A Trollhunter and His Dragon

History of Dragons and Trolls

Jim awoke the next morning to something warm and wet touching his face. He sleepily opened his eyes to find something black in his vision, and sat up to rub his eyes.

"You're still here?" He yawned when he saw it was the dragon from last night. He had been hoping it was all just a dream, that he had fallen asleep doing homework and hallucinated the giant Night Light Fury in his house. But it seemed like this definitely wasn't a dream, especially since the amulet still felt a bit wet from last night.

Getting up from his bed, Jim walked out of the room and poked his head into his mother's room to find her passed out under her blankets, much to his relief. And a good thing it was Friday too.

"Okay you need to go, like right now before my mom wakes up." Jim whispered as he shut the door. The dragon had followed him right out of his room and was now standing behind him with a curious look in its eyes as it watched him. Kind of unsettling but it was better that it didn't have a hungry look in its eyes. "Let me guess, you're hungry?"

The dragon made an excited noise before Jim tried to quiet it down. The dragon quickly moved passed him to carefully walk down the stairs as Jim followed close behind before running into the kitchen and nearly knocked the coffee table over on it's way there.

Come to think of it...what other things does this dragon eat? Jim wondered as he entered the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Aside from fish, sheep, yaks and boars that is. And we don't have chicken here either, so maybe I should wait until the supermarket opens to get some fish?

Inside all he could find were some brown bananas, a packet of sandwich ham, leftover meatloaf he made last week, lunches that he made last night before finishing his homework, and a container of something he couldn't remember seeing before.

"Okay maybe you'd like some meatloaf?" Jim suggests as he pulls the tinfoil covered container out and shows it to the dragon. Come to think of it now, was this dragon male or female? The book never really mentioned gender differences between the dragons.

Shaking his head of the thought and deciding to deal with it later, Jim pulls off the foil as carefully as he could before setting it down in front of the Night Light. The dragon crooned happy before flopping down on the ground to tear into the food. Well thank goodness it was Saturday so he could go grocery shopping later.

Why am I even feeding it? Jim wonders to himself as he moves into the kitchen to grab a bowl and a box of cereal from the cabinets. I mean I know I shouldn't, but I'm gonna feel guilty later about kicking it out of the house on an empty stomach. How do I get it back to Trollmarket without it being seen though?

As he started to eat, Jim felt his cellphone vibrate and flipped it open to find a message from Toby to remind him to get up. Glancing over at the dragon, who was licking the mess it made of the meatloaf off the floor, Jim quickly pulled out three paper bags from the refrigerator and placed them on the table.

"Don't even think about it." He warns as the dragon lifted it's head to sniff the packages. "Now that you've eaten, let's get you home before my mom finds you."

The Night Light really didn't seem to like that idea, expressing it's upsetness by wandering into the living room and jumping onto the couch with an annoyed face.

"Come on, you need to go home, I don't want to have to drag you outside myself in broad daylight." Another annoyed growl.

Before Jim could say anything, Jim felt his phone buzz in his back pocket and pulled it out to see that Claire was calling him.

"Oh hey Claire!" He responds as he turned his back to the dragon. "I was just getting the lunches out of the fridge, something wrong?"

"Oh nothing is wrong, I just wanted to let you know I figured out that writing on the cover the book you had yesterday." Claire responds and Jim could hear paper shuffling on the other end of the line. "As I suspected, old Norse! And after googling old Norse letters I managed to translate the title of the book and its author."

"Oh really?" Jim asks as he heard a sniffing sound behind him to find the Night Light very close to him and sniffing his phone. He quickly put a hand between his ear and the dragon's snout before trying to push it away. "Who's it by?"

"The book is called How To Train Your Dragon, and it was written by someone called... Zephyr Haddock?"

"Oh...strange name. And the title makes sense." Jim said as he tried pushing the dragon away as it tried licking his hand attached to the phone. "Hey cut that out!"

"Who are you talking to?"

"Uh...Draal? He's trying to eat some old VHS tapes."

Jim heard Claire laugh. "Oh? Guess he likes eating plastic and cassette tape."

"Y-yeah, that's probably it." Jim laughs nervously as he quickly hurried into the question. "Uh I'll call you later, gotta do some chores before I head out."

"Alright, and good luck with getting Draal to stop eating your stuff."

Jim let out a sigh of relief as he quickly tucked his phone into his pocket and turns to face the dragon with an upset look. "Okay, I think it's time for you to head home. It's still pretty early in the morning, so you have plenty of time to turn camouflage yourself with your fire, or however you turn invisible, to be able to go back home. And I mean it, I can't have you follow me and my friends to school, you'll cause a ruckus!"

The Night Light made a face as Jim walked to the door leading to the backyard and opened it, gesturing for it to go. With a pout, the dragon slunk to the door, gently whacking the side of Jim's head with its tail before it slipped out into the yard with the Trollhunter behind him. The Night Light looked around the yard rather nervously before tilting its head back and blasting what looked like a weird indigo blast of fire into the sky. Jim watched as the dragon leapt into the blast and gasped when it disappeared.

"Oh so the fire turns it invisible." He murmured to himself. When he was sure the dragon was probably gone, he headed back inside to collect his things.

So someone named Zephyr Haddock wrote this story, but does this mean they knew dragons were real? Jim wondered as he collected his and Toby's lunches from the kitchen table and grabbed his bookbag. If that is the case, then what are dragons doing all the way out here in Arcadia? Do the trolls know about them?

⚔️⚔️⚔️

"Dragons? What caused you to be so interested in them?" Blinky asked his student as Jim handed him a large leather book. "What's this?"

"Uh...just something I had lying around my house. It mentions trolls a few times in the books and I wanted to know if these same trolls were like you guys when you lived in the old world." Jim responds as Blinky opened the book and flipped through the pages.

"Ah yes, a lot of these dragons existed many many years ago master Jim, but unfortunately we never really had the best relationship with these creatures."

"How so?"

"Well you see, many dragons of that part of the world have been known to kill and eat trolls. Fighting for territory and hunting grounds and such." Blinky explained as he shut the book and handed it back to Jim. "Aaaarrggh actually had an ancestor who witnessed a time when a huge surge of dragons took over an old dwelling place the Kubera used to live in before being forced to relocate themselves somewhere else. This "Hidden World" the Vikings called it, it used to belong to trolls before dragons scared them out."

"Oh...I didn't know that." Jim admits looking a bit defeated before perking up. "So this means dragons really do exist then! And they can be trained too!"

"Well if goblins, trolls and gnomes exist, dragons do as well." Blinky said with a shrug. "Thankfully, though there are no dragons whatsoever here in the new world. The last time a troll has ever seen a live dragon was when they all just disappeared off the face of the Earth to that Hidden World, never to be seen again. So rest assured master Jim, you won't have to worry about facing a real dragon during your time as a Trollhunter. Unlike poor Unkar the Unfortunate, who was torn apart by one of those creatures."