Strike Class dragons live exceptionally long lives, even handicapped ones. I have been blessed by the gods to live long enough to tell you this tale.
As hatchlings, a Night Fury's dreams are their future. As younglings, the dreams stop, and the parents of the young Night Fury begin to mold those dreams into reality.
However, my dreams are considered impossible and I am forced to follow the path my parents took. It is Night Fury tradition.
Hi, my name is Toothless. Today I am going to tell you how I broke tradition and made my impossible dreams possible. But if you are to understand me, we have to start at the beginning.
My home was a big island close to the North Pole, so it is always cold. Spring and Summer are a bit warmer than Winter but only lasts a few months out of the year. We do not have Autumn. If we did, we could not tell.
The island's name is lost to us. It had a name many generations ago, but as time went on, we forgot its name. It is rumored that the first Great Elder told a human who wrote it on a scroll. The human died sometime later and the scroll as lost at sea.
Let me tell you this right now. It's better to have parents who have traveled the known world than to have ones who never left home. Well for Night Furies it is.
I have always been different from everyone else on the island. You see the thing is, my parents thought I was a dud because my egg was cold. An egg is supposed to be either warm or hot. The hotter the egg the stronger the dragon.
My egg was ice cold from the very beginning. Thankfully it is dragon tradition to keep the egg until explodes. All the dragons do this because it is customary to bury the dead hatchling instead of getting rid of the egg.
My parents already had my burial hole dug and everything when my egg exploded.
When they realized that I was alive, the whole island rejoiced, but the rejoicing didn't last long. All the Night Furies quickly realized that was I small, even by hatchling standards. This also meant that I had hatched early and would never achieve the full power of a Night Fury.
My size earned me the name 'Pukio', which meant runt. This also meant that I had to be raised differently.
Over the course of the next two years, my parents sheltered me from the cold of our island. I would spend endless days sleeping and cocooned by their wings. They would often take turns keeping my small frail body warm while the other would hunt. They told me stories of their adventures and encouraged me to be the best that I can be.
Now a lot of Night Fury parents would not do this. Night Furies prefer encouraging their hatchling or youngling physically. But because I was such a sickly hatchling, my parents could not be physical without harming me.
When I turned three, I was strong enough to leave the cave and began learning how to fly and hunt. I was supposed to join all the other hatchling Night Furies my age, but my parents knew how cruel young Night Furies could be. So, my father would take me hunting and teach me about the Whispering Deaths, our rivals, and my mother gave me flying lessons.
I easily outdid my father in hunting, by catching more fish than him. I was faster than my mother when it came to flying. I was faster than any other Night Fury for that matter.
The Great Elder of our island chalked my speed up to the fact that I was such a small Night Fury. This I took pride in.
Spring and Summer didn't last long. Only a few months. As the harsh winter hit the island I would spend most of my time, lying by the fire my mother made and listen to her adventures.
If I was normal sized three-year-old hatchling I would not need to be lying by a fire.
At age four, I was put through a rite of passage to have the honor of being called a youngling. The Great Elder had set up my rite of passage to be easy, but my parents were becoming stricter and beginning to behave like normal Night Fury parents. So I had to take the same test as everyone else.
This test consisted of hunting, speed, firepower, and accuracy.
I did well with hunting and speed. But since my parents never got around to teaching me how to use my plasma blasts, I did not do as good as the other four-year-old Night Furies.
Thankfully, I still passed and rose to the rank of a youngling.
Now earlier I mentioned the Whispering Deaths. Let me explain to you why they are our greatest rivals.
For as long as us Night Furies cared to remember, we have been at war with the Whispering Deaths. Those tunnel-digging dragons have been after our island because their's is over-populated. But we're too stubborn to move, so we fight.
One night our two kinds were fighting again. However, the Whispering Deaths were not giving up as easily this time because they had the strength in numbers.
I am now six years of age and am able to go out of the cave by myself. I have grown considerably since I was a hatchling. I am an almost normal size for six-year-old Night Fury.
I ran through the forest, my shoulder bleeding and burning from the spike sticking out of it, trying to get back my parents cave. Because when the Whispering Deaths come, any Night Fury, who is under the age of eight, was to stay inside and not go out.
I had been on the other side of the island getting my dinner and talking to a visiting Skrill when the tunneling dragons came.
"Pukio!" I heard one of the Night Furies roar as I ran past him. Whatever he said afterward was lost in the wind.
I growled at my name. I hated it. I am not a runt. Well, I do not consider myself to be one at this point. So what if I hatched two days early out of an ice-cold egg? That did not mean anything. So what if I didn't always hit my yearly growth spurts? I was just a bit of a late bloomer. I was by no means a runt. I could fight, hunt and fly on my own.
Just as the Whispering Deaths are beginning to retreat, I reach my parents' cave. What I saw was horrible. My father laying on his side as my mother licks blood off of him. His blood. Blood that was coming from a terrible wound.