"What could have done this?" Hiccup said, shocked, this being the first thing either of them had spoken in several seconds.
"I-I don't know, Hiccup," Fishlegs replied. "Oh no," he said quickly after. "I think I'm going to-" He hurried away and hurled the remains of dinner out behind a bush. Hiccup did not look. He was feeling just as queasy, and he didn't want to throw up as well.
"We're going to have to see what caused this," he said. Fishlegs, drinking water from a flask, almost spat it out.
"Hiccup, you know I can't stomach this."
"Well, it looks like there's nothing left inside to come back out, so you might as well. Besides, this could be bad. I don't know if there's anything that could kill a Bewilderbeast, apart from another Bewilderbeast, a Foreverwing, or a Red Death. And there's almost no chance of any of those attacking one another, because the first two are usually gentle, and Red Deaths are incredibly rare. They're as rare as Night Furies for Thor's sake. And these wounds aren't from any of those anyway," Hiccup added. "They're too big."
"Harpoons? Ballista bolts? Something else from dragon hunters?" Fishlegs suggested.
"Too big for any of those too," Hiccup said, shaking his head. "I don't know any weapons that could have caused this. The only explanation is some sort of dragon."
Fishlegs made that strange squeaking sound he always made whenever he didn't want something to happen, but followed after Hiccup as he slowly walked towards the Bewilderbeast body.
Close up, the wounds looked even bigger. They were as wide as tunnels made by young Whispering Deaths.
"Fishlegs," Hiccup called. He gestured towards the wounds. "Whispering Death?"
Fishlegs shook his head. "They're smaller. And there aren't any Whispering Deaths around for a hundred miles."
Hiccup was silent for a bit. Then he spoke.
"I'm going to have to go inside."
Fishlegs looked ready to collapse. As a matter of fact, he did sag against Meatlug for support, but regained his composure after a few seconds. He swallowed. "Do whatever you need to."
"Come on, bud," Hiccup said quietly to Toothless. They went up to the Bewilderbeast, and Hiccup got on Toothless. Slowly, with a gentle flap of wings, Toothless rose up into the air and moved towards one of the gaping wounds.
Hiccup tried not to look at the scarlet, dripping flesh, but instead at where the hole lead. Suddenly, he frowned, all else forgotten. The wounds were very straight, and weren't like you would expect from a Whispering Death, tunneling about here and there like a worm in the ground. Instead, they opened up on the other side. There were a lot of them, but they were smooth and straight, clean wounds like you would get from a sword stab. A gigantic sword wielded by the gods. If it had been from a Whispering Death, or some sort of giant flesh-eating worm, these wounds would be all over the place, turning and twisting and tunneling around inside. You would expect them to be more ragged. These ones were perfect, precise cuts, like some maniac had decided to cut you in random places, but would do it very carefully where he chose to cut you open.
Hiccup patted Toothless, and they landed. He had seen everything he needed to.
"What is it?" Fishlegs asked, a noticeable tremor in his voice.
"This is completely different from anything we've seen before. It's completely clean, like it got shot by a giant arrow and the arrow went straight through and out the other side."
"What are you saying?" Fishlegs asked nervously.
"I'm saying that this is really, really bad. We need to figure this out before anything else happens, because I'm pretty sure that something else will happen."
"So what should we do?"
Hiccup thought about it for a moment, then looked up. "We'll go back to Berk. I'll look through the Book of Dragons, and you look at your dragon cards. See if there's anything that could have done this. And rule out Whispering Deaths."
"But what if we don't find anything?"
Hiccup looked back at the Bewilderbeast for a moment. He turned back to Fishlegs. He had a look in his eyes that Fishlegs had seen plenty of times before. It was the look he got when he was completely and utterly determined to do something. "Then we go back to Dragon's Edge, and we use the Dragon Eye."
"Didn't we destroy both of them?" Fishlegs asked, surprised.
"We destroyed the ones you knew about. I made one more, for emergencies like this one, and I hid it away in a very safe, very secure place." He looked at Fishlegs, directly into his eyes.
"I made a vault in the volcano on the Edge."
"What?" Fishlegs asked incredulously, shocked and surprised, unable to believe how Hiccup could have managed something like that in secret, and all on his own.
"How did you manage that in secret, and all on your own?" he wondered aloud.
"Remember that one time last year when I went off for 3 months? That was when I did it. I designed and built the whole thing. And I wasn't alone, I had Toothless. Isn't that right, bud?" Hiccup said fondly, scratching his dragon under the chin. Soul, who had stayed away for the time, immediately came for petting of his own. Hiccup looked at him with a despairing grin, like the face of a parent who is starting to get irritated by their adorable toddler's constant need to be carried around.
"Alright, alright," Hiccup said, scratching Soul under his chin too. Soul closed his eyes, enjoying the treatment, perfectly content to just sit there and be scratched.
"Alright, that's enough," Hiccup said after a few seconds. "We're gonna have to go, big boy." Soul put on a sad expression.
"Sorry, but this is really important." Soul did not budge, and neither did his face.
"Okay, how about this? I'll give you a responsibility. You stay here and see that nothing happens while we're gone, and we'll be back in a while. Okay?"
Soul lumbered off towards the Bewilderbeast, and sat down.
"Alright bud, let's fly. Come on, Fishlegs," Hiccup said as he and Toothless took off. "We'll get to the bottom of this," he said, almost to himself. "Count on it."