XXXIX.
The night after the battle on Valka's fortress, Hiccup woke abruptly to an insistent blunt-nosed prod against his chest and a pair of enormous bug-eyed irises staring but an inch from his nose.
Odin's ghost! What the –?
Shocked at the sudden awakening, Hiccup gasped and sought to pull himself away, at least as much as he could while lying upon the ground. This resulted in little more than an awkward scoot which solved no problems, for the bug-eyed visitor just jerked forward to follow his movements, double pupils barraging the entirety of his vision. A curious, excited squawk cracked through Hiccup's ears. And suddenly the world snapped to attention. He realized what had jolted him awake, relieved his stress with a short, embarrassed chuckle, and reached out a hand to greet his morning welcomer.
"Well, hello there," he laughed quietly to the baby Scuttleclaw, letting the infant dragon nuzzle his hand. The baby bobbed its oversized violent head excitedly and emitted another congenial squeak. Though probably only several weeks old, the Scuttleclaw already boasted a wing span that must have exceeded four meters, and its length nose to tail tip surpassed a full-grown Gronckle's size.
The Scuttleclaw bounced up and down when Hiccup verbally acknowledged it. It then again pranced boisterously when he pulled himself from a supine to sitting position and wearily opened his eyes. Glancing upward, he gauged the time of day and realized he must have slept 'til near noon. Unsurprising, really, his late morning awakening; though the warm sauna temperatures in the fortress center might have lulled him quickly to dreams any other night, competing gory images and restless thoughts kept him awake for an agonizingly long time. Hiccup, exhausted as he had been, had struggled to fall asleep. But he must have actually managed to doze off sometime.
Now a purple baby Scuttleclaw danced before him, bobbing its head like a bird and gawkily flapping its wings. The novelty of Hiccup sitting up had faded, and now it rushed forward to headbutt him, cajoling the young man to fully rise and give it his full attention. Hiccup did so, and as he patted the dragon's nose, he asked with a baffled chuckle, "What are you doing here, big guy?"
It charged in a full circle around him as a response.
"You're just a baby! You shouldn't be away from your mo –" Hiccup's voice instantly slowed. "Your… mother," he mused. He cringed at first, unpleasant memories surfacing. But then understanding dawned. With a burst of optimism he exclaimed, "So not everyone left this mountain after all!"
He threw his arms out wide toward the Scuttleclaw, and exclaimed the declaration again. "Ha! There are still some dragons here!"
Implicit expectations that he would remain stranded in this lonely mountain swiftly evaporated. A small seed of hope surged forward as he realized he had a means after all by which to travel, to seek out Toothless, and finally to return home to Berk. And after all this world of unfamiliarity and change and shock and war and pain, even the simple prospect that something might go right for him brought forth a hysteric, giddy laugh.
The dragon cocked its head at Hiccup's strange noise and watched as the young man stepped forward. "You have any siblings and friends around?" Hiccup asked the animal. A plan began whirling in his mind. He held out his hand, waited for the infant Scuttleclaw to voluntarily nudge his palm, then carefully slipped onto the dragon's back. "Would you be able to take me to them? Can you do that, big guy?"
He could only hope this untrained tike instinctively would fly toward any other infant dragons residing in the fortress. And indeed the Scuttleclaw launched off – heading somewhere – with barely-coordinated wing flaps that jerked both of them up and down in the air moreso than propelled them forward. Frantically Hiccup grasped for a handhold before he might get inadvertently flung off. Hiccup had not experienced so rough a ride since he first developed Toothless' flight gear five years back. "Am I too heavy for you?" he wondered, yet at that point their flight stabilized, and in a flurry of flaps the Scuttleclaw launched them both upwards.
Up a steep, straight-vertical cliff they climbed. Several times they nearly slammed against stone walls from the Scuttleclaw's uneven flight. "Where are we going?" Hiccup called out. Then he noticed it.
The entrance to a cave near the top of that cliff.
Inward they flew, entering first a narrow passage, and then a wide chamber. Small, neon-lit dragons – either Fireworms or Glow Worms, he thought – amassed on the ceilings and walls to provide light, provide vision for the infant-infested room, a festival of brightly colored baby dragons swarming every inch, play-fighting and hurling over one another and peeping and chirping and screeching and bickering and begging and hopping and flapping and flying and swathing the world in endless energy, ceaseless activity. "It's a nursery!" Hiccup exclaimed, and feasted his eyes on countless tiny dragons.
Round, rolling Gronckle babies burped alongside half-inflamed Monstrous Nightmares. Head-heavy Typhoomerang chicks bared beaks at Raincutters and a whole rainbow of Scuttleclaws. To these Hiccup's ride headed. The two of them landed – heavily – and Hiccup hopped off, just to be swarmed up to his armpit in infants. "Whoa there!" he called out, but he nevertheless was almost bowled over from behind by a particularly eager dragon.
He turned around to see who had head-butted him. A spiky white dragon, it turned out, with equally spiky teeth. It was not a species indigenous to Berk, but Hiccup had occasionally encountered this type of dragon on his mapping adventures in colder climates. The Sabre Tooth Driver Dragon grew to about four meters in length but was incredibly bulky and strong and also adapted to live in tundra climates. Even this infant appeared sturdy and hardy, capable of surviving against severe cold for extended periods of time.
Exactly the sort of dragon he had hoped to find.
"Hey there, Spiky," he murmured, and slowly, very gently reached out his hand. "What do you say we go on a little trip across this frozen wasteland?"