Most creative take on a cliched creature?

[Guttersnipe]

Good point! I just love Toothless's design, so sleek and shiny.

He reminds me of a black cat. Very cute.

 

[CTRandall]

Stanislaw Lem's take on dragons:

There are "three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way"

It turns out, however, that dragons aren't really nonexistent, they're just incredibly improbable. So the constructor Trurl builds a probability amplifier that causes dragons to spontaneously burst into existence all over the galaxy. (And this was prior to Douglas Adams.)

 

[The Big Peat]

I don't think I've seen a version of dragons like Pratchett's swamp dragons.

 

[Don Coyote]

Some of Larry Correia's monsters in his Monster Hunter International series have original twists-
-Trolls are annoying creatures with phenomenal computer skills
-Elves are stereotypical trailer trash
-Gnomes are urban gangtas
-There was a dragon named "Management" who owned a casino in Las Vegas and lived in its basement with his collection of cars, art and other objects. Management was deep behind the scenes mysterious mover and shaker gleaning info from the internet