I Hear Him Scream
is a How to Train Your Dragon Fan Fiction by the author "Rift-Raft". Its first chapter was published in 2010, just months after the release of the movie it is based on.
Picking up at the beginning of the How To Train Your Dragon movie, the events of the story quickly take a different route as Toothless crash-lands into the center of the Berk village, where Hiccup is finally praised for the achievement and urged to make the killing blow. However, dragons now possess volatile, innate magical abilities, and Toothless unveils this as he escapes from his bindings and subdues Hiccup. In an act of sadistic revenge, the Night Fury calls upon his magic to take away Hiccup's viking honor by morphing him into a dragon, intending to have him killed by his fellow villagers- if he could even survive the Painful Transformation. But despite Toothless' escape, he still finds himself crippled from flight, and the two dragons can only flee separately into the island's wild territory to narrowly avoid pursuit. After running into eachother again, a shaky Enemy Mine truce is soon formed, and eventually blossoms into a bond that provides strong Hurt/Comfort elements.
Unheard Whispers, a collection of side chapters and a novella, has also been released. The story itself was continued with Echoed Songs, a sequel based on the events of How to Train Your Dragon 2. A third part of the story loosely based on How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is also in the process of being shared, known as A Seeking Call.
I Hear Him Scream provides examples of:
- Abled in the Adaptation: Late into the story, Toothless' missing tailfin is restored with magic. He gives it up again later.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Toothless is, at first, downright sadistic towards Hiccup after being shot down. Now that the two can communicate fluently, he also takes nigh every opportunity to ridicule everything about the boy. Thankfully, he takes a level in kindness.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: A lot of characters go through this on account of Hiccup being ripped from his rather innocent life. Besides the most prominent characters, Snotlout also goes through this in spades, failing to keep up his usual brash attitude when he takes in the events before him.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Mental Magic, which the Queen uses to Mind Control the dragon nest, can also be used by Hiccup. In contrast to the dark and shadowy depiction of her magic, Hiccup's resembles glowing light, allowing him to fight the Queen's influence over himself and others.
- Big Brother Instinct: At one point, Ruffnut of the twins receives a lasting injury to her side. Tuffnut shows a rarer side to him during this, protecting his sister and working with perfect cohesion for her safety.
- Cast from Hit Points: The innate dragon magic, while not forbidden from use, is often reserved for emergencies as overuse can take a great toll on the user. Healing magic, ironically, is most commonly shown to cause direct damage to the caster.
- Character Narrator: A near-entirety of the story itself is narrated by a few of the present characters, who weigh in with their own internal monologue. The most consistent narrators are Toothless, Hiccup, and Astrid.
- Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: Toothless decides to hunt down the freshly-transformed Hiccup at first, thinking it would be best to put him out of his misery. He stalks around the cove with this demeanor as he searches for him, trying to get a reaction.
- Cosmic Egg: During their truce, Toothless tells Hiccup of dragon mythology, in which it is said that the world was once in a state known as "the Prebirth", where it was nothing more than an egg that eventually hatched into two rival gods.
- Forced Transformation: The premise of the story is that Hiccup is turned into a dragon. Toothless had envisioned this as a Karmic Transformation against Hiccup, though he was fully aware that it would be extremely painful and likely result in the boy's death.
- Mind Control: Rather than the Red Death from the movie simply ruling the dragons by force, she is known as the Queen, and employs powerful magic to make the entire nest her loyal servants, stripped of their memories. Toothless is burdened with seemingly being the only one unaffected.
- Mistaken for Own Murderer: Unable to bear the thought of Hiccup suffering so deeply, Chief Stoick convinces himself that his son must have died, and that an evil dragon has possessed his body.
- Morphic Resonance: On account of the transforming spell being slightly incomplete, Hiccup looks different from any other Night Fury. His scales are pine brown, and freckles still dot his face.
- No Need for Names: According to Toothless, dragons as a whole do not see the importance of names when their senses can easily identify one another. However, some dragons of fame are given names as a privilege. Toothless is rather bothered by the very notion of abruptly being given a name by Hiccup at first, but he gets over it.
- The Speechless: Downplayed. As Hiccup unfortunately learns early on, he can only growl when he tries to speak Norse as a Night Fury. On the other hand, he becomes fluent in the language of the dragons. He begins to write in runes to communicate with Astrid and the other teens, later.
