HTTYD Misplaced - Chapter 5

"So very clever of you, little kitten," a terrifyingly familiar voice sliced through Hiccup's dreamless sleep, pressing black despair onto him from all sides. "So very, very clever. Did you think you were safe?" The darkness slid around the edges of a looming shadow as it passed through the lucid fringes of his mind. "Did you think I would not find you?"
Hiccup scrabbled away from the foreboding shadow. "What are you talking about?" He demanded, struggling to prevent himself from falling into hysterics at the phantom's feet.
"You find my return shocking, do you?" The spectre attempted none of its favoured emotional torment, instead acting straight-faced and officious. It chuckled; "Please, the gap between worlds is hardly a step I cannot take. Still, I am curious," it began pacing around the trembling Viking, spitting words with disgust, "why do you abandon your family, your home, to try and escape me further?"
"I didn't-" Hiccup began at a half-shout, but cried out in alarm as black chains of barbs burst from the stony floor of the dark wrapped cell and subjugated him, strangling him, the spike cutting deep into his arms and throat. He was dragged down to his knees, and black wings of heavy darkness swept around him.
"You're weak, kitten!" the phantom screamed, "You run from your friends because you do not trust them, yet you cling to them because you have no strength! You're pathetic," it finished, and struck him across the face, scarlet drops falling from the gashes through his cheek left by talons of black.
He gathered his thoughts. "What do you mean, 'the gap between worlds'?" he shouted through his slashed throat, blood pouring down his bare and scrawny chest.
The phantom chuckled again. "So that is why you cannot trust them. They're keeping a secret from you. They don't want you to know where you are." The chuckle turned to open, malicious laughter. "You haven't a clue what the one with the oversized sword is planning, do you?" A chorus of psychotic merriment, crashing into Hiccup through the black chains and dark walls, taunting him, ridiculing him, joined the shadow's solitary laugh, and then it all stopped. "Do you?" The phantom repeated accusingly.
"I…" Hiccup began, but stumbled.
"Humph," the phantom huffed, "I thought not. He hasn't seen fit to tell you, to include you in his little plan, to inform you of the danger you are in. It will be your downfall and his own."
The phantom bent down to his face. "Just how much danger do you think you are in, kitten?" it asked in its usual mixture of disappointment and sarcasm. Hiccup didn't get to answer the rhetorical question, as an axe blade of black metal and despair fell down through his head.

Hiccup shot upright, gasping for breath, drenched in cold sweat. The sheet he had been lying on was soaked, as was the seat of the chair on which he sat. White pain flared in his forehead where the phantasmal axe had struck him. Ignoring it, he stole a glance at the occupant of the bed he was sat next to.
Astrid was still unconscious, and had been for the past two days. Hiccup hadn't left her side all the while, and had only recently fallen asleep himself as exhaustion won out over worry – not something he'd be letting it do again anytime soon. He leaned in closer to her, slowing his ragged gasping to match her gentle breaths. Eventually he calmed down, leaned back in his chair, and thought things through.
Grumahn had followed them. He had to tell someone, other than Toothless and Astrid, when she awoke; Grumahn's plans seemed to involve them, too. His immediate thought was Farenheit, but he doubled back on that idea: Farenheit hadn't seemed at all concerned by Astrid's unconscious condition, and had otherwise made Hiccup feel like he wasn't entirely welcome. Avoiding him, ignoring him, and worst of all, keeping him separate from Toothless. No, he couldn't tell Farenheit, especially since he was "too busy trying to organise his troops right now." To do what? All they'd seemingly done in the past three days was sit around waiting.
Someone else, then, someone he knew he could trust. That ninja guy? Dodgy, he'd attacked Grumahn whilst Hiccup was dreaming once, but he seemed too unpredictable, plus no one except Farenheit seemed to ever get a good look at him – he enjoyed hiding, and there was probably a reason for that.
The dragon lady? No, she might have meant well, but Hiccup still hadn't completely forgiven her for putting Astrid into a coma. Plus he found her a little creepy.
Marcia? Maybe, she seemed nice, but a little too… dangerous, and it was almost as if she wasn't telling him something whenever they had talked.
The guy with the chains? Definitely not, from what Hiccup had seen the man was a bloodthirsty monster, obsessed with violence.
Ayala? Ayala had rescued him when he was kidnapped, and stopped his father from punishing Astrid and Toothless from leaving the village, but she rarely left Farenheit's side. Anything Hiccup told her, Farenheit would undoubtedly hear about.
Why was that a bad thing? Farenheit might be a little flawed, but he wasn't about to betray them just because Grumahn had followed. Having him know would, if nothing else, help Hiccup feel a little safer.
If Farenheit believed him.
Because from what few things Syuzanna had said on the matter around him over the past three days, this dimensional-crossing business (if that was even what it was, she wasn't entirely sure) was pretty tricky, to the point where no-one in Raknorel could do it themselves. The two crossings that had already happened were apparently just unfortunate results of "stray and wild magic". Grumahn, in his forced dream, had made it sound easy, which made him seem all the more terrifying.
Someone interrupted Hiccup's train of though with a light gasp.
He looked up.
It was Astrid.
She'd rolled over in her sleep, and her leg had brushed against the damp patch left by Hiccup's cold sweat, which was still pretty chilly. This had woken her up, since she'd actually finished recovering a few hours ago and was sleeping pretty lightly. Hiccup could barely believe it.
"Hiccup?" she asked quietly.
"Astrid!" He cried happily, throwing himself onto her with a hug.
"Hiccup, what-" she glanced at the world over his shoulder. "Where are we?"
"Farenheit's place," Hiccup explained simply, "and I'm so glad you're back." He hugged her all the tighter.
"Wait, Hiccup," she pushed him out to her arm's length, "'back?'"
"You've been unconscious for three days."
Astrid's eyes went wide with shock. "Three days? What happened to put me out for three days?"
"Ask Syuzanna, I can't make any sense of it myself: the word 'magic' pops up so often that I'm beginning to think she's making excuses, and if she is, she's pinning half the blame on you." Astrid crossed her arms with a huff, before looking down at herself.
"What am I wearing, anyway?" Plain white cotton pyjamas adorned her light frame, modestly covering everything except for her head, hands and feet.
"Just something more comfortable to sleep in than a chain shirt," Hiccup replied, "your usual clothes are in there." He pointed to a squat chest at the foot of the bed
"Oh, right." She acknowledged him quietly. "Three days…"
Hiccup placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Astrid, nothing bad has happened."
"Maybe not here," she softly replied, "but what about back home?" The mention of Berk unleashed a flood of homesickness onto both the Vikings, enough to make Hiccup drop his gaze. "What will Stoic do when no-one can find us? What if Grumahn attacks again? What-"
"He can't have attacked again, Astrid." Hiccup interrupted her quietly, and she easily picked up on the hint of fear in his voice.
"Hiccup, what's happened?" He didn't reply. She gripped his arms and asked again, her voice laced with worry "What's happened, Hiccup?"
"He's followed us," he replied quietly, as if not saying it aloud would stop it being true. Astrid gasped. "He came after us, and now he's here. He sent me another dream, so he must have been stood in this room." He looked up into her eyes. "Astrid, he was stood right next to us while we were completely defenceless.
"He made the same offer again, for me to give myself to him to avoid an untimely death. But… there was something else, something that I didn't understand."
There was a moment's silence, which Astrid broke with a shake of her head. "That doesn't make sense. If he was here, he could have just taken you back again. So why didn't he?" She locked gazes with him again. "Hiccup, what else did he say?"
There was another short pause. "He said something about 'the gap between worlds', and stepping across it after us. I've got no idea what he meant by it, though."
"Have you told anyone?" Astrid asked, still concerned.
"Not yet," Hiccup replied, "except for you, of course."
Astrid slipped out of the bed and stood up. "We need to tell someone."
"I know," he said, "I'm just not sure who. Well, other than Toothless, we definitely need to tell him."
"Okay, let's find him, and we can tell anyone who happens to be with him right now, to." She wasn't quite sure how they were going to get Toothless to understand, since he was a dragon, but she trusted Hiccup.
"Alright then." Hiccup concluded, before reconsidering: "Do you want to get dressed first, or are you happy wandering around in your pyjamas?"
His arm still smarted badly by the time they found Toothless.