Night Rider

Fire

Thanks for reading this far and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

-Hiccup's Pov-

I awoke to the smell of burning. I snapped my eyes open, only to find that a small amount of smoke once again clouded my vision. Did the volcano do this? I questioned myself. I rubbed my eyes and sat up, taking in my surroundings. I couldn't see far because of the density of the smoke, but I could just make out a few burning trees and Toothless. How were the trees burning? There is no lava... I noticed, and it wasn't hot enough for a forest fire.... This didn't make sense to me at all, but one thing made sense - we needed to get out of here before we got burnt or suffocated to death.

"Toothless!" I shouted. I vaguely saw Toothless's ears prick up, then as quick as lightning he was on his feet and trying to blow the smoke away with his wings. I stumbled up, holding my arm above my eyes to give me a little protection and ran quickly over to my belongings. The heat was quickly getting worse and the fire on the trees was building up rapidly. The ground was ice cold in the morning sun and my feet cruched on the grass and dirt. I grabbed my water in one hand and quickly stuffed everything else into my satchel which I carried over my shoulder.

"Toothless!" I shouted again. He came bounding over to me. I quickly poured all the water over Toothless's tail to stop it catching fire (just a trick I picked up - although it would mean that this specific tail couldn't be used again if it rusted up) and I hopped on his back. That had been the last of the water, but Berk was less than half a days flying away, so I didn't worry about it, well not much anyway. We soared straight up into the air, but the smoke didn't cease. We climbed and climbed in hight, the density of the thick smoke only vaguelly decreasing, so we still had no clue where we were. Toothless then yelped in pain and clumsily yet powerfully threw his body to the right. I held on to the saddle for dear life and I just managed to see a tiny yellow speck fall back to the ground - Fireworms.

"We need to get out of here, bud!" I cried and Toothless shot off without a second glance back. He flew vertically upwards, to try and get out of the smoke, I don't know how the little critters can cause so much damage - there must be hundreds or thousands of them!

We shot through the smoke and into daylight very quickly once it started to thin. We continued to soar upwards, but when we had a clear sight of the island below us, I pulled Toothless to a halt, so he hovered in mid-air, his wings beating strongly and my hands started to cool. You could hardly see the island below us due to the black smoke blanket on it, you could just see a tiny speck of a beach on the West side of the island, but that was soon swallowed by the smoke too. Toothless seemed unharmed, except from a patch of scorched scales where the Fireworm had attacked his leg, but that would quickly heal if it didn't get attacked again. Their skin does burn hotter than a thousand suns... I was surprised that they didn't attack us more. Why only send one Fireworm?

But, I had spoken too soon. A swarm of them hurled themselves out of the smoke like a burning, yellow, fiery cloud. Toothless took off at an alarming speed, causing me to almost fall from the saddle once again because I didn't expect it. The wind whipped my face and I was so glad that I had my helmet on, but that also meant that I had to turn my head fully around to be able to see them behind us through the slits in my helmet. I didn't think that Fireworms came this close to Berk. And did this mean that they had a queen? We had met them before, and that pack did.

Toothless dived and rolled through the air to try and loose them. We were faster than them, but since there was such a large gap between us, they could cut corners to follow us and that meant that they were slowly catching us up. I didn't dare to leave the island - who knows when we might next find fresh water to soothe the burn and refreshen the tail?