Toothless and the Light Fury were much quieter when they flew, too. The winds were smoother, their wingbeats steadier and calmer. Clouds passed lazily under them, and beneath that, the ocean passed even more lazily. Oceanic dragons crested the water, migrating along with them. Above them, higher, taller clouds turned the sun's light into near-solid rays reaching down to the two Furies.
It had been many days. The Light Fury had changed their trajectory every day, sometimes twice a day, for seemingly no reason at all. Generally, they were still flying south, erratically closer and closer to the edges of Hiccup's map.
Hiccup still didn't have a good name for the Light Fury. If he hadn't been sitting in a saddle whose function was inextricably tied to his foot position, he would have kicked himself for not being the kind to follow the usual Viking method of naming things. It would have made it easier, at least.
"What would my mom call you?" he had asked aloud a little while ago. Probably something like… "Light-weaver? Sky-jewel? What's a white-adjacent thing and a verb with 'e-r' at the end? Wind-skipper?"
Some descriptive two-noun combination, perhaps, like Hookfang?
They were passing by a cloud and the Light Fury made a point to turn on her side to coast around the edges of it, peacefully. Toothless carelessly mimicked her and they made the turn gracefully as the cloud expanded to embrace them. Water droplets collected on Hiccup's mask and the dragons' backs.
Ahead of them, the Light Fury spun herself around, almost snake-like, so that she was right-side up again, and Hiccup's foot in the saddle guided Toothless after her.
Suddenly, an abrupt scream caught Hiccup's and Toothless's attention from behind them to the left. Panicked, Hiccup turned just in time to see a fire-blast explode mid air, only a few yards up and to the side. Something dove through it and disappeared, the fire following in a trail after something moving very fast.
Toothless vocalized in surprise, eyes widening, and he brought himself to a stop mid air as the Light Fury turned around and was tackled by something invisible. She spun in mid-air around the thing, flapping to keep her balance, until the invisible thing's color melted back into its scales and Hiccup caught sight of another, smaller, Light Fury clinging to her neck. An adolescent.
Toothless roared gently and began to swoop towards them curiously when six other Light Furies burst from surrounding clouds to greet their much-missed friend, chattering and cooing gleefully.
The smaller Light Fury let go of her neck and hovered in mid-air above theirs while she righted herself, chastising the small one for the sneak-attack. The other six circled her gracefully, calling to her and nearly singing in their excitement to see her again, and she turned this way and that, her eyes smiling. Hiccup and Toothless soared down to her and she called up to them. The Light Furies flew up to him, eyes widening as they saw the last Night Fury. The youngest, smallest one circled him and his head followed it until it was behind him.
The largest of the Light Furies—a male with deep blue eyes and matte scales more gray than their guide's—flew right up to him and stared at Hiccup, huffing suspiciously.
He raised his hands, abs tense to maintain his balance as Toothless flapped up and down, stationary under such intense scrutiny. The large Light Fury snapped at Hiccup and Toothless snarled back loudly, scaring it backwards.
Their Light Fury flew up to them and shoved the bigger one's head away, much to its chagrin. The human is a friend. Then she called to Toothless and tossed her head around to gesture for him to keep following, and began a descent through the cloud cover. Toothless followed eagerly and the other Light Furies dove with them, flanking Toothless excitedly.
"Now you really need a name!" Hiccup called up to their friend, glancing at the other Light Furies who weren't different enough to him yet to be able to confidently tell the difference between them at a glance. Toothless seconded the sentiment.
And then they dipped below the clouds. And they saw the place she had been leading them to.
The place she had meant by digging a hole in the ground.
A great chasm, a long gorge, with increasing depth as it went further, stretched and wove through the ocean. Huge waterfalls heaped white water down its sides by the tons, interrupted and fluffed by flat stone ledges and huge caves whose entrances poked out into the center. The whole thing was misty white with salt-water foam and ocean spray, and it was massive. Large enough at its widest that three full-sized Bewilderbeasts could have walked side by side down its slope without touching and fit into the massive gem-circled crown of a cavern that led into pitch blackness all the way at the end of it.
"Woah," Hiccup yelled. Even as far as it was below them, they could hear it. The clouds, just above them, cast light shadows over it that traveled as they moved, and as the sun peeked out from behind them at the crack in the ocean. This must be the home of the Light Furies, he thought.
It only grew larger as they came closer.
As the group of dragons descended, the hole in the ocean only grew bigger, the curtains of white water only louder until Hiccup was sure he'd be deafened. When they were finally flying through the middle of the thundering waterfalls and their Light Fury guide started leading them down further into the ocean, the spray had already reached them and soaked them to the skin. Hiccup kept his dragon-scale helmet on to protect his eyes and Toothless shook himself uselessly.
Staring around, Hiccup realized the rocky outcroppings that interrupted the streams of water were really entrances to caves and tunnels, and dragons peeked out of them at the newcomers. The place seemed perfectly fit for Light Furies, and there were so many of them that Hiccup couldn't count them all as they dove in and out of sight among the already white backdrop of the ocean water.
He must have been right; they were made for this place.
When he looked behind, he realized that more and more Light Furies had actually joined their little group to follow after them as the water had to fall further and further down to hit the sloped floor. The spray mist thinned as water no longer crashed against rock so close to them, and rainbows danced around them, catching Hiccup's and Toothless's peripheral vision, and their proud guide, glancing back at her new friends secretively, actually began to fly up towards a hooded cave to their left.
The waterfall was thin in the one entryway, easily to fly through. And they were already drenched, anyway. Their Light Fury slowed and landed just past the entrance, and the other Light Furies pulled away, returning to wherever they'd come from.
She shook herself and Toothless did the same.
The sunlight seemed to move in this cave with one wall made of waterfall, and Hiccup took his mask off to shake his drenched hair out and push it back from his eyes.
"Woah," he said.
The rocks seemed like bubbles, gracefully rising up in little flat platforms from the wall. And on one of the top ones was another several Light Furies, snoozing in a cluster, curled around and on top of each other like cats.
Hiccup dismounted Toothless and patted him as they walked forward into the surprisingly dry cave—never mind. Hiccup's prosthetic landed in a shallow, still puddle and he nearly slipped, lucky that Toothless supported him.
The Light Furies that had greeted them at their entrance landed and peeked in, too, chattering.
Their Light Fury friend called up to the sleeping dragons and their heads popped up. Seeing the Night Fury, they immediately came down a few ledges to greet him from new perches.
But one was different.
It stood up slowly as the others went to greet them and stared at Toothless, stock-still. Toothless stared back, taking a step forward, and Hiccup held his hands out palm up to the dolphin-smooth white dragons curiously sniffing at him.
Something was different with that Light Fury. This… This dragon was not the same as the other Light Furies.
Its scales were rougher than Light Furies' were, its bone structure stronger, its edges and lines not as rounded as those of the Light Furies. It had the same amount and same shape of sensor frills as Toothless did.
It didn't make any noise, but all of a sudden jumped down several platforms to land in front of them, coming up to Toothless, eyes as thin as if it had seen a ghost. Its eyes. They were a soft, pale pink—not blue or turquoise like the eyes of the crowd of Light Furies that parted to watch the meeting.
Even Hiccup stepped away to look at it.
And under its white scales, its hide seemed pink too, like it was not quite opaque enough to hide its blood. Its wings betrayed the same tendency, white where they were thickest and pale pink where they weren't, veins just barely visible through the sturdy webbing.
Toothless was frozen. Hiccup covered his mouth, trying not to breathe. No way. The Light Fury who led them there looked back and forth at the two dragons as their faces got closer together.
Toothless was not the last Night Fury. There was one more, who had survived Grimmel's hunt.
This was the other one, and she was albino.