Dimension Splash Chronicles
Event: Toothless’s First Challenge Fight with a Gemnode
Pov: Toothless (sort of)
Time: Year 4 of Toothless’s existence in the world
He had accepted. He had agreed. He had walked up to that strange creature and taken it up on its offer. He was doing this for Hiccup, doing this so that he could better protect the boy he loved. His vision was swirling and blurring before him. All the shapes of the forrest where he had met the Gemnode were melding and swirling in a vortex of color. Nothing was solid, he couldn’t see anything clearly, could not feel anything solidly, and even his hearing seemed oddly dulled. The only thing solid in this warping, melting, swirling reality was the Gemnode floating before him. That creature never changed. It sat there and the world melted around it. Before Toothless could make anything more of this strange experience he landed heavily on something hard and cold. Everything solidified again, and he found himself standing on some sort of crystalline platform. The Gemnode was floating gently in the middle of this octagonal structure. The platform and the Gemnode both gave off an eerie light, but when Toothless looked out over the edge of this floating battle arena, he saw pitch darkness in all directions. The dragon suddenly felt small, felt nervous. Nothing had ever been like this before.
The Gemnode eyed him cooly. Then it spoke. Its voice sounded more like odd resonating hums, and at first Toothless heard only sounds. But then those sounds translated themselves into a meaning inside the dragon’s head. This was the language of the Gemnodes, a language which passed all barriers, but it was not a pleasant thing. The creature spoke. “Are you ready to begin?” Toothless looked up at the creature. Its body seemed small, for it was not much larger than a man. How deadly was this monster, this thing that had stolen him away from Berk? Toothless had hated it, hated it for three years, and he hated it still. If it was going to kill him, he was going to make it hurt while trying. Toothless gave a shrieking roar in response to the question, and the Gemnode nodded. It turned, floated slowly to the other side of the platform, and then spoke again. “Begin.”
Toothless sent a plasma blast straight at his enemy. It was an accurate shot, he had been welling it up from the moment the Gemnode had turned its back, but it would not reach its target. The Gemnode seemed to stretch, warp out of shape, and then vanish completely. It had teleported out of the way of the blast, and Toothless watched with sad amazement as his fire rocketed off into the black void. His mind flashed back, and he whipped around to see where the creature had gone. Toothless had made a good guess, for the Gemnode was indeed behind him. It had its hand extended towards him, and suddenly Toothless noticed a glow of light surging up its arm towards its palm. Toothless sidestepped, and just in time. A sharp burning ray shot from the Gemnode’s palm and blasted into the ground where Toothless had been standing only moments before. The Gemnode took a moment to slowly, almost causally, pull its arm back in, and that was all Toothless needed. He launched himself at the figure. He swung a clawed hand violently at its chest, but instead of a satisfying crack and give, his claw met with a hand breaking amount of force. His claw stopped at the Gemnode’s chest and stayed there. The creature seemed immovable, seemed to have infinite mass. Toothless had thrown all his weight into that blow, and yet the Gemnode floated there as if nothing had happened. Toothless was not even sure if he had even hurt it, but he was not going to stop trying. He clawed again and again, each time his arms screaming at him to stop. It hurt him badly. He was throwing his whole weight into each blow, and every time the Gemnode was unmoved, and Toothless’s arm had to bear the pressure of his own attacks.
By this time, the Gemnode seemed to have had enough. It teleported yet again, and this time it came out ready to attack. Sharp shards were whirling around its outstretched arm, and it made a throwing motion towards to the dragon. Toothless tried to dodge, but the gemlike shards homed in on him and struck him violently in the side. They dug their way in like knives and stung horribly. Then, as soon as Toothless had recovered from the shock of having six dagger like objects rip through his hide, every single shard exploded, and Toothless was thrown to the side with a shocked roar of pain. He shuddered; he needed to keep a grip on himself. The Gemnode was still floating there, calm, unmoved. It did not seem to care wether it hit or missed, and now it watched him cooly as if he was nothing, as if he was uninteresting. Toothless roared, and then he sent another plasma blast towards his calm opponent. The blast hit, and it made a horribly loud, throbbing, high-pitched, singing sound. The Gemnode again seemed unfazed, but it did not counter strike, so Toothless took another opportunity to rush in and deliver a claw strike. He sliced his arm forward, but where he should have hit solid gem, where he should have heard a ringing sound and felt horrible pressure build in his own forearm, he met nothing. His arm swished through the Gemnode’s image. It tingled and stung as if he was passing through something electrical, something like the Skrill’s fire. As soon as he had completed the swipe, the Gemnode solidified in a horrible white flash. A shockwave of energy surged from it and Toothless was blasted back. His vision was blurred from the light, and he could hardly hear. He staggered back to his feet and saw the Gemnode floating before him with its hand stretched out and with its palm facing upward. Toothless angrily let off another blast, and it hit the Gemnode right in the head, yet once again the creature seemed unfazed, and even hitting it made a horrible ringing sound. The Gemnode’s fingers glowed an odd purple, and then in clenched its fingers in an upward grabbing motion. It was at least twenty feet from Toothless, but the dragon suddenly felt sharp, tearing pain in his chest. Five sharp fingers of energy were digging their way into him. In shock he realized that he was being lifted from the ground. Then he saw in horror a huge pool of blood rippling under him. These “fingers” moved in tandem with the hand of the Gemnode, and he was digging them deeper. Toothless felt the breath leaving him, felt a horrible coldness about these objects of energy forcing their way into him. His vision was blurring, he felt certain that these fingers had punctured things in him, vital things. His heart was not beating properly, he could feel it. He let off another desperate volley of flame, but the gemnodes twisted its wrist, and Toothless was pulled by the energy fingers to the side so that his blast went horribly awry. The dragon knew that in this world he would return, but that did not help. His natural mind was screaming in fear. This was death. This is what it felt like to die. He looked again at the Gemnode in desperation, and that was the only time that he felt emotion emanate from that form. The whole battle, the entire fight, Toothless had not been able to detect even a twinge of feeling, but he felt something now, and that something horrified him. The Gemnode was enjoying this, and suddenly its chrystaline hand flashed. Toothless felt the sharp, biting fingers explode within his chest, and all went black. The last the thing he remembered was hearing his own struggling breath gurgle out of him on that cold, wet floor.
Toothless awoke suddenly as if from sleep. He felt weak, tired, starving, and sore. He was back in the woods where he had met the Gemnode, and laying in front of him were three beautiful red gems. They had a glow from within, a power resonating from them. He reached forward weakly and touched them. They swirled around before his face in a rhythmic dance, and then they turned into tiny flashes of light and flew into his body. He felt a surge a power, an increase in his life, a little relief from the pain and weakness still shuddering through his form. Suddenly he realized Hiccup was standing beside him. The boy kneeled down and tried to comfort him. Toothless nuzzled his head hard into the boy’s chest, so relieved to be alive, so happy that the nightmare was over, so joyed to be in a world where things were at least solid. This is why he had accepted the fight. Those three little gems, they would help him keep this boy safe, and Hiccup was worth that. Hiccup was worth the world.
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