Hiccup and Toothless had just gone on a flight and were resting near a cliff for a bit until they were ready to head back. Toothless had been a bit tired when they first landed, but after just a couple minutes he was back to his usual energetic self. Rolling on the ground, flapping his wings periodically, and chewing on Hiccup's leg. It would probably be a bit difficult to get the thing back from him when it was time to leave, but that was a problem for later. For now, he'd just sit and relax.
When you ignored the sounds of obnoxious dragon chewing and lip smacking, there was a lot to listen to. He could hear birds chirping, waves crashing against a nearby shore, and if he closed his eyes he could almost swear he heard the wind brushing past the trees.
For a while he just sat there, enjoying the calm and peaceful atmosphere. But then Toothless jumped to his feet and dropped Hiccup's leg. He was completely rigid. It didn't even look like he was breathing. Hiccup pushed himself upwards, grabbed his leg from the ground, and hopped over to stand next to Toothless. He propped himself up against Toothless's shoulder as he reattached his leg to the rest of him. "Hey, bud what's up? What's going on?"
Toothless didn't even glance over to him. He stayed still, eyes fixed to the sky in front of him. Hiccup squinted as he tried to make out what it was exactly that had caught his attention, and then he saw it. A glowing green spot in the sky. It almost looked like dragon fire, but it didn't move like any fire he'd seen. "What is that?"
It swirled and glistened like the surface of the sea. He couldn't look away, it was almost hypnotizing. But then something started to fall through it. Toothless rumbled anxiously and looked back and forth between Hiccup and the sky.
Hiccup nodded. "You wanna go investigate bud?" Toothless grumbled in response, shaking his head and shifting his weight between his paws, anxious to move. "Okay, okay, let's go and check it out then." Hiccup barely mounted onto Toothless's saddle before Toothless leapt off the cliff to begin flying off towards the object of his interest.
The wind whipped past his ears and he almost had to struggle to hold onto Toothless's saddle. Hiccup quickly adjusted his seating and brought his body down closer to Toothless. The wind was rushing by so fast that he could barely keep his eyes open to look for the green light. "Woah, why are we going so fast! That thing's not going anywhere, it'll still be there in a-" The light vanished like it had never been there to begin with.
"Okay, I was wrong."
Toothless slowed to a stop midair to hover in the spot where the light had been and warbled before looking over his shoulder towards Hiccup. He rumbled and snorted, confusion plain on his face. Hiccup patted and scratched the side of Toothless's neck. "Yeah bud, I know, it was right here." He started to look around the area, like the light would somehow appear again if he just looked hard enough.
Toothless followed his example, hovering all around the area, stretching out his limbs and pawing the air. As time passed he seemed to get more and more anxious, growling and whining at the air around him. Hiccup patted his neck again in an attempt to calm him down. "Let's just land down there for a bit, okay bud? We can figure this out, but I don't think staying up here will help much."
Hiccup started to steer Toothless down, and luckily Toothless complied and lowered them both to a small clearing between the trees. Hiccup hopped off of Toothless and started to pace. What was that thing? It couldn't have been a trick on the mind, Toothless had seen it too. Unless they were bewitched? But why in the world would they be bewitched? They hadn't angered any witches, or at least, Hiccup thought they hadn't angered any witches. Besides, what kind of witch would curse someone to see green lights? That doesn't sound very productive.
It could be a trick of the light. Maybe it was something reflecting off the surface of a camouflaged dragon. But what kind of dragon could camouflage and stay that still while hovering in the air? And what light source would be making bright green light to reflect off a dragon. Maybe it was bioluminescence, or maybe it really was dragon fire, or-
And Toothless was walking into the forest. Hiccup quickly rushed over to him. He didn't want to be separated here, especially not with the slight possibility of an angry witch in the area out to get them. "Hey bud, what's going on? What are we doing?"
Toothless looked over to Hiccup, then turned his head back down to the ground and snorted. "Okay, we're tracking something. Is it related to that thing in the sky or no?" Toothless froze for a second before warbling and going back to sniffing the ground. "Okay, guess we don't know."
Toothless dug his nose into the ground for a second before snoring and moving on to sniff another spot. He walked around in a circle, sniffing the ground, before moving his head upward and sniffing the air. He seemed really interested in whatever he was smelling for, and Hiccup was getting more and more curious as time passed. Toothless began to walk forward at a brisk pace, determined to get to the bottom of this. Hiccup followed behind, no questions asked.
Suddenly, Toothless stopped in his tracks. He turned his head to Hiccup and let out a small grumble before turning back to whatever he had found. Carefully, Hiccup walked forward to see a small puddle of glowing green liquid, the same color as the strange light they saw. There were small drips leading from the puddle to a tree, which had the liquid smeared onto its trunk. Then the trail of green continued on, deeper into the forest.
Hiccup dipped a finger into the liquid. It was cold and slightly sticky. It smelled like copper and lightning, but had a sour burnt smell to it too that he couldn't quite place. "Well that's not at all unusual huh bud?" he turned to Toothless who was staring straight ahead towards the trail of green. "You want to go follow it?" Hiccup asked. Toothless hummed in affirmation as he began to slowly follow the green path ahead of him.
Hiccup dipped his fingers to the substance again, squishing it between his fingers as he followed alongside Toothless. "Maybe it's paint? It could be fluids from a bioluminescent dragon. It's definitely not from any plant, and it's far too cold to be any sort of-" Toothless stopped in his tracks, head tilting like he was listening for something. Hiccup held his breath and strained his ears to try to see if he could hear it. A twig snapped, and Toothless bolted.
"Hey, no, no, Toothless come back here!" Hiccup yelled as he ran after Toothless. Toothless just kept running, but slowed his pace enough that Hiccup could keep up, if only barely.
Hiccup chased after him, slapping leaves and branches away from his face and barely avoiding trees as he ran.
"Come on Toothless, slow down! You know I can't run that fast!" Hiccup's peg leg caught on a raised tree root and he barely managed to catch himself and avoid faceplanting. He quickly got back to his feet and continued to chase after his dragon. "Why do you never listen to me?"
He ducked under branches, dodged around rocks, leapt over roots. He was having trouble keeping an eye on the ground and the obstacles in front of him.
He looked up from the forest floor and caught a glimpse of something rushing through the trees in front of him and Toothless. It was difficult to make out, but it was fairly small, and desperately running away. He looked back down to the ground and saw the green liquid again. Each drop was much further apart than where the trail first started, but it was undoubtedly the same. Whatever it was, it was coming from the thing Toothless was chasing. And something told him that it probably wasn't supposed to be dripping out of the thing. "Hey, hey Toothless! You're scaring it!"
There was no sign that Toothless had even heard him. He just kept chasing after the mystery creature. Hiccup forced himself to run faster and managed to grab onto Toothless's tail in an attempt to get his attention. "Stop, You're gonna scare it off!"
This time, Toothless slowed to a stop. As he watched the mystery creature run out of view, he anxiously hummed and looked back and forth from Hiccup to where the creature had run. Hiccup gave himself a minute to catch his breath, then patted Toothless's shoulder comfortingly.
"We can figure this out bud, but chasing it isn't gonna be super productive." They already had a trail they could follow. And if that failed, Toothless could always catch the scent. There was no use in terrifying it like this if they didn't have to. "Let's just calm down, okay?"
Toothless turned back towards the direction the creature ran off in and groaned before begrudgingly turning back to Hiccup and grumbling in acceptance.
Hiccup started to walk along the green trail again, Toothless following close behind. As they walked, the drops never seemed to grow much closer to each other. It didn't look like the creature had stopped running. Hiccup was starting to worry that the mystery creature may have gotten away for good, able to outrun them once they stopped chasing, bu then the trail led them to a wide and shallow cave.
It was dark inside and Hiccup couldn't quite make out whether or not any of the shapes on the ground was what they were looking for, but Toothless seemed to know exactly what was inside. Toothless began to march into the cave, but Hiccup stopped him. "Easy bud, slow down. It might still be a bit freaked out from you chasing it. Best to give it a bit of space. I'll go in first, you can follow behind me."
Hiccup grabbed Inferno from its place on his thigh and lit it up as he walked inside. He walked towards the back wall of the cave, holding the sword to his side to keep the bright fire out of his line of vision. There, huddled against the cave wall, was the mystery creature. It had its wings and tail wrapped around it protectively and seemed to be shaking slightly. "Okay, definitely a dragon. But what kind?" Hiccup mumbled under his breath. He waved his sword back and forth as he walked towards the new dragon to hopefully pacify it if it were to unfurl itself, but it stayed where it was.
It was small. Definitely bigger than a terrible terror or smothering smokebreath, and with a much larger wingspan, but still much smaller than most dragons. It could be a juvenile of a larger species, but he couldn't see enough of it to know for certain. And anyway, he didn't know of any dragon that produced glowing green liquid.
Hiccup crouched down in front of the dragon, set inferno down on the cave floor, and started to speak soothingly to it. "Hey buddy, you're okay, nobody's gonna hurt you. It's okay to come out." He softly touched one of its wings, but the dragon violently flinched back at the contact.
Hiccup paused for a second before an idea popped into his head. He reached into a small bag on his side and pulled something out. "Do you want something to eat? Huh buddy? I guess deer jerky isn't really great for dragons, but it's okay as a treat. One piece can't hurt." Toothless let out an indignant squawk as Hiccup started to wave the meat in front of the new dragon.
The dragon stayed completely still. It barely even looked like it was breathing at this point. Hiccup let out an exhale, stored Inferno, and stood up to pace. A skittish dragon was usually far more prone to lashing out than hiding, and he was much better at dealing with dragons that lashed out than dragons that hid. He really should try and find out what the green liquid was, but he shouldn't try to force the dragon to unfurl itself so he could examine it. It would definitely lash out then. He definitely shouldn't just leave it, it could be injured. That would explain why it ran instead of flew. But then again, that could also be because it wouldn't be able to fly through the dense trees with its large wings.
He just needed to be patient and avoid scaring the dragon further than it already had been. Everything would calm down eventually, he just needed to wait and try not to overwhelm the dragon until then.
Hiccup turned back to the dragon just in time to see Toothless paw at it, causing it to unfurl and frantically scramble away before raising itself onto its hind legs, stretching its wings out to appear bigger, and pinning itself against the wall at the other end of the cave, screeching in fear.
Hiccup quickly rushed to put himself between the dragon and the cave entrance to discourage it from leaving and scrambled to grab Inferno back from his thigh, holding out his other hand in surrender. "Hey, it's okay! It's okay, you're fine!" He brought Inferno up and lit it to hopefully pacify the now panicking dragon. "Nobody's going to-"
He trailed off once he was able to get a good look at the "dragon."
"What in the?"