The next day, I tried desperately to convince Astrid to stay on Berk.
“You have to stay here!” I said, my hands on her shoulders.
“No way!” she replied, shaking them off. “We found this place together, so we're fighting this masked maniac together.”
“You saw what that guy did to those villagers. He's a brutal murderer that doesn't care for life. If you get hurt, I'll never forgive myself!”
“Hiccup, I was born a warrior!” Astrid fought back. “I can deal with this.”
I smirked. “Even you gagged at the sight of those bodies.”
She groaned, knowing I'd won. “Fine, I'll stay here. But if I think you're gone for too long, then I'm coming to get you!”
I smiled, reassured that she'd be safe. “Thank you.”

Later on that day, I watched from a cliff as the man with the mask grabbed the villager Astrid and I had spoken to by the neck and lifted him clean off the ground.
“WHERE IS HE?!” I could hear him yelling. “WHERE IS THE CHIEF?!”
At first I had decided to wait a bit before making my appearance, but I saw the masked man take a dagger from his belt and get ready to stab the villager in the stomach, and this made me change my mind.
A chief protects his people.
“I'm here!” I yelled. I climbed on to Toothless' back and flew down to where they were standing, surrounded by other Vikings who were wearing simpler versions of the man's iron mask. These men immediately started advancing towards me, gripping their blood-stained axes. Not at all intimidated, I grabbed Inferno and sent a ring of fire burning all around me. Because of the already-burnt grass this ring of fire didn't burn for long, but it burnt long enough to surprise them.
I turned to the masked man. “Now you have me, let him go.” I gestured to the villager he was still holding by the skin of his neck.
To my surprise, instead of letting the villager go, he thrust his dagger deep into the poor man's stomach, crashing through his ribcage as he did so. I watched in horror as he proceeded to stab the villager once in the middle of face and then throw the still-alive body on the ground.
“You didn't need to do that!” I shouted angrily. The worse thing was the villager was still alive, despite the serious wounds, meaning he was suffering where he lay. I took my knife from my sleeve pocket and made a quick and clean cut on the villager's neck to put him out of his misery.
“I always need to kill,” growled the masked man, wiping his bloody dagger on his thick leather trousers and then slipping it back into his belt. “Especially the people that aren't important.” He kicked the body at his feet, making it roll over and hide its bloodied face.
“But YOU,” continued the man. “YOU I will take ALIVE!”
Before I could react, I felt a sharp pain in my neck as a needle was thrust into it from behind me, sending me into unconsciousness.

When I awoke, I saw that I was in a dark room with walls made of stone. I was surprised to realise that it wasn't that cold. Once my eyes had swam back into focus, I looked round and not only noticed a fire was lit in the corner of the room, but I also noticed that I was chained securely to a chair.
“Sorry if the accommodation isn't quite what you're used to, Chief...” came a voice from behind me. I couldn't turn round to see but I knew that it was the masked man.
“I did light a fire for you, though,” the man continued. He walked slowly towards the fire and picked up a metal rod from the side of it. He slowly put it inside the burning flames, watching as it turned from grey to red to blue with heat.
Once it was blue, he walked with the same slow pace as before towards me.
“As for medication,” he said. “This is to insure you don't catch your death of cold.”
I could only scream as his touched my right cheek with the burning rod. He left it there for what seemed like centuries and then finally threw the rod on the ground. I couldn't see but I was sure that it had left a mark that would never leave.
“Who are you?” I practically whispered, half of my face hurting like hell.
“You don't recognise me?” asked the man. “Then again, I have changed, haven't I? I was never this brutal, and this is actually the first time I've ever been in command of my own tribe. I'm quite new to the job, but I think I'm doing well, wouldn't you say?”
“Tell me who you are!” I said furiously.
“Give me a moment to finish my speech,” said the masked man calmly. “I was up to the bit of where I had changed. And I shall continue to say that you have not.” He laughed. “Still as small and as weak as you always were, Hiccup. You might think you've grown, but there's still the puny little Viking – if we can even call it a Viking – inside you.” He laughed again as he saw that what he was saying struck me hard, like verbal arrows being shot without end. “A runt like yourself has managed to become the Chief of Berk, Odin only knows how, and it doesn't take a genius to know that you are WEAK.”
I tried desperately to block out what he was saying, but I couldn't. “A strong chief wouldn't have given himself up like that. A strong chief would be back on Berk, getting reinforcements, by now. But no, seen as you are WEAK you've decided to give yourself up and let yourself be chained. Because of you, the rest of those stupid villagers will be strung up like the first ones. How does that make you feel?”
Determined to not let him win, I put on a brave face and asked again: “Who are you?”
Now that his speech was finished, the man removed his mask to reveal a face I barely recognised, but still knew from years ago. His eyes glinted with power and fury and this almost gave him a completely different appearance.
“How is that possible?” I wondered out loud.
“While you were fighting Dagur with Alvin, no one noticed ME on the sidelines. No one ever notices me. I crept away like a shadow and made sure that no one knew.” He smiled. “As you've already found out, I've inherited Alvin's taste for blood and Dagur's taste for madness... That's what you get from working alongside two of Berk's enemies.”
He leaned forward and looked me straight in the eye. “What's it like to see your old friend Savage again?”

I bet you weren't expecting the villain to be Savage, right?

At first I was going to use Drago as a villain, seen as we never actually see him die or get captured at the end of HTTYD 2, but while watching Cast Out pt 2 of Dragons: Defenders of Berk, I noticed that we never see Savage get captured either. And that got me thinking: what if he came back, with a whole new personality: the mix of Alvin and Dagur? I personally would be pretty intimidated by this XD

I hope you all liked this plot twist!

Savage practically cackled when he saw the look on my face. “Speechless?”
I glared at him. “I certainly didn't miss you.”
At this remark, he punched me in the jaw. “Well, you know what the funny thing is?” He grabbed the back of my head by my hair and pulled it back so I was looking him in the eye. “I actually missed YOU. I missed terrorising your island, I missed making plans to destroy it with Alvin and Dagur, I missed EVERYTHING to do with you. At first I found it strange to be the one in charge – I didn't think I'd be able to do it – but now I know I'm ten times better than those amateurs!”
He tightened the grip on my hair, pulling out some strands as he did so. “I still can't ride dragons. And in case you're wondering, that's not why I captured you. I don't care about those stupid reptiles any more. All I care about is seeing you SUFFER!” He let go of my hair and punched me again, causing my lip to bleed pretty badly.
“Speaking of dragons, where's Toothless?” I demanded. “What have you done with him?”
“Oh, don't worry your weak little mind about your Night Fury,” Savage said smoothly. “He's alive, but I won't say that he's unharmed.”
I strained at the chains keeping me in place. “Why are you doing this?” I asked angrily. “Why are you killing people that haven't done ANYTHING to you?”
He took his sword from his belt and pointed it at me fiercely. “BECAUSE I HAVE NOTHING TO LIVE FOR BECAUSE OF YOU!” he yelled, holding himself back from stabbing me there and then. “All I know is destruction! All I know is pain! And all I know is CAUSING those two things to HAPPEN!” He poked my burnt cheek with the tip of his blade, making it hurt even more than it already did. “And then YOU made friends with Alvin! YOU defeated Dagur! Their armies were nothing but PRISONERS! I managed to get away, but what did I have? NOTHING, THAT'S WHAT!” Overcome with fury, he practically yelled a war cry and slashed his sword at my face, causing a deep cut on my left cheek, meaning each side of my face had Savage's mark.
Replacing his sword in his belt, he continued in a calmer tone. “I have nothing to live for because of you. Why should I let anyone else have that freedom?”
I was shocked at all this. Savage really had inherited Dagur's sense of madness and mayhem and Alvin's thirst for blood. In fact, there was nothing of the Savage I knew left inside him.
I was about to say something, but he interrupted me with something that sent a chill through my spine and all the way to my heart. “Let's not talk about me. Let's talk about a certain girl called Astrid Hofferson. You know her well, don't you?”
I clenched my fists in anger, desperately wanting to strike him where he stood. He knew I had two weaknesses: Toothless and Astrid.
“I know you care more about others than you do about yourself. So to make you suffer, I make them suffer. That's why Toothless isn't dead: he'll prove very useful for breaking you.” He grinned maniacally, knowing that this angered and hurt me more than anything. “But let's talk about Astrid for the moment.”
Still as calm as ever, Savage took out his dagger and sharpened it against one of the spikes of his sleeves, making it shine in the light of the fire. “What would you do if I cut off every one of her limbs...” He slowly cut a deep line around the top of my left elbow, in the place where my leather armour didn't quite cover my tunic, as if he was demonstrating how he would remove her arms. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the pain, but it was impossible. “And then proceeded to sew them back on... all this while she's still alive, of course...” He removed a blunt, rusted needed from the handle of his dagger and pushed it through the edges of my wound, as if he was sewing. Because the needle was blunt it hurt even more than it should have, and the rust was sure to leave some sort of infection. He removed the needle and stopped talking for a minute to admire his work.
I had a red, bloody burn on my right cheek, a deep cut on the other, my lip was bleeding from where he had punched me twice and because of this my jawline was badly bruised. Above my left elbow I had another deep cut, accompanied by several little holes he had made with the needle.
All in all, I was in a pretty bad mess of blood and bruises.
From his silence, I thought Savage had finally finished his “demonstration” of what he would do to Astrid, but to my horror I saw him walk slowly pick up the metal rod again. I could only sit and wait as I watched him thrust it into the fire, making it heat up all over again.
“And after I had sewn on her limbs again,” he said smoothly as he came towards me. “I would burn her still-breathing body in front of your eyes.”
When he said this, I thought he was going to stab me in the eye, but instead he placed the burning end of the rod where he had placed it before, making it hurt like hell even more than it already did.
He dropped the rod and laughed at my pain before going back to his original question. “What would you say to that, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third?”
I hung my head, wanting desperately to give up. My body couldn't take any more of this.
But a chief protects his people.
“WELL?” Savage lifted up my head in the same way as before. “WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?”
I looked into his black, bird-like eyes and, just about succeeding in hiding my emotions, simply said: “That's messed up, man. That's really messed up.”
Savage yelled in fury and punched me so many times I didn't bother counting. “BREAK!!” he yelled. “WHY-” Punch. “WON'T-” Punch. “YOU-” Punch. “BREAK?” Final punch.
I was practically unconscious after all this. The bottom of my face was bruised to its maximum and the blood coming from my lip had poured down my neck. Savage knew by hurting me and threatening to hurt my friends, eventually I'd give in. And if I gave in, then he wouldn't need Toothless any more. He wouldn't bother with capturing Astrid, he'd just kill her immediately.
If I gave up, then I'd be condemning everyone to death.
Odin must have given me strength at that point, because somehow I managed to look up and say to him: “I'm the chief. And a chief protects his people.”