I'm Leaving Forever (a HTTYD Runaway Fanfic ~ Book 1)

27 - Leaving and Returning

A dark blue and purple sky marked the beginning of dawn. Small amounts of light from a still hidden sun alleviated the darkness and made everything more visible with a tint of blue. The stars were still out but a new moon was practically invisible. Waves were making their way over the ocean calmly and there were the few sightings of dragons coming up from the dark abyss of the ocean into the light of dawn for air before disappearing again, and some birds and dragons would often pass by as well. In general, the atmosphere was still and tranquil, although, the same couldn't be said for the Riders, no matter how much they longed for it.

After half an hour of flying, they were all graced by the sight of a few sea stacks standing tall and strong with a bit of greenery just colouring the brown rock, and waves crashing into the base of it. They found two that were conjoined together and just at the sight of that, the dragons' flying staggered and it almost resulted in a crash landing, shaking both them and their riders. The Titan Wing Screaming Death was probably the only one not completely exhausted, so calmly, it helped Toothless down from its back giving a roar to the lot of them and flew off, its huge spiralling body taking several seconds before it finally disappeared from view.

Everyone single person and dragon were exhausted. The dragons immediately lay down on the ground and the Riders all get out groans of exhaustion and pain.

"Wow. I never thought Id see so much chaos all at once," Tuffnut breathed out, "what about you, sis?"

"Nope. I loved the whole thing, but honestly, that was..." she didn't bother finishing with words and instead let out another groan.

"As much as I appreciate all of us resting, I think there are some wounds we need to tend to," Dagur said, specifically right after he looked at his sisters dragon. Heather followed his gaze and gasped at what he was looking at.

"Windshear!" Heather, despite her fatigue, ran to her dragons side and her shaking hands hovered over her right flank. There, on that flank, a long red cut was etched into her muscles. It was bleeding profusely; thick, dark red liquid cascading from the fresh wound down the side of her leg over her silver scales. Heather squeezed her eyes shut, mentally kicked herself for not noticing something so serious, but then she felt something nudge her. She looked up to see Windshear staring at her with comforting eyes, like she was telling her not to blame herself from the injury, but anyone could see that in the Razorwhip's gaze, there was also pain. Heather stroked her dragon's horn, but soon turned when she felt someone kneel beside her.

To her surprise, Zilpah had taken off her cloak and proceeded to dab the wound with it, soaking up the leaking blood and she applied pressure to make sure more could escape. "We need to clean this wound. Does anyone have any water?"

"No, but we could get some," Astrid said and began to coax Stormfly to aid her in helping her friend.

"Okay, take this," Zilpah handed Astrid a large canteen before the rider and dragon dived down to the water surface.

"You might want to bring back a lot, considering that there are other people injured as well!" Snotlout yelled out to them right when they were at the base of the sea stack. Both Astrid and Stormfly took note of this and made sure to fill the canteen all the way to the top, even if that meant they couldn't fit the corkscrew on to close it. Astrid got off Stormfly and immediately, the Nadder resumed her previous position and closed her yellow eyes. If they wanted help again from a dragon, she was sorry to say that this one is currently out of commission.

"Okay, could you keep holding this down," Zilpah asked and Heather placed both her hands on the cloth covering Windshears cut and maintained the pressure on the wound while Zilpah took some of the water with her hands and without even taking a second to hesitate, she washed away the still wet blood quickly before asking Heather to let go of the cloth so she could clean the wound itself.