~ HTTYD ~

Chief at the Ends of the World

An HTTYD Story by Toothlesslove (my name in the HTTYD fandom)

–– Chapter 1: Victory of Tears ––

Sunrise glinted off the rooftops and smoke curled from dragon nostrils as Vikings gathered in the village plaza. The smell of burnt wood tainted the air forty feet from the nearest structure from where Hiccup stood in the plaza center. He'd only first stepped on this forsaken rocky island ten days ago, but already the people's faces grew impatient in their eyes and defiant in their hearts. Children spat at his boots; old men grimaced and stood to full height as he walked past their dwelling places. It was a small island, hilly with substantial forest but even more bare rocks for beaches, and it reminded him of Berk, the old Berk, the one with dragons in the cliffsides living among a people who had long ago made peace with their enemies. But those days were over now, and this wasn't Berk. The only dragons here withered inside cages, waiting for the day they were sold and separated from the only life they knew.

What was he doing here, except to liberate what these people had enslaved? Then why did he feel like a conquerer?

Astrid, Valka, Snotlout, Spitelout, and his other warriors stood in line on either side of him, as the people whom they had fought for ten days now stood before Hiccup. From what he could tell, every man, woman, and child was in attendance to listen to what he had to say. Even the village chief, just a few days before so arrogant and fierce in the battle on the beach, stood in the front of his warriors with downcast eyes before the Berkians who had won against him. Only his second-in-command dared to lift his gaze towards Hiccup, and the hate within those eyes spoke more than words ever could. Hiccup cleared his throat, wishing painfully that he wasn't alone here, the only one to speak and calm their frustrated anger.

"People of Minkelsk," he began, "our two tribes have fought bitterly over our disagreement about dragons. As chief of New Berk, I alone am responsible for the war between us."

Hiccup paused as the discontent rippled and shook through the crowd, like angry storm waves subdued and imprisoned in a bay.

"I assure you, the only reason we ever entered this conflict was to free creatures who were helpless," he said.

In the front row, a woman shouted back at him. "My brother was butchered by these helpless dragons!"

"Yeah, terrorist!" another muttered in agreement, though this newfound defiance quickly cooled in the air above their heads. Hiccup had grown used to that word. He slapped his left hand sideways, a silent command to Snotlout to stop edging forward, sword in hand, towards the general direction of the protesting woman in the crowd. Enough with the blood and the swords. Times like these reminded him that he wasn't just any Viking. He'd reluctantly taken the title of chief when his father died that long year ago, and he had tried to use it for good - and yet here he was, perhaps making the worst mistakes of his life. If there was anyone who could stop the bloodshed, it was him. And then again, only he could have been knuckle-headed enough unintentionally to conquer another tribe while saving dragons.

"There is no more reason to fight each other, but I demand absolute peace. If you persist to enslave and sell these dragons throughout the archipelago, we will hold this island and save the dragons ourselves. But if you free the dragons, I promise you -"

He paused, casting his eyes across the audience, to the little children who clung to their mothers and hated him in their eyes. A commotion rolled across the people, faces upturned in skeptical expectation.

"- we will withdraw from your island peacefully and never threaten you again. It's your choice. I give you a week to decide."

A hitch caught in his throat at the end of the ultimatum. Look at him, making threats, blustering like every other Viking worth his muscle. Whom did he think he was? He was a hiccup - a scrawny, skinny image of a young man barely out of boyhood, made into a chief simply because his father had died a year ago. These villagers must have thought as much as he finished his speech and hastily joined the ranks of his warriors. He resisted the temptation to downcast his eyes, though he badly wanted to see something else, to be somewhere else. With Astrid and Snotlout behind him, he walked through the center of a crowd that effortlessly parted to let him through. One of the village elders led him to an exquisitely designed house that belonged to the chief and his family.

This was meant to be his temporary residence on an island that he wanted no part of. Its only fault lay in its path between the hidden world of dragons and the majority of islands to the east and south, from whom it had developed its lucrative dragon selling operations that had persisted for hundreds of years. The trade was vastly extensive; the details, grotesque. Dragons were sold not just for slave labor and the horrors of the entertainment ring, but for mass slaughter for their hides, their tusks and claws, and their meat. A whole generation of species was being systematically wiped out and dragon families torn apart as thousands of their babies were plucked from seaside nests and sold as exotic delicacies for the wealthy customers of the populated southern lands, lands even beyond the realm of the Viking. The demands of trade seemed to have burgeoned dramatically in recent years, according to records in the Great Hall of this island. Minkelsk wasn't the only villain in the trade; no, it was just the spearpoint of a very extensive operation among many Viking island chains. And yet somehow, thanks be to Odin, despite this horrible trading network and distant travels of this people and their ilk, they had never discovered the coveted home of the dragon, a home that Hiccup knew and protected above all the things in his heart.

Shimmering wooden carvings of dragons, obsidian just like ocean-washed stones, rapt his attention on the mantlepiece in the large main room. Sleek, smooth bodies, great wingspans, beautiful fires jetting from their mouths. Details too real to be created from mere distant observation. Such detail that he had not witnessed with his own eyes in far too long.

Before he could stop himself, he was dreaming of Toothless again. Not just any dragon, and not even just any Night Fury, the king of all dragons. The dragon who knew him better than any human did, the dragon who never left his side nor ever let harm fall his way in the long six years of their friendship. His best friend. The bright, green eyes happy with life, the smoothly scaled skin underneath him as they rode together in the sky, countless skies of night and day and storm and windswept sunlight - an endless paradise, a home in the unknown between two beings of different species and yet the very same soul. Hiccup knew Toothless, he knew all of him, and Toothless knew Hiccup, right down to every weakness and every insecurity. He had shared things with that dragon that no one would understand. And the dragon had shared something with him that the world still did not know: Love. That a beast and a monster who could tear your children apart and set fire to your village had the ability not just to be kind and gentle, but to love you with the fiercest, deepest loyalty - that was the impossible idea that changed his life. That dragon named Toothless changed his entire world. Because of what Toothless had shown him, he knew there was a better future that was possible, a future worth fighting for.

And now, Toothless was gone. All the dragons were gone. He had told Toothless to go, for the sake of all dragons in this cruel world, and so Toothless did. Every last free dragon in the known world, who could hear the Night Fury's call, had fled to safety into that hidden place under the sea, the original home of the dragon, never to be disturbed by the violence of humankind ever again. And that meant that he also must endure one last price of love, for the sake of both their worlds: To remain separate from Toothless for the rest of their lives.

And that's when he realized, standing beside the fireside of a foreign chief's home, his hand caressing the mantelpiece of cold, dead carvings, that tears were dangerously close to spilling from his eyes.

He'd been haunted by such tears far too often during these past several weeks, ever since he had told Toothless goodbye.

In that moment full of memory, the last person that he wanted to see was Snotlout. And yet there Snotlout was, in front of him by the fire, as if all Hiccup's grief had blinded his sight as well as his heart. How Snotlout got there, with the smuggest expression on his face, was beyond Hiccup. The painfully tender privacy that he craved for was gone.

It was clear that Snotlout had seen his emotions. Hiccup tossed his head, and, almost in rebellion, let the tears streak down his cheeks. But the expression on Snotlout's face changed, tempered its glee just a little, and Hiccup remembered him, too. For Snotlout also had to say goodbye to Hookfang, his cantankerous but beloved Monstrous Nightmare. Three weeks ago, it was the first time Hiccup had seen Snotlout openly weep in public. And so all the people of Berk had to deal with the intense pain of losing their dragons, everyone in her or his own way. In this sense, Hiccup couldn't be selfish at all. He was their leader after all, and he led a people still in mourning.

Snotlout was sensitive enough not to mention his chief's tears, yet he was riled up and excited over something else that Hiccup had said to the people of Minkelsk.

"Hiccup, these people kill dragons! It's stupid to offer them a whole week. Maybe just a day or two at most, but that's it!" Snotlout told him. The young Viking didn't seem to mind that villagers of the island were milling around in the same room, clearly able to hear the youthful warrior's discussions with his chief. Snotlout had no concept of diplomacy.

Hiccup swallowed the remainder of his salty sadness, and forced his mouth open, trying to sound remotely confident in his beliefs. "I don't believe we have the right to change a people's way of life without giving them enough time to think about it," was all he could think of saying, and instantly regretted how hypocritical it sounded. Didn't he just fight a war to snatch away a people's livelihood from themselves? Imposing his own morality on a captive populace was his new forte, apparently. If only he remembered that it all began accidentally during the first dragon raid that he had led since the dragons had disappeared. Just because free dragons were safe in the hidden world didn't mean that this safety extended to all the caged and enslaved dragons scattered across the Viking archipelago. And so his mission to save dragons was more urgent than ever, as the populations of free dragons mysteriously fled from the human world and humans ramped up their pursuit of what was once an abundant resource easy for the exploitation. Evil was becoming desperate. And such desperation meant that his world was more perilous than ever. Hiccup and his people had never stopped their raids to save the dragons, and now this was the consequence of their vigilantism.

But how a battle begins doesn't matter; it's how it ends and who ends it that does.

"I'd say we keep the island and stop this dragon business in its tracks," Snotlout informed Hiccup, as if the decision was the easiest thing in the world. The boy-warrior, for that's what he was, always a rival from Hiccup's youth and now forced to live under Hiccup's command, suddenly looked proudly into Hiccup's eyes, almost yearning for his approval. "I can lead this island," Snotlout volunteered. "Put me in charge while you rule New Berk, and I can stamp out any dragon-selling activities in their tracks!"

"You said 'in their tracks' twice, El Capitan! You left your brains on the battlefield!" Tuffnut roasted Snotlout from across the room. The twin snickered with his sister, Ruffnut, as they both screwed their faces into horrible contortions in Snotlout's direction.

"Shut up! None of you don't know anything about being chief!" Snotlout shouted back. The twin's irreverence had shattered Snotlout's delicately cultivated ego.

Yet for the first time in his life, Hiccup had clearly seen the ambition of his cousin Snotlout. Hiccup had always known it was there, and it was annoying, especially in the days of their childhood when he bullied Hiccup. But this was different. Snotlout was serious. He had mentioned wanting "to be in charge" of the island of Minkelsk two other times since they first landed here. At first Hiccup chalked it up to Snotlout's ever-present trivial boasts, the kind that had become mildly amusing after years without results or intent behind them. Yet Hiccup had the feeling that the joke was up. Perhaps losing Hookfang was the catalyst Snotlout needed to reignite his age-old desires and turn his rivalry with Hiccup into a new power struggle.

Just as Hiccup was feeling squeezed in from all sides, something new and urgent pushed all other thoughts away from his mind. Astrid Hofferson strode up to him and Snotlout as they stood by the fireside, with a message and a neutral objectivity on her face that masked the opposite reaction in his heart. "Hiccup, I need to talk with you in private. The chieftains of the archipelago have requested your presence at an official gathering two days' sail from here."

"It's about this island, isn't it?"

Hiccup already knew what they wanted. Judging by the deep concern now seeping through her warrior exterior, the furrows deepening through her face and the softness of her eyes mitigating her stare into his, Astrid also knew it.

"If I don't come, it means war," he said.

"Yeah, Hiccup."