| “ | I am an EXTERMINATOR. Imprisoned in my egg, I can see through the clear transparent walls of the shell I cannot break. After fifteen years of scratching I look out onto the world that I am dying to IGNITE, and over the years, my fury has been simmering, stewing, boiling, and now it is SMOKING HOT. | „ |
| ~ An Exterminator's internal monologue. |
The Exterminators are an exceptionally dangerous species of dragon in the How to Train Your Dragon book series, appearing as the secondary antagonists of book #5, How to Twist a Dragon's Tale.
Description[]
Exterminators are black in color, although their skin is said to be partly transparent. They have two hearts and must be killed twice before they actually die. Although extremely small when born, adult exterminators can grow to be three times the size of a lion. Exterminators possess ten long retractable claws that they use to trap and kill their prey.
When an Exterminator egg is laid, it cannot hatch until it comes into contact with lava. The eggs are commonly found near volcanoes for this reason. Exterminators are alive and aware when they are inside the eggs, which causes them to hate the outside world as they resent being trapped within the shell. Once they hatch the Exterminators yearn to burn everything around them with their fiery breath; a group of Exterminators are capable of devastating entire islands.
Exterminators have one natural predator - the Fire Dragon, a gigantic dragon that hatches in erupting volcanoes and feeds exclusively on Exterminators and the occasional human.
How to Twist a Dragon's Tale[]
Millions of Exterminator eggs on Lava-Lout Island are in danger of hatching because the island's volcano will soon erupt. It had previously been kept dormant by the proximity of the "Fire Stone", but the stone was stolen by Stoick the Vast. The evil Alvin the Treacherous arranges for statues of him to be built all over the island, so that the infant Exterminators spend years looking at his statue and come to worship him. Alvin hatches several Exterminators early and sends them to kill his archnemesis Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third on the Isle of Berk.
The six Exterminators burn a forest on Berk and try to kill Hiccup along with his fellow trainee Vikings, but only succeed in killing a few deer before they are defeated by the arrival of the heroic Humungously Hotshot. Humungous reveals the origin of the Exterminators and that the Lava-Lout volcano will soon explode, and Hiccup resolves to return the Fire Stone in order to prevent disaster.
When Hiccup and his friends arrive on the island, they encounter Alvin, riding atop a fully-grown Exterminator and determined to make the volcano erupt so that he can conquer the Barbaric Archipelago with his army of dragons. It turns out that Alvin wants the Fire Stone because it can control the Exterminators. The heroes try to throw the Fire Stone into the volcano, but are pinned down by Alvin's Exterminator (although they stab out one of its hearts, it does not die), and the volcano erupts.
All of the Exterminator eggs hatch and the Archipelago appears doomed. Just at this moment, Hiccup realises that the Fire Stone is actually a Fire Dragon egg, hence why the Exterminators are afraid of it. His dragon Toothless deposits the stone into the volcano, and it hatches and releases the Fire Dragon, which devours all of the Exterminators. The last Exterminator to be eaten is the one ridden by Alvin.
