I Am Dragonblood: Secret Uncovered {Book Three} (HTTYD Fanfic)

Chapter Six - The Light Fury

    Hiccup

Hiccup soared after the mysterious white dragon, struggling to keep sight of her as she arrowed around pillars of rock. She was quick and he was out of practice, banging into rocks now and again, but his flight instinct kicked in soon enough and he caught up with her at the crystal tunnel. She was hovering in the entrance, waiting for him, her white scales tinged with red in the light of the glow. He approached slowly, unsure of if he should say something or wait for her to speak first. When he was at about three yards distance she decided it for him. 
    'Who are you? What is your name?' Her voice was definitely female, if with a hint of a growl. 
    'I could ask the same of you. I am Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, Chief of Berk.'
    The Light Fury looked confused. 'Berk? That's a human settlement, why would you even want to live there, let alone be their Chief, Dragonblood?'
    Hiccup's ears shot straight up. She knew he was a Dragonblood, so did that mean...?
    'Yes, I am Dragonblood.' Obviously he was just as much an open book when he was in dragon form as he was in human. 'My name is Arianwen Mared, protector of the Skjult Verden. I've been watching you from when you first entered. Why, when you have your own wings, do you ride dragons?'
    'Um,' her abrupt questioning and intense gaze really put him off. 'Well, non of my tribe, except thr- four, know I'm a Dragonblood and, er, I don't know what they'd think if I told them. So, I can't fly around, really. And ever since we've made peace with the dragons we've been riding them and Toothless is my best friend and he can't fly on his own so I have to ride him and, erm...' Why did he just say that? Those piercing blue and red eyes bored into him as if they could see into his soul, making him stutter and muddle his thoughts. 
    'So the Night Fury cannot fly and you befriended him, and he can somehow fly with you.'
    'Well, yeah, that's about the gist of it. Toothless is missing a tail fin so I made him one and I have to move it so he can fly.' Really, what was wrong with him? 
    Arianwen turned and flew into the tunnel. 'Come, tell me what happened.' Hiccup followed as if being pulled by a magnet, and found himself telling the Light Fury the whole story of how he'd found Toothless. They passed the grey Eruptodon who was guarding the tunnel without mishap and flew through into a huge cavern, a giant white crystal grew down from the centre and dragons of all kinds flew around it in a spiral. The Chief stopped talking and gaped at his surroundings, his eyes wide, until Arianwen prompted him to go on. 
This part of The Hidden World was like the part he and the gang had explored, but the glow was so much brighter and lakes of clear blue littered the ground. He turned a circle to take it all in, still spilling out his story, and noted that the Eruptodon had followed them. When he turned back the Light Fury had landed on a rock, waiting for him. 
    'What is this place?' He breathed. 'Why is it guarded?'
    Arianwen nodded to the crystal. 'Look down there.'
    He followed her line of sight and saw, below the point of the crystal, dragon eggs. There must have been at least a hundred, of all different colours and sizes. There were the tiny, green Terrible Terror eggs to the very rare, red Screaming Death eggs. Light from the crystal filtered down onto them, illuminating them with its magical glow. Right beneath the point was where the light concentrated most, and that was where eggs he'd never seen before were clustered. There were some white ones, shining brilliantly, and in amongst them were a couple of midnight black ones, looking like marks of charcoal on clean paper. 
    Arianwen took off and glided down to the eggs. He hurried after her and discovered that there were fierce, battle scared warriors of dragons guarding them. They glared at Hiccup but did not stop him as he stepped past. 
    'What are these eggs?' He asked, even though he thought he already knew. 
    Arianwen stepped delicately over to them. 'The white ones are Light Fury eggs, and the black ones are are Night Fury.' 
    That confirmed his suspicion. Then a thought struck him. 'There are other Night Furies?'
    The Light Fury's ears drooped. 'Sadly, no. These are the last eggs I know of, one hatched twenty years ago, but these are still here in the hopes that one day, they may hatch out too.'
    Hiccup's ears went down too, then up again. 'So Toothless hatched here?'
    'Probably. Unless there were eggs I did not know of.'
    Hiccup looked at the eggs again, wondering, if they had had hatched, if Toothless would have been flying high above the clouds with them. With his clutchmates, his siblings. 
    'Do you think they'll ever hatch?' He asked. 
    'I don't know,' Arianwen replied. She ran a claw lightly over the shell of one of the Night Fury eggs, making a teeth jarring sound. 'I wish they would, but... It is very unlikely.'
    He turned his attention to the concentric circles of multicoloured eggs, all arranged around the light from the crystal. 'Why here? I mean, why have a hatchery below a giant crystal?'
    The Light Fury flowed to a Hobblegrunt egg, inspecting the small flecks of bioluminescence in the hard shell. 'For some reason the hatchlings who hatch from here are stronger and more likely to survive than ones from elsewhere. I don't know why and neither do the other dragons, not even the Protectors here,' she indicated the scarred dragons, their posture alert to danger. 'I'm sure it is something to do with the light seeping through the crystal, but other than that, no one knows.'
    Hiccup gazed at a blue flecked Nightmare egg, letting the new information sink in. 'Why—' he was interrupted by one of the Protectors growling. He followed the  Shivertooth's line of sight and saw a Nadder flying down to them, its usual blue and yellow scales glowing a multitude of colours. 
    'Stormfly?'
    The Nadder rawked, landing at the edge of the circle of eggs. 'Yes, it's me.'
    'What are you doing in here?'
    Stormfly put her head to one side to look at an egg. 'There was no guard in the tunnel so we came in.'
    'We? Astrid is here?'
    'Yes, up by the tunnel.'
    Arianwen, if in human form, would have paled at those words. 'Humans are not allowed in here. She is in danger of being injured or worse.'
    And just to prove her point, the Eruptodon who had followed them in gave a mighty roar and charged towards the tunnel. Hiccup saw Astrid's fair haired head duck down behind a rock, trying to hide, but the dragon had set its sights and there was no stopping it. 
    The Night Fury shot into the air before either Stormfly or Arianwen could react, his wings beating fast. The Eruptodon landed and arched its wings menacingly, cornering the Viking. Hiccup shot a blast at its feet, the bright blue plasma sparking off stone, and it leapt back with an enraged snarl. 
    He landed with a growl in front of Astrid, his claws scraping into the bioluminescence and his metal leg squealing in protest. The Eruptodon roared in his face and he roared back, firing a warning shot past its head. Arianwen did the same, with Stormfly swooping in on the other side, distracting the dragon from its main target. 
    'Go! Get her out!' The Light Fury yelled to him, slapping the furious dragon with her tail. 
    Hiccup backed up and pulled the Viking over with a wing. She immediately knew what he wanted her to do and she climbed onto his back, pushing her axe into its leather strap on her own back. 
    He blasted a shot at the Eruptodon again and darted out, winging through the tunnel at breakneck speed. He heard a roar behind, followed by a thunk as the guard smashed into the wall. The Light Fury moved in below and behind him, Stormfly above, guarding against the guard. With a burst of speed they shot out of the tunnel and into the cave air, flying up so they could have an advantage point. Looking down, they saw the Eruptodon come to a stop at the tunnel entrance, small wings beating hard to support its weight. It looked up at them with its little red eyes, snorted and turned back the way it had come.

1466 words XD