12 WELCOME TO LAVA-LOUT ISLAND

12. WELCOME TO LAVA- LOUT ISLAND The Exterminator Eggs were so numerous that they found themselves picking their way through them. The Eggs had been laid hundreds of years earlier, so they were embedded very deeply into the soil, and grass, moss, heather, and bracken had grown over them over the years. Now, however, all the vegetation had been burned down, so it had exposed them like gigantic fat white maggots. A furious, frenzied, scratching noise was coming from within them. It wasn't clear at first what this noise was, but as the Vikings climbed higher they began to come across Eggs that did not have the white, greasy opaqueness of bacon fat like their brother-Eggs further down. These Eggs had skin that was wearing thin, and fine lines were appearing all over the surface, like cracks on china that was about to break. They were

clearly close to hatching, and on some the shell was so fine that it had become see-through, and the Exterminator fledgling was clearly visible within, all twisted and snarled in an angry knot. These fledglings had grown so large over the centuries, and were so cramped in their Egg prisons, that their limbs were contorted into the most grotesque positions, and it was the ends of their talons that were making that feverish scratching noise, as they tore at the hard shell exterior that was keeping them trapped. Once you have looked into the eyes of an Exterminator, it is impossible to forget them. The look in an Exterminator's eyes, of pure, concentrated, white hot FURY, the irises vibrating with pinpoint anger, is a look that haunts a person through their waking hours and in their nightmares forever after. The Vikings had to climb over these horrible, slimy see-through Eggs, and as they did so the eyes of the Exterminators fixed upward on them in a frenzy of impotent rage, and the scratching became even more screechily furious. "Oh... yuck... this is vile..." groaned Fishlegs, giving a shriek of horror as he slipped and fell with his face pressed up against one of the Eggs, with only that hard exterior separating him from the manic eye and madly scraping sword-talon of the

Creature within. Once he had made sure that the carnivores really were trapped inside the Eggs, Toothless couldn't resist the opportunity of teasing them, of course. He flapped right up and landed on the Eggs, sticking his tongue out and making faces at the imprisoned beasts, which drove them into extremities of temper, and they tried to throw themselves at him, but the most they could achieve, of course, was to make their Egg rock slightly in its bed of burned-out carbon. Toothless thought that this was a very good joke, and carried on doing it, despite Hiccup telling him repeatedly NOT to infuriate the Creatures any more than they had to. Dragons have a cruel streak, and I'm afraid that Toothless even made up a song about the Exterminators, which he sang as he cheekily swooped over the Eggs making farting noises, and setting them rolling down the hill with his nose. "Can't c-c-catch me O w-w-weedy little Extermi-babies Frogs without legs Tadpoles in your cradles I can see you crying in your Eggs But you c-c-cant... catch... ME!" Everywhere they walked there were these grim

entrances to the Fire-Gold Mines, out of which great clouds of steam mixed with gold dust were billowing. Hiccup swallowed hard, peering down the sinister dark holes, cruel bright streams of magma snaking through the bottom of them, and imagining the poor Windwalker forced to crawl down there, struggling like a fly without wings. The Lava-Lout Village gave an even grimmer vision of what the life of Humungous must have been like, kept for fifteen years as a slave by these greedy savages. There were CAGES everywhere, manacles, chains, whips, weapons of all description. Huts with barred windows, beds of stone or iron. No wonder poor Humungous didn't want to step on this cursed island again. Hiccup, Fishlegs, and Camicazi walked on, Fishlegs lagging slightly behind, puffing away like anything, but still stubbornly dragging his Running- Away Suitcase. Every now and then they came across these unusual man-made Statues, of the kind that Humungously Hotshot had been describing, raised up high on a prominent rock so that they were clearly visible to all the Eggs round about. They were Statues of a Face, three times as large as any man, and the Face did look just a little bit like

what Hiccup remembered Alvin the Treacherous looking like. But there was no sign of Alvin the Treacherous himself. It had all been surprisingly easy so far. They were now only four or five hundred meters from the top of the Volcano, and they had reached it without bumping into anything nasty at all. All they had to do now was get to the summit, throw the Fire-Stone over the edge, and then run back down to the Harbor... They were nearly there... They were nearly there... Only fifty meters to go, when Something put its black foot over the lip of the Volcano above them. A black foot with five claws sprouting out of it, each claw as broad and sharp and gleaming as a SWORD. Out of the top of the Volcano, like a gigantic slimy slug, slithered the revoltingly muscly figure of a huge EXTERMINATOR, three times as big as a lion. Green saliva frothed from its fangs. Great clouds of steam snorted out of its flaring furious nostrils. Its face was contorted in a ghastly grimace of anger, eyes popping with a fury that burned like acid. Its tail and its horns appeared to be on fire. It reared up on its hind legs, slicing through the air with its ten

terrible sword-claws, and through the transparent wall of its fireproof chest you could see its two great black hearts pumping its boiling-hot black blood, sending it shooting through its body at twenty times the speed and pressure of the blood of any other living creature. It opened its terrible mouth to ROAR, and it was a noise that sent shivers screeching down the Vikings' spines and set their hearts racing as quick as a panic- stricken rabbit's. It seemed impossible that a Creature this wild could be controlled by a human being, but in the Exterminator's mouth was the choking copper-red slab of a metal bit, and on its back, in between its great ebony wings, rode the tall, sinister figure of a Man. The Man had one arm that ended in a copper- red hook, and this hook was heaving on the metal reins as he fought to gain control of the enraged, rearing Creature. With the other arm he lashed at the Exterminator's sides with a great black whip until the dragon brought down its great front legs, and bowed down in snarling, pacing, barely controlled submission. Fishlegs, Camicazi, and Hiccup took a few steps backward, Camicazi holding on very tightly to the Fire-Stone. The Man in Black pushed up the visor on