A/N: So this fic is a bit of an AU, merging the world of HTTYD and ATLA in a way I hope makes sense. Berk, the surrounding isles, and the small landmass known as the "mainland" are considered in Air Nomad legend to be something like Atlantis, a society that angered the spirits and disappeared behind a wall of storms. The Earth Kingdom, Water Tribes, and Fire Nation aren't aware of their existence at all, thinking that patch of sea to simply be a place too dangerous to sail, much like the Bermuda Triangle.
The fic is set five years after the events of HTTYD 2 and ATLA.
Here Be Dragons
Chapter 1
Year 2 BG
The young monk wiggled on his cushion as he looked at the pai sho board. He had trouble sitting still. He always had trouble sitting still, in fact, which meant he had to resist the urge to get up and scoot around the room or do handstands or do anything other than sitting down. It was a nice evening outside and the motes of dust dancing in the pale rays of sun filtering in through his window tempted him into dancing around, too. The sun was setting, though, and it was unlikely he'd get to go outside again. He had a pretty early bedtime because he woke up so early every day.
His attention span (or lack thereof) was why Gyatso always made him play pai sho, so he'd actually slow down for a little while and focus. Aang was already close to being an Airbending master - he was way ahead of all his friends and he even had a neat trick he was going to show the Council of Elders soon to see if he passed the test - but when Airbending came as naturally to you as breathing, that wasn't the same thing as having discipline. Aang was doing so well they thought that at ten years old he might become the youngest Airbending master in Air Nomad history and discipline was what Gyatso thought he needed to actually become it.
Still, even with how antsy Aang felt, Gyatso had picked a good way to keep him focused on the game. Besides his usual jokes (and attempts at cheating that kept Aang on his toes) he had decided to tell him a story.
One that he'd gotten distracted from for a moment.
"Are you listening, Aang?"
"Now I am!" Aang responded cheerfully, flashing Gyatso a big 'See how good I am listening?' grin.
Gyatso only smiled a gentle smile in return.
"Let us go back to the beginning then! Once upon a time, when the world was young, humans and spirits coexisted, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in conflict. One group of humans that often fought against the spirits sought to free themselves from their influence. So they built a fleet of ships and started a perilous journey over the ocean, hoping to find a place where they could build a colony of their own, away from the rest of the world. It was a dangerous journey, where they had to fight ocean spirits that they displeased alongside the natural dangers of the sea. Before long, half of their fleet had been destroyed by the spirits and by storms, and yet they traveled on, hoping to find a place to call home."
"Why didn't they just try to get along with the spirits? Wouldn't that have been easier?"
"Some people are blind to the simplest solutions that lay in front of them. And some people see themselves as above the spirits. Some have a nature of wanting to exert power over the world around them instead of living in harmony with it. They believe they can crush the mountains, or tame the seas, or destroy the natural world without consequence."
"But nobody can do that. Even the best Earthbenders can't crush a whole mountain and even the best Waterbender can't control the whole ocean. That's impossible."
"Exactly! Their desire to control the world around them, to have dominion over it and the spirits was their undoing. They eventually found the place they were looking for, a land of many islands. At first, it seemed there were no spirits there, but that was only because they weren't attuned to the natural world. So they spread out over the land and built colonies and villages, destroying the trees and plants and trying to shape the land into what they wanted it to be. Eventually, this angered the guardian spirits of the lands they had taken over, great spirit dragons -"
"Like the dragons we have around the Four Nations?"
"These dragons were different. The dragons of the Four Nations are attuned to the spirit world, but they're still flesh and blood. In fact, the last Avatar, Roku, was friends with a dragon! He allowed Avatar Roku to ride him everywhere."
"Wooooow! How did he get it to let him ride it? I want to find a dragon! Do you think if I ask really nicely one will let me ride it?"
Gyatso laughed gently at Aang's enthusiasm.
"Perhaps one day a dragon might become your friend, too, but the people of the many islands weren't so polite or kind to the dragon spirits they found as Avatar Roku. They waged a terrible war against the spirit dragons, one that left many dead on both sides. Eventually only one of the spirit dragons was left and as it lay dying it gave them a terrible warning. It told them that because of their violence and rage they would be punished."
Aang's eyes went wide, as he listened. He was so transfixed he almost didn't see Gyatso try to cheat again.
"Hey!" he laughed, moving the pai sho tile Gyatso had been nudging back into place. "No fair!"
Gyatso laughed again, pleased to see that his charge was focused enough catch him.
"How did the dragons punish them?" Aang asked, his expression sobering.
"The dying dragon told them that from then on forward, the spirit dragons would reincarnate as flesh and blood dragons and as long as they lived in conflict with the natural world, as long as the people of the islands were hostile, they would forever be at war. That would be their punishment, endless conflict. The dragon warned them that they would never be rid of them - any time the dragons died they would just reincarnate once more."
"That's terrible," Aang said sadly. "But why didn't they just stop fighting? All they had to do was just stop fighting, right?"
"By now, their hearts were full of hatred, and they refused to let it go. Because of this the dragon also didn't want them to leave the islands and carry that hatred with them out into the rest of the world, so he called on the spirits of the sea and air to cause the islands to disappear behind a wall of storms that would sink any ship that tried to enter or leave and create such winds that no one could fly past them or over them. Or so the legend goes."
"Is it a true story or is it just a legend?"
"No one know for sure! It is said that Air Nomads once visited the islands in their travels, because the people there were less hostile to other humans and were willing to trade. During the end of their war with the spirits, an Air Nomad named Jampa, who had visited the islands, tried to implore them to make peace, but his warnings were ignored. It is said that he was the last to leave the islands on his flying bison before he saw it consumed by the wall of storms."
"So all those people were just stuck there? Are they still stuck there?" Aang asked, still wide-eyed.
"Only if the story is real. Jampa was supposedly the one that brought the story of what happened to the people of the islands back to the other Air Nomads and there is an area of the sea to the northwest of the Fire Nation where there are terrible storms that make the area too dangerous for anyone to fly or sail near them. But the Fire Nation and the Water Tribes think that part of the sea is just naturally dangerous and think nothing else of it. And the story is very old; It's been passed down through many generations of Air Nomads so it may just be made up - a cautionary tale. But whether it's fiction or not, its lesson is very clear."
Aang was used to Gyatso telling him stories and expecting him to tell him what the lesson or message was so his face screwed up as he thought about it.
"The lesson is that fighting and anger and causing suffering just leads to more suffering. The people of those islands got stuck in an endless cycle of war and violence because they wouldn't stop hurting the dragon spirits. And the other lesson is that people should live in peace with the spirits."
"Exactly. The world is made of cycles, Aang."
"Like the Avatar cycle?"
"That's one of them but there are more cycles in the world, cycles of violence and retribution and cycles of peace and kindness." Gyatso smiled, and then looked out the window, at the waning light that was now casting Aang's room in shadow. "And another cycle is day and night! Now that it's night-time it's time for you to go to bed."
Aang groaned. "The sun isn't all the way down yet! Can't I stay up a little longer? We're not even done our pai sho game."
Gyatso looked at the board, picked up a tile, and in a few simple jumps he won the game.
"Now we are!"
Aang just laughed at being beaten so suddenly and soundly. Realizing he'd been thoroughly beaten at this whole bedtime thing as well, he hopped up and jumped into bed, airbending his blanket over him. Gyatso closed Aang's curtains to the last of the dim evening light.
"If it was real and wasn't just a legend," said Aang, pulling his blanket up to his chin, "do you think the people stuck on those islands will ever be able to stop fighting?"
He didn't like the idea that they'd be stuck there forever and never find peace.
"One would hope so! But if they're still there and if the storms are still raging on then they've been at war for a very long time," said Gyatso. "So long that they perhaps don't even realize how much of the world there is outside what they know. We're lucky in that we have the Avatar to help maintain balance in the world. Cut off from the Four Nations and the Avatar, it would take someone very special to bring about such great change after so many generations of violence."
"Maybe one of them could be like Avatar Roku and make friends with a dragon."
"I won't say it's impossible, because nothing truly is! But if the story is true then for a people so used to conflict, such a thing wouldn't be easy..."
107 Years Later...
"WAAAHOOOOOOOOOOO!" Hiccup crowed as he and Toothless shot out of a dive at breakneck speed. "Yeeeaah! Let's go, bud!"
This had been a looooong trip so far and the two of them occasionally got bored. They'd found a small island to camp on for the night so after a meal and some sleep, the two of them were refreshed and ready for another day of exploring. Like they did on so many days, they'd decided to start their day with a nice unleisurely morning flight.
As usual they worked effortlessly together, and Hiccup reveled in the feeling the same way he always did as they flew. They were two halves of one whole and just like the line between man and dragon was so thin as to nearly be nonexistent, the same went for what separated them from the sky. Sometimes it felt to Hiccup that he wasn't even a person anymore, that the cool wind had filled him up from head to toe until he was a part of it.
The breeze was nice here, still cool but devoid of the bitter bite of the wind back home. Down this far to the southeast, the seas and winds warmed up significantly and the light of the sun was actually capable of warming his face whenever he wasn't wearing his helmet.
"Oh, this is amazing," said Hiccup as their flying leveled out. "It's just so much warmer down here."
The cold was something every Viking simply got used to but it still wasn't exactly pleasant to live somewhere where you had to worry about bits of your body freezing solid and snapping off. Where they were flying now was so far south that the leather Hiccup was wearing was actually holding just a little too much heat in.
And that was great. He had never once in his life actually had the thought 'I'm feeling too hot, maybe I should take something off.' At least, he'd never thought it outside the forge.
Far off in the distance, a shape loomed up and Hiccup heard a rumbling sound that made it clear they'd reached their destination.
"I think this is it up ahead. Let's get higher up - and avoid going directly over top. We learned our lesson last time."
Toothless chuffed in agreement, making an annoyed sound that communicated 'And whose idea was that?' very clearly.
They got closer and closer until the volcano they were looking for finally loomed up in front of them.
"It's exactly where the Chief of the Green Isles said it was."
Hiccup and Toothless did a few lazy flybys.
It was exactly where it was supposed to be, except he didn't see what else was supposed to be there, what they'd all said was out there - every chief, every village elder, every sailor that had gone out to the edges. His mother had said the same thing, that in all the times she'd traveled out a certain distance that it'd been there.
And the volcano…the volcano only confirmed what they'd said.
"Look at that. See the way it's shaped on that side? It fits what they all told me. Let's set down over there. I want to check the map again, just to be sure."
They came in for a landing on a rock formation a safe distance away from the volcano and Hiccup hopped off of Toothless' back. For a moment, he stared at the volcano, watching the steam rise from the lava pouring over the edges of the cliff on the one side of the volcano into the sea. He looked at the rock formations around it all and saw the signs of extreme erosion, as if wind and water had worn them down as fast as the volcano could make them.
He pulled out his map, lifting up his helmet so he could take a better look at it, kneeling against the stone. Toothless peered over his shoulder.
"It's the right distance. This is it, this is what they were talking about. Look at the stone." He gestured to the side of the volcano. "One side of the volcano is worn down, like it was eroded by something, and the other isn't. All the rock formations are worn down on this side and not on the other side of the volcano. It all fits."
He gestured out to the east.
"Annnd despite all that? Nothing!"
In the few short years he'd been chief, with the help of his mother and his friends, he'd pushed at every edge of the map, and whether he'd traveled north, south, east, or west, he'd found the same thing, villages talking about an edge to it all. A part of the sea filled with storms where the wind and rain was so terrible that it sunk any ship that tried to go through it. Even his mother had found the same thing, traveled so far in one direction once that she'd run into it, too. She said the wind had been so bad that she and Cloudjumper'd had to turn back. She even tried going over it, going so high up into the sky that the air had gone cold and thin, but the wind was still too strong and she hadn't been able to pass.
North, south, east, or west, every village or island on the edges had people that said the same thing, that there were storms that made the sea and sky untraversable.
The volcano even confirmed it. This was where the chief of the Green Isles said the barrier had existed and that the massive volcano was pressed up right against it, with one side weathering the storm and the other free of it. Sure enough, the strange lopsided growth of the volcano made it clear that one side of it had been heavily eroded by wind and waves and rain and that the other hadn't. The lava seemed to be piling up and actually building formations now without interference but the way it'd cooled and formed rock made it seem like that was a relatively recent change.
The storms were gone. Kaput. There was nothing but clear sky and smooth sailing.
Which explained the dragons. A few months ago they'd starting flying in from the east, frightening the villages closest to the edge of the maps. The were massive, beautiful dragons, even larger than Timberjacks, with red and blue bodies and heads with scaly golden crests that were shaped in a way that made them almost look as if they were made of only other dragons Hiccup seen that were large were the Bewilderbeasts and the Foreverwings and they were earthbound due to their size.
They'd named them Brightclaws due to the fact their feet and claws were usually gold. Fortunately, despite their size, they were quite peaceful and seemed content to hunt whales and seals and scooped whole schools of fish out of the ocean with their massive mouths, using their teeth to filter them out of the water. When Hiccup and Toothless had flown close to one once, it'd shot them a look that'd seemed like a simple 'Oh, look at you there' and continued on its way as if they hadn't been there at all.
In fact, some started to move in from the east right then, a flock of about six of them, and Hiccup watched as they gracefully flew overhead.
"This is amazing. Every village - every single village, mom, everyone - said we were blocked off by storms. Like a massive...ring around the archipelago and the mainland. This is supposed to be the edge - the very edge - and what's here?" He gestured to the east. "Nothing!"
A great, big, wonderful nothing!
He turned to Toothless.
"Except it's not nothing. If the storms that were here are gone and the Brightwings changed their migration patterns to find new territory, then there has to be some kind of landmass out there. Other islands, at least."
Hiccup took out his pencil and scribbled on his map, and then looked to Toothless.
"Do you know what this means?"
Toothless chuffed in an affectionate way that implied that yes, he knew, but that Hiccup could go ahead and say it anyway because he was so excited by it that he wouldn't be able to stop him.
"It means there could even be a whole continent out there. Maybe one that's never been explored before - or even better, one that has people on it. There could be whole tribes out there that are completely different from us. We could open up new trade routes, exchange books like we did with the mainland - just think of all the things we could learn from each other. And the only thing that was in our way is gone, for whatever reason."
Maybe some kind of strange shift in the climate? The storms definitely hadn't been a temporary thing. The villages that had tried sailing through them now and again had said the storms had been there for generations.
"The whole world is out there waiting for us, bud."
Much as Hiccup wanted to, he couldn't fly out there right away, though. He only had enough rations to get back home. And the Brightclaws were huge and could cover incredible distances without getting tired. That meant that whatever else was out there might be a very long distance away. If they were going to go on expedition into the unknown they had to plan it carefully so he had enough food and fresh water, and so he and Toothless didn't wind up stranded in the middle of the ocean with nowhere to land.
They also needed to come up with a plan for first contact with any outside tribes. Hiccup had his usual "don't worry, the dragons we're riding won't eat you" routine but that was with peoples that spoke the same - or at least similar - languages. Even the dialects some villages used that were hard to understand had some similarities to the languages around the rest of the archipelago - and all of them had similarities with how they spoke on the mainland.
That made sense, given their history. That was one one of the most interesting things Hiccup had discovered in his travels. He'd discovered the mainland, a fairly large island landmass to the west of Berk, and after they'd worked out the language differences, he'd spoken to the scholars there, and had found out that all of the tribes that'd spread out to the islands had sailed away to create their own colonies, hoping to escape the dragons that plagued the mainlands.
It hadn't exactly gone as planned, naturally, because the dragons were everywhere. And because of the storms, which had apparently kept the tribes on the farthest edges of the map from going any further.
Everything was different now, though. Every village and every tribe that the Berk Vikings had made contact with in the last five years had been taught to live in peace with the dragons around them. Even on the mainlands, after immeasurable years of bloodshed (thousands and thousands, judging from the historical records), had finally accepted what most of the tribes were calling the "dragon peace."
And now, for whatever reason, the storms were gone.
It didn't occur to Hiccup even once that both were connected.
Hiccup folded up his map again and put it away, then hopped on Toothless again, flipping his helmet down.
"C'mon, bud, we have to head back and talk to the others. And figure out where to go from here."
He couldn't wait to share this with Astrid and his mother.
As he and Toothless took to the air again, they were watched.
The spirits around the archipelago had only been allowed by La to interfere with this part of the ocean because of their promise and that promise had been fulfilled. They didn't dare risk the ocean spirit's wrath by continuing to interfere with the sea longer than they needed to.
Voicelessly, one the spirits of the sea whispered to one of the spirits of the air, "The boy doesn't know what he's done. Thousands of years of bloodshed and he doesn't even know."
"How would he?" one of the spirits of the air whispered back. "The people of the islands have all forgotten. You know how humans are, always forgetting the things that are most important."
"How do we know this isn't a mistake?"
"The curse was one that was meant to be broken. It was a punishment meant to last only as long as they kept killing. Now they've stopped. The dragons never meant for that punishment to last into times of peace. The point was peace.
"They might fight the other humans out beyond the rest of the sea."
"We made a promise and that promise was fulfilled. What the humans do now is no longer our concern."
The skies and seas were open to them and the humans could now do whatever they wished.
For good or ill.