The Mysterious Frozen Fire - Chapter 17: Snow Rush

I'm doing my best to squeeze in time to do my chapters and get them posted.  I have a very busy schedule atm.

Just thought I'd note that a few weeks ago I said I would end at 20 chapters.  Look at my story as a whole, I may go two or three chapters over twenty.  Reason being I don't want to rush and hurry up and end my store at twenty chapters.  That would not do the story just and would probably make you feel jipped out of a nice ending for the story.

Hope you enjoy the chapter!

The Mysterious Frozen Fire

Chapter 17

Snow Rush

          Me and both me sisters just stood in the doorway with our mouths open.

          “Come in my children before you catch your death from cold,” said mother as she motioned us in.

          “But I thought-” I began.

          Mother interrupted rather abruptly and seemingly innocently, “Thought what my son?”

          I paused for a second and then said, “Never mind, I am probably just tired from the battle that I have been through.”

          I bid my mother, “Goodnight,” and walked upstairs with my sisters to our beds.  We all got in our beds, Asvord rolled over and looked at me from across the room and asked me, “Are you sure you’re sure you saw what you saw?”

          “Yeah,” I replied.  “I… I thought… I just can’t think right now.  What has happened the past ten minutes have made me confused.  Let’s go to sleep and pick back up in the morning.”

          Before I knew it, I was asleep.

          Once the bright sun rays came into the bedroom, I started waking up.  I say starting as I am not a morning person.  Sitting up in bed I saw Asvord and Elsa were just waking up too.  I slowly got out of bed and walked over to the small wash room with my winter gear from the clothes cabinet, shut the door, and changed my clothes.  Asvord and Elsa then followed suit as I soon as I got out.  We made our beds once we were done in the wash room; then we walked down stairs.

          Coming down stairs, we found our mother already getting ready to go out somewhere.

          “Where are you going mother,” I questioned.  “What about the morning meal?”

          Asvord then nudged me, “That is like.  You ask the important question first followed by one about food, when you’re hungry.”

          I just rolled my eyes at Asvord and repeated the question to mother who did not hear what I said.

          “Oh,” mother replied.  “I uh, am going out for a stroll.”

          Elsa said, “A stroll?”

          I squinted at my mother with a puzzled look, “Why not take Fintan with you?”

          Mother replied, “I was thinking of just taking stroll to.. clear my mind and get some fresh air.”

          I did not know what to think of what my mother just said.

          “Oh, by the way,” she stopped herself as she had just opened the front door.  “There is some food on the table in the kitchen for you.”

          “Wait mother,” I said grabbing her arm.  “If you won’t take your nightmare with you, then you’d better take Smoky with you; because if you hounded me about going out without my dragon, I think you should not go without one too.”

          “Alright,” she said and closed the door.

          I stood there and said to my sisters, “What no, ‘Goodbye,’?”

          “Oh come on Jarl,” Asvord waved me to come to the kitchen.  “Nobody has to acknowledge an exiting greeting to you every single time they leave.”

          I looked at her with a smile as the three of us entered the kitchen, “An ‘exiting greeting’?”

          “Oh-wah, you know what I meant,” Asvord spoke.

          We looked at the food that was prepared for us.  It was grilled perch with some salad.

          “Mother must have had somewhere important to go, other than ‘just a stroll’.  She must have hurriedly prepared this,” stated Elsa.

          “Agreed,” I said.

          Asvord sat down in one of the four chairs and told us, “Oh sit down, food is food.”

          “Oh well now; look who is all concerned about food,” I smiled.

          Asvord simply stated, “Well I’m hungry and perch is one of my favorite fish to eat.”

          “Since when?” I asked as this was the first I had heard of that.

          “Since now, because I’m hungry,” Asvord said as she bit into the cooked perch.

          I just shook my head and began eating.  Elsa just smiled and sat quietly.

          Once we were done eating, Asvord and Elsa decided to come with me to Cazi’s house to see what her and Annabeth found.  We cleaned up the table and then headed out side.

          We walked over to the stable.  After we fed our dragons a few fish and saddled them with our regular saddles, I grabbed my bow, quiver, and helmet before we led the dragons out of the stables, and headed to Cazi Olson’s house.  En-route, I slid the strap from my quiver over my head followed by my bow; I crisscrossed them, one on each shoulder.

          Landing next to Cazi’s house after three minutes, we had just enough time to dismount our dragons before Cazi and Annabeth rounded the corner of the house to go get their dragons.

          I asked Cazi, “So what is the thing you found?”

          “You’ve got to see it with your own eyes to believe it,” she stated as she and Annabeth went and got their dragons.

          “Lead the way,” Asvord said.

          Cazi and Annabeth led me and my sisters to the northwest side Berk.  We landed in the vicinity of The Cove.  We all dismounted our dragons and I asked, “So what’s the big finding?”

          “Come this way,” replied Cazi as she started leading Electic by his reins.

          We all followed Cazi as she led us through a more densely wooded area of the forest.  I thought I had recognized this place before.

          “When have I been here before?” I asked myself.

          Cazi stopped up ahead so we walked up to where she was standing.  She was standing at the peak of a hill down to a small valley.  I say “valley” but it is more of a cove surrounded by hills instead of rock walls.  This cove was about fifty yards, square.

          “Look there,” Cazi stated pointing down the embankment.

          I started looking and found what she was pointing at.

          Dragon footprints!

          “Let’s go investigate the footprints further,” I voiced.

          Asvord added, “We should probably leave our dragons here so as not to disturb any tracks of a dragon or viking.”

          “Good idea,” I agreed.  “Also, be watchful of where you step in the snow as there might be a set of tracks that are hard to see.”

          We all left our dragons at the top of the hill and then slowly walked our way down to the tracks.  I did not see any other types of tracks while on the way there.

          “Man, these dragon tracks are huge,” expressed Elsa.

          I said, “Probably two feet in diameter and two feet in length.  Therefore, this dragon is either massive or is just built with large feet.  Have any of you ever seen a track of this shape, because I certainly have not.”

           There was a short pause before, “Wait a second,” Annabeth interjected.  “When Caz and I came down here the other day and found them, I though they look kind familiar.”

          I was intrigued, “In what way?”

          “By Star Scream’s own foot print, come here I’ll show you,” she answered.

          We walked back up to the dragons and went over to Star Scream.  Annabeth ran her hand down her dragon’s right rear leg to lift up the foot.

          “See the footprint Star Scream left on the ground,” Annabeth said as she then let down Star Scream’s foot.

          I relayed, “I do see the similarities.”

          The two dragon footprints had two things in common: the length in claw marks and the shape of the footprint.

          “I wonder where the tracks lead too?” asked Elsa.

          Cazi stated, “There’s one way to find out.”

          We took our dragons reins and led them behind us as we set out to follow the tracks.  The individual footprint is very close to the preceding one, so I deducted that the dragon was walking at the time.

          “I heard about what happened with you and Koll, last night,” stated Cazi while we were still following the tracks.  “Are you sure it was him?”

          “By now,” I replied.  “I am not as sure as I was the other night it was actually Koll; but the knife on the fellow’s side I saw was Koll’s.”

          Annabeth suggested, “You could have jumped to the conclusion that since it ‘looked’ like Koll’s knife, the guy had to be Koll.”

          “That is possible,” I answered.

          “Looks like the dragon started to pick up its pace here,” pointed out Asvord.

          The tracks started to get further away from the next until the point of which they completely stopped.

          “Now what?” asked Asvord.

          Suddenly there was what sounded like a dragon shriek followed by thunder.

          “Thunder?” asked Cazi.  “But how could it thunder?  There are no storm clouds around.”

          The ground began to shake and rattle.  The dragons screamed back towards the mountain behind us.

          Asvord screamed, “Avalanche!!”

          The wind immediately came rushing towards us and was strong enough to knock Spiker and Meatballs, the whole group of vikings.  We were still in the forest, so we could not see the mountain.  But we could see the rushing snow coming through the forest and taking some of the smaller trees with it.

          We jumped up and hurriedly mounted our dragons to start flying away from the impending danger.  However, every attempt we would try to fly above the tree line the wind was too strong as it was at gale force and created too much turbulence to safely fly our dragons in; especially since we started flying from a dead stop.

          I tried to yell something to the others, but to no avail as the wind, thunder, and ground shaking caused too much noise.  So instead, I signaled to the others to follow my lead and stick close behind me.

          I thought since we could not get above the tree line at the moment, maybe if we could pick up some speed by sliding down the embankment and down the rest of the mountain, the speed we would gain would be sufficient to fly into the gale force wind from the avalanche.  I took point followed by Elsa, Cazi, Annabeth, and Asvord.

          By now the avalanche was barreling down on us at an accelerated speed every second.  We only had about a hundred yards or so lead on the front edge of the rushing snow.

          I nudged Fredrick to start flying very low to the ground to start.  Once we passed over the “valley” cove, the rest of the decline of the mountain started.  The decline was quite steep; over a thirty-five degree angle.  At that moment, I had Fredrick dive down and touchdown with the snow.  I briefly looked back to make sure everyone was behind me.  They were, but the avalanche was now no more than fifty yards behind us.

          I turned my head back to the front and hunched down on my dragon to create less drag so I could pick up speed that much quicker.

          After dodging several trees, boulders, and fallen tress by either sliding under them or gliding over them, we had now reached my dragon’s top speed at flying.  We still kept accelerating down the mountain.  A few seconds later I looked back to see we had extended our lead by about twenty-five yards.  Still, the rushing snow was too close for comfort.

          There were a few more trees and boulders to dodge and then were out in the clear.  I signaled every one to try another attempt to escape.

          Success.  We were able to get above the gale force wind.  We kept flying up until exited the avalanche’s wind.  I stopped Fredrick to hover and turned him around to see the avalanche.

          I saw Asvord coming up from behind, but she was flinging her arms to get my attention.  She had it and then she pointed down past the front of the avalanche.  I scanned ahead of it and saw there was a person with a white dragon near the edge of the cliff, three miles ahead of the front line of the avalanche.

          Without saying a word to the others, I nudged Fredrick with both my feet, twice.  This was the signal to dive bomb.  Fredrick dove straight down towards the rushing snow.  As I passed Asvord I waved her to come follow me.  I judged how far away I was and at the last second pulled Fredrick up to be parallel to the rushing snow.  Even though Fredrick did not have to use his wings to stay upright, I urged him to do so, so we could accelerate to take the lead in front of the avalanche.

          Within a matter of ten or so seconds, I was flying faster than I had ever done so before with Fredrick.  We then were able to zoom past the front edge of the avalanche.  However, I only had a mile left to catch up with the endangered person.  Now I was able to identify the dragon.

          It was a Snoggletog Wraith!

          I spotted a red flash of something next to the dragon.  It was red hair!

          “Could it be…?” I thought

          I wondered why they were not just flying away.  By getting closer to them, I saw the dragon lying on its side… not moving.  Also, the red-haired person seemed to be under the Snoggletog Wraith.

          I did not have time to land and use Fredrick to push the dragon off the person, so I did the next best thing.  I touched Fredrick with one hand near the top, front of his head.  This was my silent signal for him to fire.  I aimed my dragon at the Snoggletog Wraith.  I think Fredrick knew what I was trying to do, as he did not build up his blast as much as he normally would.  He did just enough to get the Snoggletog Wraith moving.  This allowed the red-haired person to get out from under the dragon.

          The person started after their dragon.  I knew what I had to do, but I was only twenty yards from them.  I quickly glanced back to check my lead on the avalanche and saw I had barely enough time to accomplish what I had in mind.  Also, Asvord was directly behind me.

          The Snoggletog Wraith was about to fall over the edge of the cliff.

          “Fredrick!” I exclaimed.  “Rescue!”

          With that I balanced myself on my dragon, stood up, and jumped off my dragon.  As best I could, I dove off in a position that I could slide on the snow.  I got out my bow with a certain arrow from my quiver.  This arrow had a rope tided to the end of it.  With the rushing snow was nearly on top of us, did not have time to get up.  So I intentionally slid into the woman.

          I saw that the person was in fact the red-haired woman!

          “Why are you doing this, Jarl?!” the person screamed.  “You want to get us all killed?!”

          “Grab my waist!” I ordered.

          She did and I drew my bow.  Then we both slid off the edge of the cliff.  I timed it so that we I let my arrow go, my aim was right near topside edge of the cliff.  As I had hoped, the arrow lodged into the side of the mountain one-fourth the way.  I grabbed the rope to slow our momentum down.  However, when the slack in the rope was gone, the rope tugged and broke off the arrow.  I knew something like this would happen, so that is why I brought Asvord as backup.  I looked up to see her do a half barrel roll and curve down into a dive after us.  I looked below and the water was getting every so closer.  Once I looked back up, Asvord and Spiker had completed the barrel roll and was in position to use Spiker’s claws to catch us with.  Two seconds later, me and the red-haired woman were in the clutches of Spiker.  The moment Spiker had us, she spread her wings as wide as she could and shot upwards.

          I thought to myself, “That was way too close for comfort.”

          There was a rock formation about another hundred yards away; Asvord was flying towards it.

          I looked back while still having a hold of Spiker and the red-haired woman, the snow was pouring off the side of the cliff.  Huge chunks of boulders and several trees could be seen splashing down into the water.

          We were almost to the rock formation.

          "I wonder how Fredrick did in rescuing the Snoggletog Wraith?" I thought.  I had been too focused and concerned in rescuing the woman, I forgot about the dragons.