which created some issues with training as he often had to fight with said bag on as he had claimed it to be for strengthening his bad leg

Speaking of his leg, while it still limped and was covered head to toe in scars, he no longer was fully reliant on his halberd for support, he could now walk and run with the best of them, although it often started hurting really bad after a few minutes. But he still chose to let others believe he needed it to walk as it gave him an excuse to take his weapon everywhere

He alongside Astrid had grown to be two teenagers that made berk proud, each working tirelessly in the nights as the auxiliary fire department of berk, putting out fires whenever they could alongside the crew of Snotlout, Fishlegs, and the twins

Hiccup? Well sadly he hadn't talked to the group for years, most of them had even forgotten him entirely, although he and Delvin often met up, working on some of his hair-brained contraptions or further perfecting their old design for dragonskin armor, poor guy still had a massive thing for Astrid and was about as desperate to prove himself as a 15-year-old boy could be

Anyway concerning training, during the second and third years after Snap-pines birth, Delvin combined both training and research in his sessions. Taking any time to research a variety of weapon techniques, herbs and methods to see what best worked against dragons, all in ways that didn't hurt Snap-pine

One interesting thing he learned of was dragon nip, a prepubescent form of dragon grass that appeared to render dragons into a docile and catlike state, making them far easier to deal with, this same technique had saved his ass a year ago when he had to deal with a rogue Gronkle, by the time it had regained its wits from the effects of the grass Delvin had been long gone

And it was finally in the 4th year after he had spent two years watching the seregios grow at an alarming rate, from the size of a sheep to a small building in only 3 years he decided to begin more complex and demanding training

Moving on from commands such as "stay" and "sit" to "search" and "fight". Training him at first to hunt wildlife and hunt it and then eventually even moving onto certain dragons, teaching Snap-pine to capture and beat dragons in a fight, something the dragon excelled in due to his predatory nature. Now at a command Delvin could point to a dragon in the sky or a sheep in a field and Snap-pine would bring it to him

As a matter of fact, he didn't actually have to train Snap-pine at all on how to fight dragons in the air as Seregios were simply highly-developed aerial hunters and required no teachings from him

And this was how things remained, by day he trained his body, halberd, and dragon by afternoon and night he helped Astrid with putting out fires

And then one day a boy shot down a Nightfury

[yay we reached cannon! How do you like the novel so far!]