Chapter 5: Friends

"The creature was wary of me, that was for certain, the first few times I tried to see it's wound it growled at me, I couldn't blame it though, I was the one who had hurt it in the first place. After a few attempts and a lot of growling, I finally managed to get the creature all bandaged up. By the time I was done it seemed like, whatever it was, it was smart enough to understand I was trying to help it, so I was able to get a closer look at it.

It was enormous, like nothing I had ever seen, pitch black with scales, four legs, and bat-like wings. At first, I thought it had no teeth, which was strange to me, but after some inspection, I realized that it's teeth were-"

The soft buzzing of my phone took me out of the story, I grumbled and snatched the phone off my bed to see who it was. My mom was calling me, I groaned and put the phone back down. I don't know why she was calling all of a sudden, maybe my dad asked her to, maybe it was Gobber. Either way, I didn't feel like answering, I was just getting to the good part.

The buzzing soon stopped, and I returned to reading.

"At first I thought it had no teeth, which was strange to me, but after some inspection, I realized that its teeth were actually retractable, something I had never seen before. It was because of this, that I decided to name h-"

My phone buzzed again and I threw the journal down in frustration. It was only one short buzz, so I knew it was a text message, I leaned forward to see what it said: "I'm still at work, we may hav-" but the rest didn't fit into the notification. I grabbed the phone and opened it, "we may have to delay our flight"

I bit my lip, I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I wasn't even sure if I was upset or relieved, I threw the phone onto the other side of the bed. Whatever I felt, I didn't want to think about it anymore, so I picked the journal back up and continued reading.

"...I decided to name him Toothless."

It took some time for me to treat Toothless' injury, every movement I made had to be slow and calculated as he, understandably, didn't trust me quite yet. He would bare his teeth at me, letting out and low growl when I moved too close or too quickly. Though it took time and patience, I managed to treat his wound, and Toothless seemed to understand that I had helped him, his gaze softened a bit after I had finished, though it was clear he was still cautious.

I sat down on the opposite side of the cavern, the only light source my dim headlamp, shining across at him and illuminating his glowy green eyes. I was tired, and I needed to rest, but I refused to move my eyes from him. Toothless was huge, massive, and though he seemed more intelligent than most other animals, I still felt uneasy as he sat there across from me, staring me down with those huge cat-like eyes. I wondered if he was thinking the exact same thing I was.

How long had it been, I wondered, one hour? Three hours? I couldn't tell, the adrenaline had completely obscured my perception of time. It was deathly silent, and that made me wonder where the others had gone, if they were okay, if they were hurt. The fear and panic seemed to slowly creep up on me, and I wasn't sure if I could even find my way out of the endless labyrinth of caves and caverns we had passed through, but that was assuming I could get away from Toothless without being eaten. A hand moved to my stomach, I would get hungry soon, I had placed my bags down when I reached the top of the ledge, maybe it was close by, I couldn't remember how far we had gone when Fishlegs first screamed. Even if it was only a few metres away, I didn't dare move my headlamp off of Toothless, my hand gripped the knife tighter.

I cured myself silently, why did I have to treat it? Why didn't I just kill it? My stomach growled audibly, I couldn't say how long it had been since I finished wrapping his wound up, how long I had been sitting here staring at him. My headlamp's batteries wouldn't last forever, and neither would I.

Then, just as I thought I had built up the courage to move, Toothless stood up and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I wanted to shuffle backwards but there was nowhere more to move as the jagged wall of the cave poked into my back.

"Whoa, whoa," I said as he slowly approached, but he only came about halfway, making and gesture with his head, like he was asking me to follow him, before turning and beginning to move further into the cavern. I just watched him, the light from my headlamp following him like a spotlight. Toothless stopped, turning his head to look at me, just staring, almost as if he was waiting for me. "Do you...do you want me to follow you?" I asked aloud. Toothless just snorted, turning his head to look ahead of him.

Maybe this was a terrible idea, but somehow I seemed to trust him, so I stood up on shaky legs and began moving towards him, a hand brushing against the wall of the cavern to keep myself steady. As soon as I neared him, Toothless kept moving forward, never going so far ahead that I would lose him in the darkness. We walked, for what felt like hours, and the hunger I felt only got stronger, but there was no looking back now.

For all I knew Toothless could've been leading me around in circles, it was too dark for me to differentiate any of my surroundings, and the silence seemed never ending. It seemed to always be right on the edge of unbearable, but I managed to keep going, never stopping. Then, as we were walking, I heard something, a faint, constant sound that seemed to get slowly louder as we approached. At first, I thought maybe the deafening silence was making me hear things, but sure enough, it was there. It sounded like white noise to me at first, but as we got closer I soon realized what it was; running water.

The rocks I was walking along, started to get more and more slippery and steep, until sure enough, we came upon it, an underground river. "Fishlegs was right…" I murmured as I got closer to the water, dipping my hands into the icy cold rapids. I took handfuls of the stuff, drinking it down one after another, trying to fill my empty stomach.

Toothless was already in the river, I could hear him splashing around somewhere upstream from me. As I dipped my cupped hands back into the water something rushed by my fingers and I immediately jerked them away from the river, nearly falling backward. I looked closer, shining the light of my headlamp at the water, when what appeared to be a fish rushed by in a flash. "A fish…?" I said to myself. Only one other thought came to my mind; food.

Toothless seemed to have the same idea, as when I turned to look over at him, I could see him trudging out of the river with a large fish in his jaws. I rolled up my sleeves and took in a sharp breath. "Catching fish with my bare hands...in the dark, how hard could it be?" I asked myself with a weak chuckle. My eyes stared intently at the moving water, until a flash of movement, and I darted towards it narrowly missing. I fell forward, catching myself with my hands, but not without soaking the front of my shirt. I groaned in annoyance as I stumbled backwards out of the river. I could hear a strange noise that made me turn, it was Toothless, he warbled in a strange way that sounded like laughter.

I smiled and rolled my eyes. "Yeah, yeah, yuk it up, " I said splashing a handful of water in his direction. It was then that from behind Toothless I could see a small flash of a light, and I immediately stood up. A light had to be coming from one of the others, maybe there was hope we could regroup.

I watched as the light grew larger, but Toothless also seemed to notice the presence and quickly turned around, crouching in an attack stance, a low growl emanating from his chest. "It's okay, it's okay," I said in a whisper, trying to calm him down, but it was no use. The footsteps echoed in the cavern and soon I could see Astrid's face illuminated beneath her headlamp, her expression was that of horror as she looked upon Toothless, grabbing a knife from her belt and pointing it at him. "No! It's okay!" I cried out, my arms in the air.

"Hiccup, get away from that thing," she called back, eyes still glued to Toothless.

"It's okay, it's okay he won't hurt you!" I said, arms stretched out.

Astrid shot me an incredulous look. "You don't even know what he is!"

Toothless began to bare his teeth, his growl only getting louder. I moved between them, arms still stretched out in a defensive stance. "And he doesn't know what we are so please just put the knife down." I could see her eyes darting between mine and Toothless', confusion and uncertainty written all over her face. "Please." I pleaded.

She took in a few sharp breaths before cautiously tucking the knife back into her bag. "Alright, I put it away, can we go now? We need to find the others."

"We should bring Toothless with us."

Her face immediately crunched up into disgust and horror. "Toothless? You've named it now?"

"He's okay, he won't hurt us."

"Yeah? Tell that to him!" she said, pointing towards Toothless who was still baring his teeth at her.

"He still thinks you're a threat."

Astrid scoffed. "I'm a threat? It's three times my size."

"This is his habitat, you think he's encountered many humans down here? From his perspective, were like aliens, and we've invaded his home, give him some time to adjust," I said, "he showed me to this river, this must be his food source, so he wants to help."

Astrid looked over to the water. "This is the river Fishlegs was talking about, so he was right." She sighed heavily. "Alright, I'll give...him a chance. Did you manage to get anything to eat?"

I shook my head. "No, not yet."

She squinted her eyes at me, looking me up and down. "Where's your pack?

"Ah," I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly. "Yeah, about that, I may have left it behind when everything went down."

Astrid sighed again. "So guess you won't have any spare batteries or food then. Alright, well, I have a small pack stove, you can set that up and I'll try to catch something, we should also boil water, who knows how long this is going to take. And when we head out turn your headlamp off, just stay close to me instead, we need to conserve power."

It took some time but Astrid managed to catch a decent amount of fish which she reluctantly shared with Toothless. We used her small pack stove to cook up a good meal and boil plenty of water to drink and to bottle up for the journey ahead. After we had finished everything, we decided to rest for the night, or at least what we thought was night, so we would have the energy to find the others tomorrow. Astrid slept far from where Toothless and I slept, she was still suspicious of him, and refused to be any nearer.

The next morning we set out, packed up all our extra food and water in case we didn't return to the river, and headed out, Toothless with us much to Astrid's displeasure. It wasn't long after we set out that Toothless seemed to take charge of where we were headed, seemingly leading us somewhere, somewhere even deeper into the cavern.

"Where is he taking us, Hiccup?" Astrid asked, clearly very uneasy about the whole situation.

"I don't know," I admitted.

She glowered at me. "So why are we following him? The other's shouldn't be deeper in the cavern, this is a waste of our time and resources, if we run out of water and food before we make it out of this place we could die."

"Last time I followed Toothless he led me to that river, I think he wants to help us," I said, "besides, if he wanted to eat us, he would've done that a long time ago, don't you think?"

"That doesn't mean we should just follow him anywhere, we're trying to find the Fishlegs and the twins, remember? Our headlamps aren't going to last forever, and we only have one extra set of batteries between the two of us."

I nodded. "I know, but I think we should see what he's trying to show us, after he led me to the river, I think he deserves to be trusted at least one more time. If it's nothing we can go on our own."

"Fine, but we better get wherever we're going soon, we can go on like this forever."

The longer we walked the steeper down the ground seemed to get, to the point where I was nearly losing my breath trying to keep up with Toothless and Astrid. Though Astrid seemed growingly concerned about how far down we were going, I started to notice a slow increase in life around us. I noticed more and more moss, small plants, and even small insects and amphibians, though none of it was familiar to me at all. It felt like we were entering a different world.

I stopped and reached down to brush my fingers against a small purple-tinted plant, it looked like it was glowing slightly, it was like nothing I had ever seen in countless botany textbooks.

"Hiccup look," Astrid said, tugging on my shoulder.

I stood up and saw Toothless standing by a small opening in the cave, barely large enough for Toothless to fit through, and he gripped the stones with his claws as he squeezed his large body through the crevice.

"What's through there?" I asked myself aloud.

Astrid shook her head. "I don't know about this."

"Just a little further, there's got to be something important in there, haven't you noticed all the moss, plants, and insects around us suddenly?"

"I have, but why would that all be so far down here? There isn't light, there isn't anything. There's more life here than up where the river was," she said.

I nodded. "Then let's go a little further, maybe he's leading us to the answer."

Astrid agreed wordlessly, simply walking over to the opening, glancing back at me before climbing through. I followed behind her into what seemed like a tunnel, but soon we could see that there was a small light further down that grew larger and brighter as we approached. The image became clearer and I could see that whatever was at the end was enormous and bright. At first I thought that it was leading us outside, but soon I realized that the light was too glowy and blue to be the outside world. Then, suddenly Astrid and I were at the end, and we were surrounded by a strange and unfamiliar place, glowing bright blue all around us. The plants were all luminescent and gorgeous, filling the huge cavern in soft cool tones of light. There were more creatures, flying around all over the place, small and large, in all sorts of shapes and colours.

"Where...are we?" Astrid asked breathlessly.

I shook my head, unable to rip my eyes away from how beautiful everything around us was. "I have no idea." Toothless leaped off of the ground and flew up into the air, soaring around the other creatures. "This is...amazing, we have to bring the others here, my mother, she has to see this."

"Hiccup, look at this," Astrid said, and I looked over as she plucked a small glowing blue plant from its stem and held it up. It kept brightly glowing a beautiful blue colour even after Astrid had plucked it. "Do you think this is why he brought us here?"

"Maybe, I don't know."

Suddenly a gust of wind rushed upwards blowing past us and sweeping the small plant out of Astrid's hand. We both braced, and another creature, this one blue and yellow with a large crown of spikes around its head, landed next to us and began peering down at Astrid.

"...Hi," Astrid said breathlessly, reaching out a cautious hand to touch it. The creature didn't hesitate to let her touch it's snout and a large smile quickly spread across Astrid's face. Toothless returned to where we stood, and soon we were surrounded by the strange creatures nuzzling up against us.

"How do we get down from here?" I asked, more for Toothless than for Astrid, and before anything more could be said Toothless ducked his head beneath my legs and scooped me up onto his back. "Whoa, hold on!" I cried out but it was too late, he had already leapt back into the air and flew off. "Astrid!" I called out, looking back to see where she was, but I didn't see her standing there.

"Hiccup!" I heard her call back, but from above me, I looked and saw her sitting atop the blue and yellow creature, riding her like I was riding Toothless. "This is amazing!" she called down at me, her hands cupped around her mouth as she spoke.

I couldn't help but agree, the cavern we were inside of seemed endlessly large, the stone all glowed a turquoise-blue colour, the plants glowed all sorts of different colours, I could see all the types of creatures, I could see their nests, their strange orange eggs, their young learning to fly. Everything around me was spectacular and unbelievable, and I couldn't wait to tell my mother and the others about everything we had seen.

By the time we landed back where we had started, it felt like we had been flying around the cavern forever, I couldn't tell you how far or tall it was. "This place is like nothing I've ever seen," Astrid began, "but we have to find the twins and Fishlegs, they could be hurt or starving, or worse."

I nodded in reluctant agreement. "We must leave," I said, turning to look at Toothless, putting a hand on his snout. "Thank you for everything Toothless."

Astrid took my hand into hers. "We'll come back Hiccup, once the others are safe, we can return." I nodded and we began gathering up handfuls of the beautiful glowing plants before climbing into the tunnel and heading back from where we came. After a few moments of walking, I turned to see Toothless following behind us. "I think he still wants to help," she said, "maybe he knows how to find the others."

"So you trust him now do you?" I said, giving her a mocking smile.

Astrid laughed and punched me lightly in the arm. "Shut up."

With the glowing blue light and Toothless to guide us, we headed up and up out of the cavern slowly climbing until we passed the river, then moving through more unfamiliar parts of the cave. The trek was long, but we managed to move quickly until we could see a peek of light coming from a small crevice in the rock.

I rushed over to pear out, and sure enough it was the outside jungle. "It's the entrance, he brought us back to the entrance," I said, turning to look back, but when I turned it was only Astrid standing there. "Where did Toothless go?"

Astrid looked behind her, but there was nothing there. "I don't know, he was here a minute ago. I guess he figured he did what he came with us for."

I nodded slowly, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of sadness. "You're probably right."

"Don't worry, we'll see him again," Astrid said, putting a hand on my shoulder, "c'mon, let's get your mom and the others to help us search for Fishlegs and the twins, we can always find him again later."