A Dance of Ice and Fire (HOTD/The Ice Dragon)

[Firewillreign]

A crossover AU between House of the Dragon and The Ice Dragon by George RR Martin, because fuck Targryen politics. If you self-destructive assholes want to fight, I'll throw you a goddamn APOCALYPSE!!!

Inspired by the fic the Dragons Of Ice and Fire.

Before someone crucifies me for starting yet another fic on account of my terrible self-control, I'd like to defend myself and say that I had this idea for a while and couldn't get it out of my head, and then I had a really bad week and just needed to write something to get my mind of it. We'll see how it goes.

---

Long ago in a distant faraway land amidst a blistering ungodly winter storm colder and harsher than any that had come before, a girl was born.

Her father was a humble crofter, and her mother his much-beloved woman who died to birth the girl, tears freezing solid as her skin grew pale and cold and deathly, and the babe she brought forth into the world was almost no better.

Quiet, even as an infant, with skin as pale as snow, hair only a few shades darker, and eyes as bright as blue stars.

A winter child, the people of her village would whisper amongst themselves as she grew, a creature more cold than warm.

More ice than fire.

More dead than living, the cruelest of them hissed behind false smiles and closed doors, a damned life reared from a dead womb and so cursed and reviled by gods and men alike.

At first, the whispers did not matter, for in spite of his tragedy, her father's love for her was true. But it was the love of a grieving man, tainted by the shadow of loss, and it was never enough to banish the cold and the grasping specter of winter from the girl's heart and soul.

The rest of her kin fared no better. An elder sister and a brother older still who could do no more than watch and despair as the little girl grew alone, quiet and hushed, never forgotten but never welcome among the rest of their people, for what fool would risk drawing the wrath of the gods by inviting a child so clearly accursed in their eyes amongst their number?

No, best the ill-begotten plague keep to her own company unto her death and spare them all any further misery, for her mere existence was burden enough.

And yet, despite the will of the many, the girl whose name was Adara was not to be alone forever.

On the eve of her fourth year, when at last her father let her out to play among the snow and the ice lizards who carved their homes beneath frozen rock, when the cold and the dark grew great enough that all the other children had long fled home, the ice dragon came to her.

The ice dragon was a crystalline white, that shade of white that is so hard and cold that it is almost blue. It was covered with hoarfrost, so when it moved its skin broke and crackled as the crust on the snow crackles beneath a man's boots, and flakes of rime fell off.

Its eyes were deep blue and icy, mirrors to her own. Its wings were vast and batlike, colored all a faint translucent blue. Adara could see the clouds through them, and oftentimes the moon and stars, when the beast wheeled in frozen circles through the skies.

Its teeth were icicles, a triple row of them, jagged spears of unequal length, white against its deep blue maw. When the ice dragon beat its wings, the cold winds blew and the snow swirled and scurried and the world entire seemed to shrink and shiver.

The people of her village feared the ice dragon.

A creature of legend and storied power, whose mere sighting was considered a grave omen that would foretell the most brutal of winter storms, and all knew to fear it.

It was no enemy of man, but it was no friend either, for winter-made flesh cared naught for the trials of lesser beings and devastated kings and paupers alike.

But Adara was different, as she had always been from her very first breath.

She was herself a winter child, and the cold that snuffed out all warmth and heralded the harshest of seasons was as much a part of her as it was of the ice dragon.

So when the young dragon landed before her, half again the size of a mammoth and near enough to swallow her whole in a single bite, Adara did not shy away from it.

Instead, she raised a single tentative hand and pressed her palm to the mighty beast's snout as none had ever dared to before.

"Hello." The girl whispered in awed delight, hand tracing hoarfrost-sprinkled scales ever so gently. "Won't you be my friend?"

...​

The girl sang to it, soft and clumsy, and told it stories that none of her kind would care to hear from her. She brushed hands along frozen scars from battles against his kin and bared both heart and soul to it as she lay against its side, content in a way she'd never been before.

The ice dragon lingered only a single night before disappearing into the ether, wings catching on northern gales as its nature called it to back to the fabled lands of always winter where not even Adara would dare to follow.

"I shall miss you." She whispered as it took flight, and the words were carried by the wind only for a moment before fading into nothing.

That should have been the end of it.

But something strange and wholly incomprehensible had been forged that night between the child and the creature of the skies, and the beast was slow to forget. Like would always call to like, and the ice dragon returned to the clearing where it'd met the child who was kin to it the very same night of the following year.

Adara was waiting for it there, and when at last it landed, she did not hesitate to run in and press herself against its snout in a gesture as warm as any she would ever make, and whisper against its scales.

"Thank you for coming back."

And so a bond was forged.

...​

The dragon lingered only the one night as before, but it returned year after year, and with every return, it lingered just a little longer.

It was not until her ninth year that Adara finally mounted the dragon.

It had grown over the years, larger and stronger and fiercer than it was before, and Adara knew it was time.

She reached out and tugged at the very edge of the dragon's wing with a small hand, and the dragon beat its great wings once, and then extended them flat against the snow, and she scrambled up to wrap her arms about its cold white neck.

Together, for the first time, they flew.

At times the beating of the wings threatened to shake her loose from where she clung, and the coldness of the dragon's flesh crept through her clothing and bit and numbed her flesh.

But Adara was not afraid. She never had been.

They flew over her father's farm, looking very small below.

They flew over the village, where crowds of people came out to watch them pass. They flew above the forest, all white and green and silent. They flew high into the sky, so high that Adara could not even see the ground below, and she thought she glimpsed another ice dragon, way off in the distance, but it was not half so grand as hers.

And all the while, Adara laughed, an icy, tinkling laugh, a laugh as bright and crisp as the winter air that carried it away until nothing of it remained.

They flew for most of the day, and finally, the dragon swept around in a great circle and spiraled down, gliding on its stiff and glittering wings. It let her off in the field where it had found her, just after dusk, and vanished as it was ever wont to do.

Adara was always a lonely child, her life empty and hollow, but that day of delight and laughter and freedom was the most victoriously joyful of them all, and hers alone besides.

Perhaps it was bitterly fitting, then, that it was also the day when the path to her greatest tragedy was set in stone.

...​

On Adara's eleventh year, a great enemy threatened the village.

Men armored and armed themselves, women barricaded themselves in their cottages with their children, and all the people prayed for salvation as an army of fire and sorcery threatened to march on their homes and raze them to naught but ash.

When the dragon came to Adara that year, she begged on behalf of people who had cursed and shunned her all her life as only a child pure of heart could beg.

"Please, help them."

And the ice dragon would never refuse its winter child, and when the army came to spill blood and char and salt the land, they instead met dragon breath so cold it burned, and all were broken beneath winter's fury.

After that, Adara was finally welcomed among her kin.

A hero, they called her and finally shared the warmth she'd never been allowed to long for, even as the dragon flew away once more, content in the knowledge that she was safe.

...​

It was not to be.

Unyielding strength invited challenge. Challenge incited conflict. And conflict bred catastrophe and tragedy in equal measure.

And there was no greater strength than that of the ice dragon... or the one who could wield its power.

...​

When the ice dragon returned for the final time, it was to a girl half dead and buried in the snow, delirious from pain and cradling the side where the betrayer's knife had slid into her flesh on the eve of her name day celebration.

And the dragon, who had grown strong and mighty and wrathful beyond comprehension raged, and the village and the villagers who had orchestrated this wailed and fled and died as winter fell upon them from above and laid waste to all they were and ever would be.

When the deed was done, the beast cradled its precious winter child in a single claw and took to the air with her once more, and flew her north as it had never done before.

Past the mountains and the hills and roiling snows, past the flatlands all the homes of man, past and deep across the lands of always winter where even his dying winter child would have suffered a chill if only she would live to see it through.

Inconsolable in its grief, the ice dragon did not stop flying until its wings would beat no more.

Exhausted, it fell from the sky and to a mountain below, amidst a storm it had no strength left to weather, and the snow and the ice and the treacherous magic of the land was quick to spread over them, to bury them beneath its bulk and claim their lives for it's own.

The ice dragon did not fight the end as it came for them both, for grief was a far more treacherous burden than any magic could ever hope to be.

And so it and its winter child vanished beneath the swiftly freezing ice and disappeared forevermore.

...​

Decades passed, and centuries and millennia after that followed in time.

The dragon and his winter child remained buried, entombed within a prison of magic and ice, and would have remained so until the end of time.

But something changed.

Another dragon, one of fire and not ice, silver scaled and ridden by a queen of man, visited a great Wall.

It dared not cross the boundary even when prompted to, but unbeknownst to rider and beast alike, the damage had already been done.

For the presence of such a creature, one flame and magic and power in a long since gone from this dormant land... it was the spark that lit the blaze and reawakened the slumbering magics that surged beyond the Wall.

All of them.

It took decades more as fell things began to wake for the ice dragon to rouse and awaken in its frozen tomb that long since become a mountain and a prison. The magic keeping it bound had grown as well, so much so that it could hardly feel the world beyond it's prison.

Were its strife any different, it would fallen back into its slumber until the end of time.

But it sensed the impossible.

Cradled in its grip even after all this time, his winter child stirred.

She wasn't just touched by cold anymore. She had become cold, and that was what had saved her life and done far more besides.

And the ice dragon loved her far too much to condemn her to this prison any longer.

Slowly, carefully - like the glacial shift of continents - titanic wings began to unfurl.

The prison of ice rumbled in protest. The weight of the mountain and the magic that raised it tried to keep it buried.

Tried to keep them buried.

The ice dragon would not have it.

The struggle was ruinous, but it battered forth and persisted. It yearned to be free, to take the skies with its winter child once more, and roared with all the force of thousands of years of caged fury.

The mountain cracked and the heavens themselves splintered from the force of the eruption. Boulders of ice the size of mammoths were blown up through the clouds. When at last its wings broke through the surface, they pounded and summoned forth a hurricane. The air burst with a drumbeat of thunder more ferocious than the greatest of storms.

For the first time in thousands of years, as its winter child finally gasped and opened her brilliant blue eyes, the ice dragon took to the air and bellowed its victorious cry of rebirth for all to hear.

...​

A continent away, Viserys Targaryen breathed his last, and his heirs readied their mounts and prepared to dance.

Hopelessly unaware of the darkness that had been awakened far too early, and the Long Night that would soon come to claim them all.

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

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[Firewillreign]

"Take Prince Lucerys back to his dragon. Now."

A part of Luke knew right then and there that he had just been sentenced to death.

As he stood there in the middle of Storm's End's Round Hall, drenched and soaked to the bone, with his uncle all but frothing at the mouth to get at him, a frenzied twist to his lips that would have been a smirk were it not so savage... it was all he could do to meet Aemond's glower and desperately try not to give away any more of his fear, for all the good that did him in the end.

Even as the household guards pulled him away and started escorting him back to Arrax, dread quickly pooled in his gut and grew with the sickening surety that his uncle's reckoning wouldn't end there.

It was only their host's blustering and the wall of armored men between them that had prevented him from clearing the distance and gouging out Luke's eye in repayment for his own, guest rights and bonds of blood be damned, and the utter rage in his one eye left Luke with no callow delusions as to what would come next.

Aemond would not let him go, not without trying to take his due in blood.

And the lord of Storm's End had just cast him out into the oncoming storm.

Out to Vhagar, who was as likely to settle for just an eye as a starving beggar was to settle for just a breadcrumb when he could have the whole loaf instead.

Borros Baratheon couldn't have killed him better if he'd swung the blade himself, and whether that was deliberate malice or careless stupidity was irrelevant because Luke could very well die either way.

He swallowed roughly, the inside of his mouth suddenly drier than dornish sand-stone.

No, he tried to reassure himself, it wouldn't come to that.

It wouldn't.

He intended to keep his composure and march his way back to Arrax with as much dignity as he could muster, but his resolve broke the moment the great doors were opened for him and he found himself bolting forward through the sleet and howling winds as quickly as his feet would carry him.

It was pathetic, and they'd rush to call him craven for it, but right then he couldn't bring himself to care about the humiliation and the shame he'd just opened himself up to by fleeing.

Let them call him what they will. There'd be other chances to prove himself, but he needed to get back to Dragonstone and warn his mother of the Baratheon's decision to support Aegon's cause and pledge their swords to his banner.

He wanted - needed to go home.

Arrax was already half-rabid before Luke made it to his side, the ordinarily mild-tempered beast snapping and shrieking with every other peal of thunder, acting more like some manner of a cornered rat than the dragon he was.

It only took a single flash of lightning to realize that it had nothing with the storm.

Vhagar had vanished.

For a moment, the wave of sickening dread that tore down his spine was so intense it was only sheer will and the thrum of Arrax's fire burning beneath his ribcage that prevented his knees from collapsing out from under him.

He staggered back to Arrax's side and leaned his weight against his bulk.

"Easy, easy." The words were for both of them, and though the high valryian he had to scream out over the roar of the storm was mangled with fear and the pronunciation a butchery that would have had Daemon rapping his knuckles if he ever heard it, it served its purpose well enough. "Be calm, Arrax, be calm and serve me."

His own panic didn't abate, but Arrax settled long enough to lower his neck to the courtyard stone and let Luke scramble onto his saddle, and he'd just barely managed to clamp down on the last chain before the dragon heaved upwards, pearlescent white scales beating the air with fervor born of terror and launching them up and over Storm's End's curtain walls so fast he just about forgot to breathe.

...​

Because the gods were cruel and pettier than any man could ever hope to be, it wasn't until Luke had almost let himself begin to hope that he could make it home that Vhagar at last erupted out of the clouds, Aemond's half-demented cackling somehow sounding over her hideous roar.

Arrax screeched in distress and veered hard to avoid the grasp claws, and Luke flattened against his saddle to avoid breaking his neck from the whiplash.

Just like that, the chase was on, and his and Arrax's clawing hysteria ceased to be individual. He bit down on his own screaming as he felt more than heard Vhagar's wings snapping into pursuit behind them. They twisted and dove and fled through the thunder clouds, and none of it was enough because for all that Vhagar outweighed Arrax many times over, each beat of her wings was worth a hundred of his and each raging vicious current that threatened to break his desperate flight might as well have been a soft spring breeze to her.

When the crag appeared dead ahead with the promise of salvation, he didn't have to direct Arrax to turn for the dragon was already diving into the narrow chasm between the clifftops Aemond's outraged howl echoed behind them as Vhagar was forced to swerve away.

Had he been just a little more clear-headed he would made something of the reprieve, directed Arrax to claw a foothold on one the rock shelves below to wait out the storm or done anything else at all. Vhagar couldn't have followed them in if they had, and even Aemond wouldn't have possibly had the patience to weather the surrounding storms for hours just for the sake of playing this sick, twisted game.

But before he had a chance to think of it, to even dare to breathe long enough to steady himself and command Arrax, Vhagar's shadow fell across them from above the crag, easily trapping them in the shadow of her battle-scarred underbelly as she kept pace from above, and Luke lost control over his mount entirely.

Everything after that was a terrible blur.

Arrax wrestled free of his will, flying deeper into the storm in a fierce panic, and finally ending when the muscles beneath his scales grew too rigid with effort and the fool of a dragon turned on Vhagar in one last frenzied attempt to save them both.

"Arrax, no!"

He tried to stop it the moment he sensed Arrax's attention, eyes somehow growing wider still despite the wind and the rain half-blinding him with their fury, but a gout of flame wide enough to swallow an aurochs was already erupting out Arrax's gullet and sailing through the clouds ahead before he'd gotten the first word out.

Vhagar roared in irritation and something far more threatening as the flames washed over her scales and did nothing at all, enraged where before she'd only been aggravated and cleaving to the whims of her rider.

Her bellowing roar chased after them as they ascended sharply through the clouds, and Aemond's screams went from viciously gleeful to near as horrified as Luke had been since this nightmare began as Vhagar bucked against his control and began to hunt.

"No, no no! Vhagar, no!"

That was all he managed to hear before they flew out of earshot. They soared up and up and further up still with the last of their strength, trying to ascend through the storm and find their escape beyond the raging winds.

When they finally broke through the cloud cover the sunlight beyond nearly finished blinding him in its brilliance where the had failed before, dazzling Arrax's scales and rendering the clouds below into an ocean of white gold.

He should have been achingly relieved at the sight, but he could hardly bring himself to breathe as he continued clenching the reins of the saddle tight enough to lose all sensation above the joints.

Even Arrax knew better than to lower his guard, head snapping this way and that, wingbeats frantic and ready to flee for all that he only just barely had the strength to keep them aloft.

Aemond and Vhagar had been left behind, but the fear and threat of death lingered on and grew worse the longer there was no sign of them and the air remained silent save for the rush of Arrax's wings.

They'd been right on their tail. They couldn't have-

He turned to the side as the air whistled and ice shot up his spine, and there was Vhagar, hurtling up directly for them, too fast to evade, too mighty to beat back, and neither he nor Arrax had even the time to scream-

And then, right before the stranger claimed them both, something changed.

Vhagar must have felt it before any of them, for the old she-dragon's maw clamped shut an instant before it would have caught half of Arrax's body between its teeth and all of Luke along with it for good measure.

It was her snout instead that rammed into his wing and side and sent them both careening and flailing across the heavens, but that was it. She didn't pursue it even when Arrax righted himself and prepared to dive below again, and refused to obey even when the wind carried Aemond's confused demands over to them.

Instead, Vhagar's wings continued to heave, holding her in place as the dragon went abruptly, dangerously still in the air and quiet in her flight, gaze darting to the clouds below.

Luke and Arrax were somehow entirely forgotten in favor of nothing he could spot for himself. That would have been a perfect chance to escape, were it not for the fact that Arrax himself had seemingly caught on to whatever scent or presence that had broken through Vhagar's stride and went just as still and silent in the air.

Were they... wary?

Vhagar was afraid?

Gods above, what was it now?

The answer came with a whistling of air and sound that would have been reminiscent of chiming bells if it hadn't been so deep, and the rhythmic thunder-like beat of dragon wings that was so undeniably familiar and yet not, an odd quality to them set his teeth on edge and had him exhaling in mounting alarm.

When he did, his breath came out cold and misty, and only then did he realize that a sharp chill had suddenly overtaken them all.

That was all the warning they had before the clouds behind Vhagar were blown apart and out emerged...

...

For a long moment, Luke didn't understand what he was looking at. The saddle reigns slipped from his grip as his gloved hands went slack.

Back in the days when all of them had lived in the Red Keep, before the poisons of Green and Black had truly seeped and rotted everything and before Driftmark, Aegon had dragged him and Jace and Aemond down to the deepest crypt beneath the Red Keep to the chamber where Black Dread's Skull had been set aside by the Old King at the time of his death.

Luke's grandfather had mourned the dragon's loss so deeply that he'd refused to set it on display in the throne room before the Iron Throne when he ascended to the chair, for he was more than just a symbol to his last rider, and so the skull remained in the crypts for all to see.

When Aegon had led them to it in another dared them to touch, he'd dared them to try and slip between the spear-like teeth and back out again if they were brave enough to try.

"But don't take too long." He'd jeered in another one of his stupid japes. "Else he'll come back to life and swallow you whole."

"No he won't." Aemond glared at his brother, but even he'd tellingly refused to step forward until Jace did.

In the end, none of them made it in, not even with Aegon needling and cajoling from the sidelines as they pushed and shoved each other closer to the skull.

Luke had made it closer than even Jace, but he didn't get a chance to enjoy the victory. Not when he looked up and truly stared at the sheer enormity of the gleaming black dragon bone looming over him.

The greatest dragon who ever lived since the Doom of Valyria dwarfed even Vhagar, and the smallest of his frontal teeth had been four times as tall as he had been and near as wide. There was something more to it as well, some otherworldly presence to it beyond the balefull candlelight reflecting on it and even its monstrous size that had the hair at the back of his neck rising in fright.

Luke had managed to hold out only long enough to squeak like a frightened mouth before bolting. Aegon had laughed himself silly after that, but Luke hadn't cared. That had been the stuff of nightmares.

He loved dragons as any dragon lord should, what he had was Arrax was proof enough of that, but even when long gone Balerion had seemed less a dragon and more a god.

That, or perhaps some fell monster straight from the Seven Hells, and that had just been his skull. He hadn't been able to even imagine how large the rest of him must have been when he'd lived, not even after seeing Vhagar firsthand in all her terrible glory.

He didn't have to imagine any longer.

The dragon that erupted out from behind Vhagar was so large it blotted out the sky ahead of it as it flew forward on wings held aloft by a hurricane of cold.

Its hide was crystal-white and glittering more sharply than any gemstone he had ever seen, its wings were batlike and stretched from one corner of his sight to the other, and when it was unhinged its jaws and roared in deafening challenge, it sounded fiercer and more powerful than any storm man had ever dared to brave.

Vhagar roared back and made to turn, but she was too slow and ponderous to meet her new foe's charge.

Calling it a clash would have been charitable. The unknown dragon was thrice Vhagar's size at least and cut through the air more swiftly than Luke had seen even Meleys fly. Vhagar had scarcely turned around before the utter mountain of a beast rammed into her with an impact akin to mountains colliding.

What little of it Luke could see over his slack-jawed awe and disbelief was over as soon as it began.

Both dragons tumbled from the impact, bodies interlocked in vicious combat as they plunged through the air and disappeared beneath the clouds, falling back into the storm, leaving only the cadence of their clashing roars behind.

That should have been the end of it.

Luke should have fled right then. He should have returned to Dragonstone and told his mother and Daemon and all the others of everything he'd witnessed, and let them settle it.

It would have been the wisest choice to make.

And yet he didn't make it, for as he watched the two dragons vanish into the thunderclouds below, the only thought he had to spare was for the rider who'd almost killed him.

Aemond.

He didn't know what drove him to it, if there was a reason at all, or if it was a bout of inexplicable insanity. Whatever it was, it had him pressing himself against the saddle and seizing the reigns once more.

"Arrax!"

It was a miracle in itself that Arrax finally deigned to obey, but not one he was in any position to savor. The air was driven from his lungs as they dove back into the dark and the chaos, intent on doing something.

Luke didn't think that far had, and he didn't get the chance to, for as he fell back into the storm, heading towards the draconic roars and the thunderous clash below, it wasn't the sight of either dragon that greeted them.

Instead, it was cold.

A wave of wind and ice and white light so cold it burned caught them just as they emerged through the clouds, and Luke abruptly found himself going numb all over and fading into rather blissful darkness, all thoughts and fears vanishing in the ether.

Even Arrax struggled madly for only a beat before going equally limp and heavy beneath him. Distantly, he registered a pleasant feeling of weightlessness, something akin to a scream and a roar wrapped in one, and then nothing at all.

...​

By the time the storm broke hours later, Borros Baratheon would receive words that would plunge the realm further into maddened chaos.

Prince Aemond and Prince Lucerys's dragons had clashed with a third, and all five had vanished into the wind with not a trace left behind.

...

​

Next chapter is an Adara POV, probably, so let's see how that goes.

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

This was supposed to be an Adara POV, but the setup was too critical so I'm leaving that for the next chapter.

...​

Aemond was never one to rest easy, be it in mind or body.

Between the trials of his daily duties of a prince - flexible as those were for a mere second son who was third in line for the throne by dint of his father and king's willful blindness, undeserved favoritism and blatant weakness - and the nigh-religious training he plunged into every day in the courtyards of the Red Keep to make up for his... deformity, his sleep tended to be heavy and his rousings dull and unexceptional.

This time, however, was different.

And was the case with everything that wasn't bestowed upon him out of some misguided sense of pity or that he didn't choose to take for himself, the change was nothing welcome.

The first thing he registered was the hurt, a half-numb, thrumming ache running up and down his limbs and echoing in his skull in a way that had his breath catching sharply before he ever managed to crack open his eye.

He shifted in place with a groan, but it brought him no relief. His body felt heavy and moved as though it had been dipped in tar, and when at last he succeded in blinking himself awake, it was with an accompanying quiver so forceful he nearly bit his tongue off.

Gods, but he felt wretched.

And cold.

So much so that between the shivering and the swiftly growing throbbing in his skull, it took him several heartbeats and near as many dazed blinks to realize that he wasn't in his bed, in his chambers in the Red-keep, or anywhere he recognized at all.

It was as though he lay in an abyss of darkness, no light to speak of save for a low burning open flame set into a steep pit mere feet away from where he lay sprawled against a bed of earthy soil and hard rock. The air felt cold and dry against his lungs, yet somehow carried with it the scent of wet leaves and rain and something sharper and far less familiar to his senses.

A dungeon or a cave, then, or something of the sort.

who reigned over them would he have wound up in a cave?

Had he been imprisoned? Abducted? Him?

Absurd.

Where were his guards? His family? His mother and Halaena

Panic began to rear-

Vhagar.

His thoughts faltered.

The moment Aemond thought of his dragon, and registered her presence at the back of his mind, everything came back to him with all the force of a thunder strike.

Aegon's crowning. Grandfather's orders. Storm's End and Borros Baratheon. The bastard and the storm he'd chased him into.

And then-

Vhagar had frozen, impending kill forgotten, and it hadn't been Aemond's desperate, frenzied pleading that had slated her bloodlust.

No, it had been fear, and fool that he had been in that moment, he'd not even deigned to consider that it was not his alone, too seized in the relief that he hadn't started the inevitable war to come before it fell upon them.

He barely even saw it.

Wings that blotted out the sky, crystalline teeth like spears hurtling towards him, framed in a maw so massive the bastard could have flown his mummer's farce of a dragon down its length and still had room for more.

They were driven through the clouds before Aemond even felt the horrendous clash, an uncomprehending scream strangled in his throat

And then came the cold, in a wave as unrelenting as the tides, a cold so great it burned, froze his breath in his lungs and cast him and Vhagar both from the skies and back into the storm below-

He came back to himself with a sharp inhale as the memory of the sickening fall and the abrupt blackness sweeping over him and the pain in his head went white-hot and molten.

It lasted only long enough for him to gasp out in agony before it surged back, but that was enough for his vision to blur out from the agony. That was why it took far longer than it should have for him to realize that he was no longer alone in the dark.

He went dead-still when the girl stepped into the light of the flames, slipping out of the darkness like a ghost.

She certainly looked the part, and that she looked to be even younger than he himself was only made it more pronounced.

She was pale, far too pale. Aemond was as Targaryen as they come and even his complexion didn't match that shade of milk-white, made all the more pronounced by the brilliant golden hair that framed her face and trailed down past her shoulders and sides, sleek and glinting even in the dim light that reflected off of it.

An eerie contrast, striking and impossible to miss with her sharp features and set jaw, but it was her eyes that had Aemond freezing in an emotion he refused to name. Blue like the northern he saw only when Vhagar ascended far past the clouds and let him see all there was to see across the heavens.

Aemond met those eyes, brilliant, otherworldy blue, and knew.

"It was you."

His voice was a dry, horrible rasp, rich with realization and the very start of indignant horrible fury.

Their fall. That beast that caused it. It was hers.

He didn't how he understood it for truth, but it was. The knowledge slipped into his mind like quicksand, sealing in the cracks of his incomprehension and building pressure fit enough to burst. He knew it with all the certainty of his bond with Vhagar

"It was you." He repeated, teeth barred into a snarl that sapped the last of his strength and sent him into a fit of coughs so savage it felt as though he was hacking up a lung and rending his throat bloody.

She didn't respond, her face utterly devoid of emotion or tell.

Her expression didn't even flicker.

Somehow, that was more infuriating than any insult he'd ever taken.

"Is he ready?"

When she spoke, she did so with a voice that was more a whisper of wind than a voice, faint and low and

"No."

How pathetic it was that he couldn't even turn his head to catch sight of the second speaker in the shadows.

"You told me you would wake him." The girl said, and her eyes never left him for all that she did not acknowledge him. "He is awake."

"But he is not ready."

"It has been days."

Days?

"And it will be longer still. He is not like you, none are. The winter chill has no home in his flesh as it does yours, yet it lingers all the same and he is made lesser for it. He's of no use to you as his now."

Lesser? Of no use?

The fury came to a boil.

"How dare-!?"

He managed to spit out those two words before his voice broke, fuelled as he was by rage, and he devolved into another round of brutal coughs.

And all the while, the conversation for which he had no understanding and already a great and boundless hate carried on uninterrupted.

"And the other?"

"His suffering is greater still, and he will take longer to regain his strength if he ever does at all. Your creature should not have-"

Finally, at last, the girl's expression changed.

Without warning, her expression darkened with a burst of infinitesimal wrath.

It robbed Aemond of his own just as swiftly.

"You will not fault Frostsinger in my presence."

There was a cold, stilted pause. Her eyes were lit up in her anger and the air itself seemed to quiver and shy away from her.

"I meant no offense."

"You would have been foolish to."

Another pause followed, and Aemond breathed out at last when the anger fled and her mask of emotionless impassivity returned.

"It was his own fault. That he dove after one who was undeserving of it was his own error" Her eyes flickered to Aemond, just as dismissive, and back again. "Frostsinger is not to blame for reckless stupidity."

"Foolish." the voice agreed. "Or brave, perhaps."

"They're one and the same, and just as costly." Her voice tinted with something else Aemond recognized despite himself, an old, old, bitterness that he'd lived and breathed for years and still did to this day. "I would know."

She took one last look at Aemond - whose mind had once again fallen into a helpless daze as the implications of what, of who, they were speaking of began to sink in - and then turned away as her form melted into the shadows.

"Have him on his feet by the time I return, Green One, or I'll drag him if I have to."

And then she was gone.

Aemond made to cry out, to rage against this final, humiliating dismissal, but he'd regained no strength in the moments past, and blackness was overtaking him even before unknown hands seized him and dragged him further into the dark.

The last thing he saw was a pair of yellow eyes, set into brown, leathery skin, and he slipped into oblivion even as his mouth course hands pried his mouth open and poured broth and something altogether darker down his throat.

...​

When Aemond slept, he dreamt as he never had before.

He saw a silver-haired and violet-eyed man in a shirt of black scale wearing a familiar crown of Valyrian steel and studded rubies. In one hand, he held Blackfyre, and in the other, he pointed North, behind Aemond.

"From my blood come the Prince Who Was Promised, and his shall be the Song of Ice and Fire."

When he turned, he found himself buffeted by sharp winds and swirling snows.

Another man waiting for him in the eye of the storm, one who looked nothing like the last.

He was dark of hair and grey-eyed, dressed in boiled leathers and a fur cloak of purest black. A pale scar dragged across the length of his left eye, but the eye itself was undamaged, and both were fixed on Aemond with a burning intensity.

"My song is undone. My watch is ended. I am no more" The stranger smiled, an aching, foreboding relief in his eyes. "It is your burden to bear now, oh would-be kinslayer. You and your will stand strong, or you'll not stand at all when the darkness rides down from the north and claims you all."

He turned around and walked into the snowstorm, his figure vanishing into the darkness beyond.

"Be ready."

It did not end there.

A shadow emerged from the darkness ahead and stood in front of Aemond. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took, and take them it did even as more emerged behind it.

Ten, a hundred, a thousand, even more.

All marched forward, towards the light, towards Aemond, eyes a haunting, soulless blue.

He tried to rear back as the first lunged for him, but he could not move. Not when it seized him by the throat with one hand, and not when it drove its other through his chest and tore at his flesh without mercy.

Soon, the others came for him too, undeterred by desperate scrabble and his screams.

He screamed and screamed unto the end, but it was all for naught, for there was no one left to hear.

...​

When he gasped awake and opened his eye, moments or days or even years later, he didn't have the wits to now, he found himself heaving on the same hard ground as before.

His body was stronger. His strength returned, at least in part, and the chill that had all but crippled him was gone.

But it meant nothing then, for when he looked up, he found Lucerys Velaryon standing over him, eyes wide frenzied, face mottled in fury and black frostbite burns, with a heavy rock held high above him in a furious, two-handed grip.

On instinct alone, Aemond moved-

And the rock came down.

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Though they had struck an alliance of circumstance in the face of a greater threat - or had been forced to, more like - Adara still knew very little of the true nature of the Earthsingers.

That left her wary

Attempting to navigate her way out of the cave systems where the score of them she'd come to know dwelt left her wary and frustrated.

For all that they loved their wild lands and their deep forests and venerated their pale, red-leaved trees above all else, the green folk chose to dwell below it all, following twisting snow-white roots down into the dirt and the dark and carving their homes where no man or beast would ever think to look for them

And what homes they were - impossibly long-winding crawlways that led to hollowed-out earthen halls or grander caverns of such maddening size that twenty tall men could stand atop one another's shoulders and still not be able to reach the lowest of the hanging stalactites that grew down from above. Other steeper and more precarious tunnels led to hardpacked dead-ends, or worse, opened up over treacherous pits so deep that no poor fool who fell into their depths would ever be heard from again.

The greatest strife, however, was the absence of light so far below the earth. The Earthsingers were born with eyes the color of bronze, yellow-gold or amber that glinted like gemstones in the shadows and let them navigate the darkness of their deepest caverns as easily as they could sprint in the forests that grew above them, but Adara was not so lucky.

Her vision was sharp - perhaps sharper than the ordinary, even - but the blackness that pervaded the dwellings of the green folk was nigh-absolute save for the strange, moist and wriggling creatures that lined the walls of a precious few caverns and shone with inner light in shades of blue and green.

Even then, their brilliance could do only so much to light the way. A few paltry sparks, fight against the ever-present dark.

How very fitting, given everything that was to come.

In the end, Adara could make her way to and from the earthen prisons where she'd stashed the two princelings she'd appropriated, but marching through the unyielding darkness was never an easy journey. That she steadfastly clung to her dignity and refused to have the Earth singers lead her about like a helpless child was perhaps a failing, but she could not bring herself to care no matter how much greater her grief was for it.

And it was greater - by the time she stumbled and tripped her way back to to surface of this strange isle after leaving the elder of her two captives in the care of their mutual hosts, her palms were bruised, her knees were battered and her irritation was simmering beneath her skin in a manner that had become as familiar to her as breathing since the moment she'd woken up amidst ice and cataclysmic devastation nary a moon ago.

Adara was no more appreciative of it now than she was then.

The sun rose over the crimson-hewn canopy of the so-named Isle of Faces even as she began to walk along worn dirt tracks that ran across its surface, ignoring the towering and ever so foreboding weirwoods that loomed on either and every side of her with practiced apathy.

At least the dawning light was soothing, and the bleeding-red eyes of the god-trees regarded her with equal indifference.

For now.

Frostsinger was asleep when she finally stepped onto the gravel shore, though he quickly roused as he sensed her approach. The sound of splintering ice and erupting water sprouts rang out as he rose, so incomparably large now that most of his tail and a fourth of his bulk had to rest in the shallow waters along the lake coast and had frozen it solid in turn.

Despite his size, he wasted no time in surging for her. She laughed in long-missed delight as his gargantuan head dropped towards her, the glint of the rising sun reflecting off his horns and scales and setting them ablaze with a glow of marvelous silver-white.

He bumped her with his snout as she drew near, impossibly gentle for a creature so large, and when his eye-slitted eye settled on her it was with the only kind of warmth a creature of ice could possibly come to know, a warmth that he reserved for her and her alone.

"I've missed you too." She whispered and reached with both hands to stroke at his hoarfrost-covered scales. Even the smallest of them was twice as large as her open palm, but she made due, and the contented chiming trill that rang out from between his teeth was proof enough that he was satisfied as well.

Frostsinger sang so sweetly only when he was pleased, and that too was often for her alone to enjoy. It had been what had earned him his name, and it had only grown more fitting with time.

Abruptly, something else drew her attention. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a tall, shadowed figure darting across the edge of the treeline and pursed her lips at their flickering appearance.

Frostsinger's song stilled, replaced with a thrumming call and the beginnings of a warning snarl as he sensed her happiness shift to unease but she steadied him with a soft call of her own.

"Easy. They have no quarrel with us."

While the Earthsingers called the Isle of Faces home, it was the green men who were its wardens, and those who dwelt on the isle's surface had never once called on her or revealed themselves to her save for whenever she caught a stray glimpse of one of them of her own accord and she was glad for it.

They were not hostile to her presence, not she could tell, and seemingly had no care for either her or Frostsinger or anything but their oaths and their trees, whatever those were, but they were still other and eerie in a way that set her teeth on edge and her shying away from them all the same.

That she could occasionally feel them - or something else - watching her as she went to visit Frostsinger had not endeared them to her, and the strange appearance she'd spotted the one time one drew too close for comfort had only made it worse.

Even the memory of it was startling.

There was so very little of this life that she could recognize, so heavy a burden to carry as it was. She had no wish for more complications, and the green men all but reeked with the threat of them.

"Come." She said, beckoning Frostsinger to her as the figure disappeared from sight. "Let's race the clouds, my lovely."

He crooned softly, eyes still fixed on the spot where the Green man had paused - ever and always so doggedly protective - before huffing in satisfaction and stretching out his gargantuan wing in the same motion she'd seen a thousand times before. Adara scaled it with ease, sprinting and giggling in bubbling joy as she slipped between the spear-like scales and icy frills on his back, nestling herself into that one crook that had remained the same in all the time Frostsinger had grown and wrapping her arms around her favored hold.

"Frostsinger." She called, her smile stretching from ear to ear "Fly."

And her dragon roared his icy agreement, spread his wings and heaved himself upwards into the heavens with a burst of deafening sound akin to a thousand peals of thunder.

...​

They soared through the clouds for hours, gliding over plains, forest, hills, and a seemingly endless array of streams and rivers rushing on below, the thrill of the cold winds and the absence of the strange, heavy air of the isle a pleasant change after days of knowing nothing else.

When at last they circled back after roaming for miles and miles, Adara was settled and at peace in the way only flight could leave, pale skin as flushed as it could ever get and with contentment thrumming in her veins.

Though the spot Frostsinger had chosen to land in was a surprise she had not been expecting.

"Did you bring us back to gloat?" She raised a teasing eyebrow at her dragon who huffed in denial and turned to sprawl over the clearing near the opposite shore of the God's eye from where the isle was, settling himself in after their long flight.

Across from them, at the other end of the clearing, the one-eyed would-be kinslayer's dragon lay, head lolled to the side and eyes shut in her forced slumber.

Her wings had several long gashes and rents pockmarking the inner, pale yellow membranes. Her under-belly was littered with scars and her upper half was worse off, with large trenching marks cutting in above her spine where Frostsinger's claws had hooked around her bulk and carried her aloft after his breath had subdued her.

Despite its wounds and Adara's own dispassion towards any fire-born creature of any sort, she could not help but admit to herself that the she-dragon was a gorgeous beast, larger than any other fire drake she had seen or fought in the days long gone, scarcely under a third the size of Frostsinger and with scales the color of faded leaves.

It was impressive, to an extent.

What name had the one-eyed priceling screamed at her? When all four of them had been tumbling down into the storm before that addled fool of a boy had chased after them and nearly gotten himself killed for his efforts in a feat of stupidity Adara still could not comprehend.

Ah, yes.

"Vhagar." She said the name aloud, tasting the foreign word on her lips, and was suddenly seized by surprise when the great beast shifted, rumbling in place weakly and cracking open a single, sluggish eye.

She stepped back as a baleful bronze pupil met her sharp blue, the dragon belting out a hoarse and dangerous growl before Frostsinger surged up behind her and roared a frigid, crackling battle cry so brutal it likely had birds and beasts for miles scattering in terror.

He needn't have bothered. Vhagar's eye was already slipping before he'd even risen, the one cry of protest at the pain and indignity she'd been forced to endure having sapped her of all strength as quickly as it had come.

It was to be expected. Adara knew that if she crossed the distance between them and pressed her hands against those scales, they'd be cold and half-frozen. The price of enduring Frostsinger's fury.

When an ice dragon breathed, it wasn't ice alone that burst out of its crystalline maw. It couldn't be, or else it would never be able to hunt. Its game would either freeze solid and burst from the force of it, or the frost would set into the flesh and spoil the taste.

No, should the ice dragon choose to hunt live prey as Frostsinger had done at her command, their breath would seep into it with a chill beyond the natural, a cold that sunk into the bones and made the flesh go heavy and weak, and it's owner fall into a slumber of the likes of which few ever managed to escape.

It was an ugly, creeping hurt. Adara remembered it well, or something very much like it through the vague recollections of an altogether different kind of pain.

Those last days had been nothing but pain, until the ice had crawled into her lungs and heart and silenced it all for-

She inhaled sharply and shook her head, dismissing those poisonous thoughts and turning her attention back to Vhagar.

Were it an ordinary creature that had been bathed in Frostsinger's cold fyre, they would have never risen at all. Her friend had grown too strong. That Vhagar could even move after days and days of slumber where the other smaller one was little more than an icicle in a cove by the isle was a testament to her strength, but it wouldn't be enough to pose any sort of challenge at all

It must be galling, Adara thought with an emotion approaching pity, for something so large and so great to be brought so low. Vhagar had likely been the undisputed queen of the skies for decades until Frostsinger had burst through the heavens and dragged her off her throne with ice and fury she could not hope to match.

It was tragic, but life often was. It was her dragon who ruled the skies now, and he would rule it forever if she had her way.

And she would, even if there remained so much more to be done.

Adara hardened her heart and turned her back to Vhagar, leaving her to her slow, lonely recovery as she marched back to Frostsinger's side.

"It's time to go back, my lovely."

Frostsinger only crooned his agreement and offered her his wing once more.

...​

By the time they landed back on the isle, the sun was high in the sky, though the morning mist still clung in heavy billowing waves by the treeline and refused to disperse, as it was often won't to do.

That was why Adara missed the Earthsinger slipping towards her on on soft-treading feet until Frostsinger suddenly caught the spry creature's scent and growled in deadly warning, barring teeth like jagged spears with cold glowing at the back of his throat.

"No, there's no need." Adara hurried to reassure him, steadying her palms against his snout in an effort to calm him. When at last he settled, she turned to glare at the golden-eyed singer with a hint of real anger in her own. "You very nearly died."

Frostsinger would have frozen her and half the isle had she taken another step towards Adara's unprotected side, her bad side, and been utterly unrepentant about the carnage.

"I meant no harm, but there is news." the words were meant to placate, but the urgency beneath them had Adara's spine straightening and Frostsinger growling again. "The Raven calls."

Oh.

Oh, no.

...​

Adara hurried behind the Earthsinger as she led her deeper into the Isle's heart than she'd ever been before, straight into the territory of the Green men.

The closer they drew to their destination, the heavier the canopy of red leaves above grew and the darker everything below grew in turn until the only light left was a pitiful glow reflecting off of the red sap bleeding from the weirwoods and running down their bark in bleeding rivers that seemed to run forever.

When at last the Earthsinger stopped running, Adara had to force herself to swallow and clenched her fists at the sight that awaited them.

A single weirwood stood in the clearing ahead, taller and greater than all the rest before them, though this one had no red leaves to speak of. Instead, it had ravens, dozens and dozens of them, black as pitch perched in rows and stretched over a litany of stretching white branches, all of them deadly still and silent as if frozen in place.

As soon as Adara stepped one foot into the clearing, every raven snapped its beady black eyes to her with unerring, unnatural focus.

"Girl."

All the ravens spoke as one, their voices a warbling cacophony, yet Adara still found her eyes drawn to the one among many, perched on the highest branch of the looming weirwood, a path of white feathers encircling its neck.

"Winterchild."

She swallowed again and took another step forward, meeting the Raven's gaze.

"Raven Of Three Eyes." She called out the stilted greeting, unable to hide the unease and wariness in her voice. Across the island, she heard Frostsinger roar his displeasure, but he did not come for her just yet.

That was for the better. The last time the raven had come to her, it had been in the moments after they erupted from their icy prison. Adara had been so confused, so hurt, her memories a ruined, aching mess, and then the black crow had landed before and cracked her skull open anew without ever touching her.

It poured pictures and visions and meanings into her mind, filled her memory with words and symbols and and even a language that meant little and nothing to her save for the pain that they brought.

Westeros. An iron throne. A dance of fire and blood.

Targaryen.

It was only before the end, where Frostsinger had moved to kill the menace and reduce the forest they had nestled themselves into a frozen ruin that the god - or whatever the Raven truly was - had shown her something with meaning enough to earn her attention.

A threat, blue eyes in the dark so like her own yet devoid of everything but vile hate, coming for all things warm and living, and in time, even her and the dragon who'd chosen her above all others.

That was why Adara had chosen to fly south, father south than she and her people - if the traitors long gone could be called such - had ever imagined the world to stretch, why she had captured the dragon-riding princelings and brought them to this isle, and why even now she stood at the Raven's call and awaited its words.

For Frostsinger first and herself second, and no one else.

But even her patience was coming to an end.

"What is it now?" Adara spoke again when the raven made no further move to speak. "I've done as you asked."

"Both of them are near dead."

So he knew.

"They'll heal. It was no fault of mine that the second dove after us-"

"No. T'was mine own will that sent the Strong boy after you."

Adara paused at that.

"Then no one is as fault. What more is there to be said? I've broken the kinslayer's stride and brought him and the other one here, to the heart of your power-"

"Not my heart." The raven croaked at once, feathers ruffling in place. "My heart lies to the north."

"Then let me bring them-"

"No. The enemy grows stronger. Its forces are amassing beyond the Builder's wall. Even now, the Giants and the Childen and the rest of the Old ones feel their rousings, but if you of all of them come north again, the enemy will hasten their stride solely to slay you and the world will be doomed for it."

Adara blinked.

"Why?" A horrible thought occurred. "Do they want Frost-"

"The dragon is of no consequence. In the grand tapestry of fate, it is nothing. Merely another beast that has grown stronger and mightier than was its due on account of olden magic. Were it not for that, it would be no more different than any of its other brethren. No, it is you who draws the enemy's ire."

"Me?"

"You. You. You." On every branch of the wierwood, the black crows echoed the word "You, who are touched by cold yet still lay claim to warmth. You, who are touched by cold that has no mercy for fools and yet harbors no malice for the living. You are not simply another foe to the great enemy, but a challenge, and it will not suffer you to live."

"Then what would you have me do?" She said at last, and she did not even attempt to his her frustration and the building rage in her breast. "I was... I was not part of this, you said as much, but you awoke me, awoke us-!"

"Not me." The raven cut her off. "Never me. You should have slept forever, and the song is undone for your presence."

"I do not know what that means."

"You will understand in time. You will. You must. The song is undone, another must take its place."

"I do not know what that means." She tried again, voice rising in over the shuffle of crows. "Why won't you tell me more? I did what you asked, brought the two boys-"

"Not them." The raven croaked. "Not them, no good. One is too soft, and the other is of too much iron, brittle and unwieldy."

"Then why have me seize them?!" It took her a moment to realize that she was screaming, her chest heaving with the force of it. "Why have me do any of this!? What use are they to me if they are not the ones I need!?"

She had to stop the threat. She had to protect Frostsinger. He was all she ever had then and all had left now.

"Both will have their part to play, but they alone will not be the fire to your ice."

"Then who is?"

"You will know in time. You must. The Dragons will dance as one or not at all."

Adara went to speak against that, for those words meant nothing to her, but the raven did not let her draw breath for it.

"Aid will come. The witch of rivers and the daring will answer when the call of blood rises, and the debt of vengeful youth must at last be settled."

The last word rang out with a finality that made the hair on the back of her neck rise in panic, for she still didn't understand.

Then, the raven spoke one final time.

"Go now. You should not have left the fools to themselves."

It took her a long, dreadful moment to comprehend those words. Then it dawned on her, and she cursed in cold dread and turned to bolt back to the warren she'd left behind.

As she ran, the crows began to howl and disperse, a great cloud of black feathers and sharp words howling around and for her in a way that she would never forget for as long as she lived.

"Stop them. Save them. Make them bow. You must, you must, you must."

...​

Adara dove into the tunnel she'd left behind, heedless of the darkness as she sprinted further underground and back to the cavern where she'd left her charges.

When at last she burst into it, she only had a moment to be grateful for the glow of the firepit before she caught sight of the younger of two, eyes cloudy and half-mad with delirious rage as he hefted a rock high above the other.

She moved, but not before the black-haired boy screamed and brought the rock down. The elder of the two was saved the fate of having his skull cracked open and spilled across the dirt when he lashed in a brutal, desperate kick that flung the boy back. Rather than taking off his head, the stone landed roughly on his chest instead and left him heaving in agony.

The younger boy screamed again, still half-mad as he rose and surged forward to attack again, but Adara was already there and she tackled him to the ground with all the force she could muster. His head snapped back against the earth and he stilled.

She froze, before exhaling shakily when she caught the tell-tale rise and fall of his chest.

"He should not have been here."

She turned to catch sight of the Earthsinger slipping in from the tunnel behind her, yellow eyes alight with concern.

"He is still half-dead and suffering. The paste we've been feeding him must have granted him enough strength to rise and attack like a beast driven by instinct, but that is all. He is not ready, not yet. Neither of them is"

Adara heard the words, but they sounded distant to her ears. She rose to her feet, feeling unsteady and unnaturally light-headed, and turned to where the elder princeling lay heaving and shaking in the dirt, his one act of self-defense robbing him of what little strength he'd mustered.

"He could have killed him. I need them, I need them both, and he almost died."

The Earthsinger stepped back, ever so slightly, wariness in her gaze.

"We did not expect them to recover so quickly. I will have a guard placed on them."

Adara did not hear her, or offer any answer of her own. She merely looked first to the silver-haired princeling, before turning her gaze to the one at her feet.

She thought of all she had to do, and all she didn't know to do because the raven told her little and nothing despite her efforts. She thought of the past, of the betrayal and the pain, and to the future, of the enemy and the threat, and all she stood to lose.

Frostsinger.

And then, quite abruptly and quite embarrassingly, she collapsed and burst into tears.

...​

On the other end of the God's Eye, deep in the bowels of the monstrous Harrenhall, a witch awoke from her slumber.

Alys Rivers, the bastard daughter of Lyonel Strong, roused and blinked up at the bricked roof of her chambers in stunned disbelief.

Once, twice, three times.

Then she threw back her head and laughed, long and deep and loud, the mad cry ringing through the halls of Harren's Folly in a way nothing had and ever would again.

...

​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

When Luke awoke - truly awoke at last - he did so with the lingering remnants of cold agony clinging to his frame.

His skin felt raw and flayed. His muscles ached and his bones creaked with every ragged motion, and his skull felt brittle and hollow, like an eggshell on the verge of snapping. A monstrous chill seemed to have dug its hooks into his flesh and left him painfully cold and desperately craving warmth he couldn't find.

Shivers and shuddering breaths wracked and rattled his lungs long before he gathered the strength needed to blink his eyes open. When he finally managed that much at last, the gods proved that their cruelty remained unsated with his past suffering, because the first sight he caught was enough to have him stifling a painful scream.

Separated from him only by a low, steady flame blazing from a shallow pit just ahead, bound and slumped on the ground against a wall of earth rock was his wretched one-eyed plague of an uncle.

Aemond's skin was a shade paler and sallower than it ought to have been, and his face looked gaunt and stretched thin. His hair was disheveled and matted with dirt, and he'd lost his eye patch, leaving that cursed sapphire glinting lowly in the light of the flame from where it had been set into his hideous trench of a scar.

His one good eye was focused on Luke with sure and certain hate.

"Bastard."

Of course.

His voice was a weak, hoarse rasp, more fit an old man on his death bed than a prince in the prime of his miserable life, but of course he had the strength left to voice that poisonous gods-damned word.

Rage burned through his veins and he would have made to fling himself at Aemond, for all the good that would have done - the memory of him trying and failing came to him right as he made to move - but only when he tried to stagger to his feet did he notice that he to was bound nearly hand and foot.

There were lengths of crisscrossing rope wound tightly around his body, pinning his arms behind his back and his hands to one another in a rough, heavy-bound knot tight enough that he could hardly feel them. Another length of frayed material was circled around his ankles, the knot pinning them together even through the leather of his boots.

Grimly - and more than a little fretfully, though he valiantly refused to show it - Luke thought that he was hogtied not unlike a pig for slaughter. The closeness to the almost visibly rabid Aemond, no matter how similar a bound he was did nothing to lessen the effect.

Especially given that, from what last he could remember, he had just barely escaped death by Vhagar's cavernous maw.

Even the mere memory of it was enough to send a jolt of cold dread lancing down his spine, his breaths growing sharper and more uneven.

Luke had quite literally seen his death coming, and had only a moment to realize that he and his dragon would be torn out of the ear and eaten like animals before Vhagar's maw abruptly slammed shut and sent them careening away instead.

And then the clouds had parted and the thing that was almost to Vhagar what the hoary old bitch had been to him and Arrax had carved through the cloud cover and descended on the queen of all dragons like a demon out of the seven hells before locking its claws with hers and dragging them both back down into the storm.

Luke had made to dive after them when he should have fled instead - for what god's forsaken reason, he couldn't hope to rightly say - and then there was nothing else for him to remember.

And now here he was, Arrax nowhere in sight, Aemond his only bitter company, the pair of them trapped in the near-absolute darkness and stale air of what he could tell was some kind of cavern and not one clue as to how or why he had come to be here.

"Where are we?"

His voice cracked and stretched in a way that would have had his mother ordering maester Gerardys to ply him with tea and honied remedies had she been present to hear it.

A part of him wished that more than anything that she had been.

"Where are we? Who's done this to us?" He said again, forcing himself to meet Aemond's half-blind gaze. "Where are the dragons?"

His mother's allies wouldn't treat him so, and his usurper uncle's wouldn't dare do the same to Aemond - and for all he could faintly feel Arrax's pulse thrumming beneath his own ribcage, it was slow and alarmingly muted.

Something was wrong.

"Fuck you, you bastard son of a whore."

The words were said so flatly and so quickly that it took Luke a moment longer than it should have to understand them. When he did, he snarled in outrage, a fresh wave of anger helping him fight past the weak uncertainty and the fearful revulsion he felt every time he looked at the smug cunt.

"You-!"

"Enough."

Luke froze just as Aemond went very, very still.

A girl had just stepped out of the darkness behind Aemond, likely of an age with Baela and Rhaena and striding towards the pair of them with a measured gait and stern, impatient frown on her face.

The sight of her was vaguely familiar, and that in itself was strange because Luke could not fathom ever meeting and then misremembering anyone with skin that pale, hair that golden and eyes that burned with a light that put even Aemond's vaunted sapphire to shame.

"Are they ready?" She called in a loud voice as she rounded Aemond and came to stand between them, the flame at her back. "Are they strong enough for it?"

"Yes, Winterchild."

Luke startled almost violently. He craned his neck to the side, trying to glimpse the second speaker but found nothing but shadows and darkness behind him.

The knowledge that he was being watched by a figure he could not see, a figure who could very well be mere steps away for all he knew filled him with even greater unease.

What exactly was happening here?

"Good."

When he turned around, he found the girl towering over Aemond, her back to him as she looked down on him with an expression he couldn't see.

"Aemond Targaryen." His uncle startled at the sound of his own name, rage dulling with wariness as he glared up at the girl. "Brother to the would-be king."

"So you're aware of who I am." His chin jutted up pointedly. "And the danger you've tempted by striking me down."

"Not at all."

The offended expression on his face would have probably made Luke laugh meanly had the girl not immediately rounded on him and forced the sound to die in his throat.

"And you are the other one." She looked down at him impassively. "The son of the would-be queen. Lucerys... Targaryen?"

He swallowed roughly, a thousand questions burning at the tip of his tongue, yet not one of them made it past his lips as he stared up at her.

"Velaryon." He said at last, pausing only to wet his chapped lips and inhale steadily. "My name is Lucerys Velaryon."

"Liar."

He flinched and bristled when Aemond broke out into loud, cruel cackles, and felt a vicious burst of satisfaction when they broke into rasping coughs.

The girl did not so much as glance at him.

"Good. Let's finish this then."

Luke and Aemond both tensed at that, a sudden silence overcoming them at the words and the unknown implications behind them, but they needn't have bothered.

Without another glance at either of them, she turned and stalked off into the darkness, calling out over her shoulder "Bring them."

That was when the second stranger stepped into the light before them, and his heart stuttered in his chest.

They were small in stature, nearly a head shorter than Luke, with brown, leathery skin and pale yellow-slitted eyes. Their features were rough-hewn and eyrie, at once familiar yet also not, with hair-like intertwined branches and too-small ears beneath them.

When they stepped forward, they did so with bare legs undaunted by the stone and the dirt beneath them and reached for him with small, clawed fingers.

"What are you?"

The words erupted out of him in a whisper, too dazed to be afraid and too overwhelmed to be silent.

"An Earthsinger." The creature - for it was no man at all, it couldn't be - spoke softly. Its claws flashed and snapped through his restraints like a hot knife through butter, though Luke made no effort to move even with his freedom regained. "Though most of your kind know us as the Children of the Forest, if they ever deign to learn of us at all.

The words meant nothing to him, but Aemond inhaled sharply, overcome with sudden wonder.

"Impossible." He breathed in stunned disbelief so unlike the ordinary venom that spewed past his lips that Luke almost turned to gape at him.

Almost.

"I would suggest you not linger on it, oh prince of dragons." The self-proclaimed Earthsinger murmured as it moved to undo their bonds. "For you'll soon find that in the grand scheme of fate and what is yet to come, that word means very, very little indeed."

...​

By the time Luke regained his wits and some semblance of sense, two more Earthsingers had already arisen to guide them through the dark passageways of the cave system ahead and out into the world above.

When they emerged in a grove of trees, the air tinted silver with the light of the full moon shining down through the canopy of scarlet leaves and came face to face with a weirwood of such massive proportions it dwarfed even the great Heart tree in the gardens of the Red Keep, his disheveled unease returned with a vengeance.

The girl was there, waiting for them blanky, and as soon as the two of them were manhandled before her she turned her back to them and instead focused on a branch of the great weirwood.

On the very tips of that branch, regarding them with glimmering, beady eyes, was a raven.

"Show them." She... she spoke to the raven. Undaunted by the madness of the action. "As you showed me. Show them all of it."

"Sacrifice." The raven croaked sharply. "Sacrifice! Sacrifice!"

The girl grimaced.

"Naturally."

Parting the folds of her cloak with a practiced movement, she withdrew a blade from her belt and ran its edge along her open palm. Blood welled from the wound, crimson and glowing in the moonlight, and she stepped forward and reached as though to smear it across the Weirwood.

Rather abruptly, that was when Aemond burst.

"Who are you?!" His uncle snarled, eye wide and frazzled. "You ride the largest, most unnatural dragon I have ever seen! You struck down and absconded with a Prince of the seven kingdoms and the son of a rival claimant, and even now you covert with creatures that have no right to exist beyond myth and legend!"

Aemond stepped forward, either unaware or uncaring of the way the Earthsingers tensed around him in warning.

"Who. Are. You?"

Luke did not expect her to answer. He doubted even Aemond did.

One came all the same.

"I am Adara, daughter of Goren, of the White Plains." Her lips pulled with something bitter. "And I'm here to tell you a tale."

With that, she turned and pressed her still-bleeding palm against white bark.


And.

Luke.​

Fell.​

...​

He blinked, and found himself in the Throne Room of the Red Keep, staring down a ghost.

"Grandfather?"

Viserys Targaryen did not acknowledge him.

"Long ago," The king began to speak "When man was young and this world was not so small and petty, a great line of would-be emperors founded a great dynasty.

So great in fact that their rule spanned much of the known world - but their ascendancy was not to last.

The last reigning emperor passed, and by all rights his throne should have passed to his eldest daughter, much loved and much respected across the realm.

But it was not to be, for in the years after her birth, the emperor had sired a son, cold and cruel and everything the rightful empress was not, and he would not be denied a throne.

On the eve of her coronation, he struck down and slew his sister, claiming the realm for his own.

His reign did not last, for he brought too much strife and suffering to be borne to survive.

In the end, one of his own descendants plunged his burning sword deep into his heart and ended his wretched life once and for all.

But the Usurper was cunning and vengeful, and with his dying breath so cursed the world that had so spurned him, and unleashed a great evil upon the lands.

A final depravity, an army born of vile blood magic and a covenant that should never have been made.

And so the Others were born, marching out of the broken Dawn's mists and bringing forth with them a Darkness fit to end the world.

So they came, and so they went, and so they come again, and with them the shambling hoards of the enslaved dead and far, far worse things besides.

And now, the end shall be heralded with a terrible winter, drifting down from the distant North and reaching for all."

There was a thunderous groan, and Luke turned around just in time to catch sight of the throne room doors being blown asunder.

Gales of cold wind and snow and liquid darkness poured in, and with them, something all the more terrifying, heralded by blue eyes.

And then the dead came.

Luke screamed.

He screamed when they reached for him, milky pale flesh grasping and blue eyes burning with greed and cruelty and hate, and he screamed when they dragged him into their midst and screamed all the more when they clawed and tore at his flesh as only monsters could.

And then teeth closed around his throat, and his screaming ended in blood as it was ripped free and filled with hoarfrost and death.

...​

Luke staggered back and collapsed to his knees, heaving.

"W-what?" He whimpered in horror when at last he regained his breath, shaking hands reaching for his throat and finding only smooth, unblemished skin. "What?"

"The truth of what awaits the world" Adara whispered solemnly, eyes lost very far away. "Or a part of it, at least."

No.

"That's impossible." He tried to argue, voice and words alike shaking like leaves in the wind. "It was a trick. A lie of some kind."

"No, it isn't. And you know it."

He did.

Gods help him, but he did.

Slowly, she looked from him to Aemond, uncaring of his inner torment. His uncle was pale and still, blank-faced but for the horror reflected in his eye.

A mirror of Luke's own.

"What do we do?"

"Return home."

Both of them their gazes snapped toward her.

"Your dragons are recovering. Soon, they'll regain their strength." Something like hope flickered in Luke's chest, though it died very quickly as the memory of what gave rise to it was recalled. "When they do, fly home and speak to the would-be king and queen."

She glared at them both.

"There can be no war between your kin. You will each of you tell them what you saw here, what is to come and summon them all atop their dragons to this isle. It is the only way to prepare for the end of all."

"That is impossible," Aemon said lowly, but his voice might as well have been a peal of thunder for how well it carried in the near-silent grove. "This war is the culmination of decades of enmity."

"Not even we could stop it," Luke whispered.

It was telling that Aemond offered no disagreement, no scathing insult or bitter poison.

He didn't even look at Luke.

Adara, on the other hand, turned to glare at him.

"Make them," Adara said - no, commanded - with frigid finality. "Go to your mother and ask her of the Song Of Ice and Fire."

She turned to Aemond.

"Go to your brother and tell him to toss your father's dagger upon an open flame - he'll know the one. Show them, tell them, do whatever you must. But know this - If the dragon riders of your house are not assembled within half a moon's time and brought here, then you need not fear the Long Night to come." She titled her head in a deadly promise "For I will come for you in its stead."

Looking into those eyes, after everything else he'd seen and heard, Luke did not dare doubt even a single word of it.

...​

Two days later:

The Earthsinger known as Redgrass stood silently, eyes watching the titanic green dragon disappear above the clouds ahead as little more than a speck.

The younger princeling had left hours before, a precaution the Winterchild had insisted upon.

And so it began

"Ready me a pack." The girl in question said as she stood to his side " I need to fly North."

For a moment, Redgrass thought - nay, hoped - that he'd misheard.

Then he caught sight of the resolute look on her face, and true fear gripped his heart.

"You cannot-"

"There is nothing I cannot do should I have the strength for it, and I have plenty to spare." She cut him off sharply.

"The Raven-"

"I don't care." The girl said flatly, and Redgrass paled in as much as he could "I'm tired of being fed crumbs and ordered about like an obedient pet. This might be the worst of them yet but it is not my first war. I saw something in that vision - something I need to see for myself."

She turned and began to stride away.

"If the Raven is as all-knowing as he would have me believe he is, then he will have known of my choice before I made it. If he did not and is not then I see no reason to bend to his whims and act as though he is. Either way-"

Her fists clenched sharply.

"I am no one's pawn."

And with that, the board was well and truly set.

...

​

Next Chapter: The Daring

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[Firewillreign]

Daeron Targaryen soared across the skies above the Reach with terrible haste, carried aloft by his Tessarion as the pair banked through the heavens on their path to King's Landing.

As the pair flew, violent, chilled air battered away at them from the north, forcing him to duck his head and drawing agitated screeches from Tessarion provoked by his mounting frustration.

Abrutply, he found himself remembering the citadel's declarations from days only recently past.

Summer was coming to an end. Winter was near, and it would be coming years sooner than had been previously predicted.

Another looming disaster on the horizon.

The youngest son of the deceased Viserys Targaryen and the still-living Alicent Hightower clenched his teeth as his dragon dove sharply, and his grip on the reigns of her saddle tightened until he was all but strangling them.

The near-deafening whistle of the wind that curled in his ears as they rapidly descended was almost akin to the scream he longed to let loose from his own throat, held back only by the sliver of royal composure that had been drilled into him since he'd first learned to walk.

He didn't, but it was a close thing indeed and for good bloody reason.

Mere weeks ago, his life had been as close to perfect as any prince of the blood could ever hope for, even a third son like him.

Especially a third son like him.

It had only been a scant few years since Daeron was shipped off to squire for his cousin Ormund, but he'd been glad for his time away from the capital, and even more so from his family.

He felt guilty admitting it even to himself, but the desire to pull away from it all had been one that could not be helped.

Between Aegon's spiral into the wild and the unhinged, Aemond's quickly burgeoning ruthlessness, and even sweet Helaena's distance, Daeron had spent years feeling as though he was living in a house made of dry reeds ready to go up in dragon-flame at the slightest rogue spark.

His mother and grandfather's frenzied, smothering grip tightening on all of them - even him - as they tried to keep up appearances for their supporters and all the countless eyes from across the realm that were fixed on their house had only served to make matters worse.

By the time he'd reached his tenth name day, the days in the Red Keep were more often than not one form of ill-disguised misery or another.

Daeron loved his brothers, his sister and his mother, as he was sure they did him, and the distance between them hurt him terribly, but he would be lying if he were to claim that he hadn't been pleased to leave them behind all the same.

Oldtown was not devoid of its own tensions and politics, not by a stretch, but the games the nobles played in the city of his mother's forbears lacked the razor-sharp edge and scarcely concealed malice that lurked beneath the decaying majesty of his then-father's - now brother's - court.

Even still, he was shielded from the worst of them by his status as both a Prince and a descendant of house Hightower, by blood if not by name. He's spent his days training to be a knight, befriending nobles and spending time with his kin and his Blue Queen, who had quickly grown both swift and strong in the freedom offered outside of the Dragonpit.

It had all been perfect.

And now, three years later, everything was falling apart.

His father was dead - a fact that brought him no real grief beyond the thought of the deadly consequences his passing heralded - and his brother had been crowned the king of the seven kingdoms and lord protector of the realm.

Decades of his family's ambitions were realized at last, some would claim. A King of Targaryena and Hightower blood to usher in a prosperous era, others would say.

Daeron almost snorted at the thought.

In truth, not one of Aegon's supporters who had any claim to sense in their minds would be fool enough to think his reign secure.

His brother may have been sat on the throne - kicking and screaming no doubt - but as things currently stood, the fearsome seat that the Conqueror had forged in his Black Dread's flames was nothing more than an elaborate perch from which one could best watch the realm rip itself asunder.

Rhaenyra.

It always led back to Rhaenyra.

His elder half-sister, of whom Daeron had seen neither hide nor hair in nigh on a decade had not sat idly by while her imagined birthright was, in her mind's eye, stolen.

Word had long since reached them of her crowning Dragonstone following Ser Arryk's defection and theft of his late Father's crown, the same circlet of gold and studded gemstones that had once graced the Jaehaerys the Concilliater's brow.

Cousin Ormund had cursed furiously when he'd learned of it - that crown was a dangerous symbol as it was, and the rumors of the crowning that had followed on Dragonstone's shores were even more so.

If the reports were to be believed, his estranged - and happily so - uncle Daemon Targaryen had placed the crown on his wife's head himself before every lord, knight, and commoner present.

That this happened at the burning ceremony of Rhaenyra's miscarried child, supposedly lost to the sudden grief of their father's death - Daeron had crushed the brief spasm of sympathy that flared in his chest when he'd first heard of it - gave his would-be usurper sister's cause greater power it should otherwise not have had, not when Aegon had been crowned well before her and controlled nearly every great symbol of legitimacy their house possessed from his seat across the Blackwater.

Nearly every symbol, except Dragonstone itself, the seat of the royal heir, and the greater half of House Targaryen's ridden dragons.

Therin lay the greatest disaster.

Between the four of them, Daeron and his siblings convened four dragons of fighting size - and only three of them could and would be called to battle, for Halaena would like as not never fly Dreamfyre into war against armies of men, much less another dragon.

By contrast, his half-sister could call upon seven, among them the legendary monsters that were the Red Queen and the Blood Wyrm, each of whom only Vhagar alone could hope to fell.

The threat of Rhaenyra's retribution had darkened the horizon like the ominous spread of black thunderclouds before the storm set in.

And then the storm had set in, in more damned ways than one.

Aemond had been dispatched to Storm's End to win House Baratheon and the forces of the Stormlands over to their side... as had Lucerys Velaryon - though anyone who'd laid eyes on him and his brothers would know that Harwin Strong's bastard had as much claim to that name as his mother did to the throne - for the same purpose.

And so hot-tempered Aemond had come face to face with the Strong boy who had put out his eye and had, until then, gotten away with it without so much as a 'by your leave'.

The gods had a vicious sense of justice or humor or both, and none of it bode well for the mere mortals beneath them.

Aemond had confronted Lucerys - something he could not blame him for - and when his nephew had refused to carve out his eye, his brother had pursued him on dragon back - and that Daeron did very much blame him for, because attacking an envoy even on a technicality was foul and ill-done, and their detractors would declare it doubly so regardless of how legitimate his grievances were.

That was the point where the tales had grown outlandish beyond the pale.

One spoke of how Aemond had killed Lucerys atop Vhagar, before fleeing into the night once the horror of what he'd done had set in - Daeron had nearly laughed himself sick at that one.

Another spoke of how Arrax and Vhagar had ripped each other apart and sent both riders to their deaths - Absurd. Vhagar was close to ten times Arrax's size and a thousand more fierce, battle-hardened, and bloodthirsty. That hoary old bitch would have slaughtered the other dragon with the same ease she'd use to crush a hatchling.

And the most humorlessly laughable stories of all touted the presence of a third dragon, some manner of monstrosity that had felled both Vhagar and Arrax before carrying off their still-warm corpses to feed on like some carrion beast from the seven hells.

Ridiculous. The fruit of the fantasies of drunken sailors and foolish smallfolk, but all of them had the same damning sliver of truth in the end.

Aemond and Lucerys had vanished in the storm above Shipbreaker Bay, and all their burgeoning plans had descended into terrible anarchy. Once the news spread, it was as though the realm entire had ground to a halt.

The moment word reached Oldtown, Daeron was saddling Tessarion almost before he'd finished reading through the accursed missive, and was in the air and flying to the home he'd all too happy to leave with haste borne of sheer, rigged terror.

Vhagar was gone.

Alive, or dead, it did not matter so long as she was not in King's Landing to act as a shield against Rhaenyra's assault.

The only thing now likely keeping the Black Queen and her supporters and brood of children at bay were the rumors - ones no doubt aided in their spread by his grandfather the Hand - that Aemond's disappearance was part of a plot to lure her and her dragons into a trap where Vhagar, Sunfyre, Dreamfyre and even his Tessarion could move to pounce on them and end the greater war to come in one fell swoop.

It was a terrifying thought for any enemy to face, even one with as many dragons under their banner as his sister claimed.

But the ruse would not hold forever, and Rhaenyra's growing supporters would only provoke her into moving against King's Landing.

Between the North likely declaring for her in full, a good chunk of the Crownlands and the Vale, the burgeoning civil war in the Reach and a the divided river lords likely flocking to her even now on account of their Tully overlord's feebleness in his old age, there was only so much time left before she would be emboldened to strike while the iron burned in her favor.

For all I know, he thought grimly, they could already be attacking.

Dragons outpaced ravens several times over. If an attack were to occur, he wouldn't know of it until he flew directly into it, or...

Or what was left in its wake.

The image of his brother's city in flames and his family's heads on pikes intermixed with ashes scattering into the winds burned in his mind, and he bit the inside of his mouth hard enough to draw blood, the taste and tang of iron stark against his numb tongue.

He needed to fly faster.

"Adhirikydho, Tessarion!"

Tessarion roared in agreement and did as he had bid, wings beating the air fiercely as she began gaining speed - but only for a moment.

Suddenly, he found himself being thrown forward in his saddle as Tessarion bucked in the air beneath him, and even as he groaned in pain at the sudden shift in her flight, he could sense her bewildered confusion.

What seemed to be a large, pulsing black cloud - dark as pitch - was approaching from on high, the strange thing stark against the mildly windy skies of the Reach and appeared to stretch from one end of his line of sight to the other with strange, unnatural ease.

It was only when the faintest wisps of the cloud drew close enough to see clearly that he understood that it was no cloud at all, but a wall of ravens - more of the black messenger birds than Daeron had ever seen even in the rookeries of the citadel.

So much so, in fact, that they seemed to blot out the skies ahead.

"What in seven hells?" He murmured in disbleif.

Then his eyes widened as his stunned bafflement gave way to the realization that they were flying on a collision course with the largest unkindness of preying birds he'd have never tried to imagine had he not seen it for himself.

And neither party seemed to be veering away.

"Tessarion!"

Too late.

His dragon plowed into the horizon of ravens with the same instinctual arrogance of any great predator, no doubt expecting them to scatter into the winds from whence they came.

They didn't.

Instead, a thousand of them scattered, yes, but they swiftly closed ranks around Tessarion, enclosing her within a hurricane of black feathers and clawing beaks and talons

She screeched in fury and, and let lose a scorching burst of cobalt flame that lit waves of the ravens, but for all the carnage the flames unleashed and the ashes they scattered, their numbers did not seem to thin.

Daeron was no coward, but the stunned fear was quick to well in him as the birds - the gods-damned birds! - descended on them and began to swarm across Tessarion's body, brushing against her wings and scales and saddle, a great flock of them descending on him and sending him into a wild fit of flailing as he tried and failed to futilely strike them away.

Soon, Tessarion's panicked roars became intermixed with his own as the wretched things continued to entrap them, and the acrid smell of burning flesh and feathers clogged his nostrils and drove him further into a blind panic.

"Daeron Targaryen."

And then they began to scream, and that stunned fear quickly froze and crystallized into cold and terrible terror.

"Tis time to serve your purpose."

The air shook as a thousand beaks spoke at once, and Daeron's ears felt fit to bursting as the twisted crowing of man and beast and something else distinctly ungodly clawed its way into them, filling his head with blinding, lancing agony and turning his roars into cries of pain.

"If the recalcitrant Winterchild will not seek fire." The voice intoned cruelly, oblivious to Daeron's bloodcurdling cries. "Then fire will seek her. Now fly."

The pain in his skull reached a horrible peak, and Daeron felt himself heave and wail as his head seemed to come undone and fell into darkness.

Even then, he could still hear the one word, repeated over and over again as oblivion claimed him.

Seek, Seek, Seek!


...​

The ravens suddenly dispersed with a thunderous caw, leaving Tessarion free to whirl in midair and readjust her course.

The path to King's Landing was soon left forgotten as the Blue Queen veered away and began to soar further and further North.

All the while, her rider lay slumped in her saddle, eyes rolled far back into his skull until only the whites remained

...​

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[Firewillreign]

Astride Frostsinger's back, nestled between rows and rows of hardened, frost-kissed spinal spikes, Adara could look down upon the world and watch it reach out and onwards endlessly.

From their perch so high up amidst the heavens, even great-peaked mountains could appear trifling to dragon and girl alike, never mind the inconsequential dwellings and holdings of men - but they never ended.

No matter how far or how often they flew, the fields and the lakes and the wilds, old and new and entirely unknown continued to stretch, on and on and evermore looming beyond horizons unconquered.

A strange dichotomy - that it could all appear so small, and yet still remain so unfathomably large, but it was no less beautiful for it.

Would that they had the time to enjoy it, after so unfathomably long a slumber that everything of the life she knew was gone, with such crushing finality that not even myths of it were like to have remained.

Instead, Frostsinger continued to soar northward on, banking through dense winter clouds with blistering swiftness as they made good time toward the great Wall Adara had only spared a passing interest in the immediate wake of her rebirth.

As they flew, the cooling northern winds buffeted her face and threw back her hair. She'd forgotten to braid it as she often did, and the golden curls shimmered as they were whipped back by the force of their flight.

T'was not an unpleasant sensation in truth, and Frostsinger's crystalline chimes and the methodical snap of his wings - akin to muted thunder - were familiar soothing melodies as she peered over her dragon's horns and down at the views below.

Sprawling snow-smothered flats, vast forests receding against the colder glaze of cooling days and larger mountain ranges of such size that even Frostsinger would enjoy carving out a lair in their midst.

This was what the dwellers who laid claim to it called the North - A great kingdom - in size if nothing else - considered far and wide to be the harshest, the most trying, nigh-unyielding and all but barren to those who were not born and bred for it.

Adara almost snorted at the thought.

The North took strength and will to survive, that much she could admit, but the only great challenges it faced were the cold and the hunger the former often brought about.

What did its people know of true strife beyond that?

Of arctic storms that raged for days and weeks on end? Of ice lizards and other far less gentle frozen beasts that crawled out of their frigid lairs to ravage the few bountiful fields of men and menace the settlements that had not the power to drive them off or fend against them?

What did they know of crueler foes?

Of worse, fell enemies that came in the night and sought to sow only terror and ruin?

Nothing, that was what.

Though she bared no grudge against them, the people of this era - of this Westeros - were too soft, and all the lesser for it.

Meeting the dragon princes had not disabused her of the notion, only strengthened it.

An attempted kin killer - an oh, did that not make her teeth clench in quiet rage - and a half-crazed boy with as much steel in his spine as a blade of fresh grass.

And they were what passed for royalty in this foreign realm, their house supposedly the greatest power of all, yet Frostsinger had made short work of the mightiest living fire-drake amongst them, and the other was little enough that her dragon could have swallowed it whole if he so pleased and had been laid low by a glancing strike that hadn't even been intended for it.

Weak, plagued by infighting born of festering, long-rotting wounds she had not the time nor the slightest desire to understand- and yet the Raven so ardently argued that it was them and theirs who would stand with her against the terrors to come.

That it was only they who possibly could.

Absurd

It was not that which had driven her to fly north again, however.

She could and would stomach far worse than boys with too much power and a fraction the sense if it meant triumphing against the threat that would one day come for Frostsinger.

No, it was the expectation that she was to heed said absurdity with neither question nor argument that pressed her into a cold, cool rage and frayed the very last of her patience - and there hadn't been all that much of it to begin with.

The raven threatened much and demanded more, but it offered little and less in return, and the crumbs it deigned to scatter upon her had been a poor fare indeed.

"Do not return North."

Adara would not be commanded like a beast of burden. She'd had her fill of blind trust and earnest faith long, long ago.

For all its great power, proven and so-claimed both, she owed it no obeisance. Whatever or whomever the raven thought it was, and whatever it may truly be, it was no master of hers.

None had ever truly been and none would ever be.

That was why she was flying north before bringing the so-called House of the Dragon to heel.

She would discover the truth of the threat to come for herself, and to do that much, she would go back to the beginning - to the place she once undeservingly called home, and woe be it to any and all who would dare stand in her way.

It was as she was firming that grim and resolve that she sensed Frostinger's mood shift beneath her.

She frowned, and then her eyes grew wide in surprise when she caught sight of it.

Emerging out of the clouds below and leveling out of a sharp ascent was another dragon. A fire drake greater in size than the pearlescent creature the Velaryon prince called to mount.

Its armor was scales of heavy blue, but its horns and crest glinted in the sunlight in shades of heavy copper, and Adara glimpsed more swirls of the same running across its underbelly as it shifted in flight across from them.

Most tellingly of all was the contraption fastened across the stretch of its spine, a work of folded leather and chained metal that was damningly familiar - a saddle, and from this distance, she could just glimpse the shock of silver hair crowning the unmistakable sight of a figure slumped astride of it.

Another dragon rider.

Another Targaryen.

How? How could they have possibly sent another after her in so short a span of time?

She blinked and lost the trail of the thought when the pitiful thing shrieked and opened its maw, revealing the glow building at the back of its throat.

...

No.

It could not mean to - but surely not. It was not even a fifth the size of Frostsinger. It wouldn't dare.

The dragon banked sharply, caught the wind with a stalling whip of its own, and belched a great arcing stream of brilliant cobalt flames across Frostsinger's gargantuan flank before she could even consider voicing a warning.

For a moment, it was as if the gods themselves had smote the world with silence. All her worries were dismissed for sheer incredulity at the sight of a fool and their beast so stupidly throwing away their lives.

Then the instant passed and she suddenly tasted pain, not her own yet still hers through the bond she shared with her only true companion, lancing and blinding and infuriating all the same, and the silence was shattered as Frostsinger bellowed with enough hideous fury to waken the dead.

The cobalt dragon dove at once, and with a burst akin to the shattering of titanic glaciers, her own tossed his wings against the winds and arced his flight viciously in chase.

The world spun around them as they hurtled down at ghastly speeds, Frostsinger's pulling them along as they pursued their audacious quarry. Adara could all but taste Frostisnger's wrath on her tongue, feel the thrumming of his offense in her breast - the audacity of this brazen attack was an insult to him in the worst of ways, and he would not suffer the challenge to linger unanswered.

She did not attempt to stop him - not when her own anger on his behalf shrieked its own storm within her - yet all the same... A part of her sensed that something was amiss.

She did not have the time to question it.

She felt a familiar pressure thrum against her, and a beat later, Frostsinger's maw unhinged and unleashed a blistering torrent of cold fyre, whiter than snow and more luminous than the glow of a full moon.
The air immediately howled with the force of the otherworldly cold, and the dragon survived only by throwing out its wings and spinning aside with a desperate screech to evade its coming end.

Just as Frostinger's jaws snapped shut and he made to ready another would-be blow, the younger dragon abruptly pulled out of its dive and angled its wings into a controlled descent. Frostsinger snapped in frustration as he was forced to, the scope of his wings pulling them back from his would-be prey as he was forced to alter his flight in turn.

The hunt continued at once - and then came to an end nearly as dizzyingly swift as it had begun.

The little dragon had forced them to drop from the heavens after it, though it was only. Its swiftness allowed it to put on a burst of distance - hardly enough to save it - but more than enough for it to drift down to the snow-covered plain it had led them to and, for no sane reason she could name, drop down to the earth and still in place.

Frostsinger roared in savage glee and redoubled his pace. His wings snapped forward once more, and she felt him raise his talons as he prepared to descend in bloody vengeance at last.

And just before Frostsinger crushed it beneath his bulk, Adara saw the dragon still, turn to them with animalistic grace before spreading out its wings and bowing its head in clear, unmistakable submission.

A surrender?

"Stop."

The plea escaped her instinctively, without conscious thought, and came not an instant too soon.

Frostsinger's killing strike balked, his trust in her absolute, and his talons pulled back sharply.

Rather than descending on their quarry, they soared over it and landed with a great, roiling impact that sent gales of snow bursting through the air from the force of it.

Frostinger rounded on it at once, a blood-curdling warble building in his throat, and the dragon shrunk on itself even more, though it did not move to raise its head despite its obvious terror.

Adara could not believe the sight of it.

She had never seen fire-drake act as such.

Never.

Such was her disbelief that she almost missed the sight of the figure astride it - the rider - inching down its flank.

Dismounting.

...

Well, then.

Frostinger snarled in displeasure - his rage had not abated, and murderous distrust - as she made to do the same.

"You can kill both in a single strike if need be." She murmured under her breath, and began to scale down his wing. "I must see what this is to be."

For what else was she to do now?

They met in between their dragons, Frostinger looming overhead with fangs bared, and the cobalt beast shying away but seemingly unwilling to abandon its rider in its fear.

And, to her, said rider was nothing worthy of note.

She could see the resemblance to the one-eyed princeling - kin of his, no doubt - but he was a head shorter, his face softer, hair shorn far more generously and he held himself with none of the false pride the other had so desperately tried to maintain.

What had the raven brought her now?

"Who," Adara began coldly. "Are you?"

He stared at her with wide, bloodshot purple eyes.

"Daeron." He croaked, stunned and horrified beyond belief. "And I am very, very lost."

Then he toppled to his knees and began to retch.

...​

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous

For the record, Frostsinger when attacking has two modes:

One) Fuck everything in this particular direction

Two) Anything north of Adara does not have my permission to exist.

Next Chapter: We go back to King's Landing and Dragonstone, and we get reactions and politics! Finally!

 

[Firewillreign]

In the eyes of gods and men, few sins were as great as kin-slaying.

This truth was known even to the common folk - to fell your own kin and wet your hands with the same blood that coursed through your own veins was to blacken your name and legacy forevermore.

No one is as accursed as the kinslayer

And yet, Aemond thought as he watched Aegon tip his head back and roar with loud, ugly laughter, I am ever and always tempted.

Returning to King's Landing had been a trial all of its own - Vhagar was yet to recover from their ordeal above Shipbreaker Bay and the days that followed, and her age-worn wings were slow to regain their strength. The flight back to the capital had been a trying, ponderous thing, and his queen of dragons had all but collapsed upon their arrival.

Aemond had not been able to show his concern - he'd scarcely managed to order the dragon keepers to ply her with cattle and soothe her with her favored melodies before the summons had arrived on the tongues of a half dozen knights, led at the helm by Ser Criston himself.

"Prince Aemond." The man had seemed ashen-faced but relieved to see him all the same, eyes assessing from head to foot and back again "Thank the gods for your safe return."

Aemond had been tempted to tell him that the gods would soon abandon them all - if they hadn't already - but chose to hold his tongue before the words could spill out.

There would be time enough for that soon, and the handful of dragonkeepers and household knights surrounding them were far from the proper audience.

"I must meet with the small council at once."

At that, Criston's smile had taken a grim edge and he swiftly gestured for a horse to be brought forward for him.

"Forgive my presumption, my prince, but that much was never in question."

The brief ride through the streets of the city had been telling. The common folk recoiled at the sight of them, flitting about in wary droves. Aemond could feel the stares burning into the back and beyond as the people acknowledged his return, and could all but taste the apprehension of the masses tainting the air.

When they arrived at the Red Keep he did not even pause to visit his own chambers and relieve himself of his riding leathers and traveling cloak despite the now hideous state they were in - were in not for his colouring, once could be forgiven for mistaking him for a peasant.

By the time he tossed open the doors to the small council chambers, Ser Criston his dogged shadow, they were all assembled and waiting for him, with his useless kingly brother at the head of the table and nursing a goblet of wine - clearly already half-drunk.

Of course.

"Aemond."

His mother's eyes had been full of emotion at the sight of him, eyes shining and shoulders trembling, and she'd looked ready to leap towards him in relief and draw him close.

For a beat, he'd felt something in him soften at the sight of her. It was enough for him to ignore the remaining five members and the manner in which they seemed to recoil at his current state.

An add, aching yearning rose in him - a momentary weakness, no doubt brought on by the ordeals he'd endured - and though he'd never admit it, Aemond would have accepted the gesture of affection from her.

Perhaps even welcomed it.

But she made no move towards him - she froze on the first step, indecision seizing her motion before she seemed to remember herself.

Her face blanked, a clean slate save for the faintest hint of apprehension that she had rarely been free of his entire life, and all he received from her in the stilted silence that followed was a half-approving nod and what might charitably have been called the ghost of a smile.

Always with appearances, even now.

The yearning he felt for her touch died, abruptly and violently, and something in his gut curdled right alongside with it.

"Brother!" Aegon crowed, voice high nasally with drink, grating in a way only he could achieve and effortlessly at that. "We were beginning to think you'd gotten lost on the way home!"

He raised his goblet as if in salute, and the rapid movement ended with wine sloshing off of the rim and splashing across the table. Lord Wylde grimaced and jerked back as the arbor gold stained the edge of his sleeve, and their grandfather shot Aegon a muted, scathing look - but he did not say a word in reprimand as he would have done before.

The days of Aegon being lightly - and rightfully - rebuked ended the moment they placed the conqueror's crown on his brow.

A fact that Aegon acknowledged, if the half-glance he shot Otto was any indicator, and relished.

"Well?" He grinned at Aemond, unpleasant in his victory, and tilted his head leadingly. "Speak! Your king commands you!"

And Aemond spoke.

He recounted the flight to Storm's End, his talks with Lord Borros, the agreement he'd brokered in return for chaining himself to one of the blustering man's four daughter, and at last, the arrival of Lucerys the false-Velaryon.

There, he paused, taking in the expectant looks the council graced him with.

His grandfather's anticipation was almost tangible, whilst Aegon looked bored.

"Get on with it."

He inhaled lightly, resisting the urge to grind his teeth at the command, and continued.

There were no more pauses after that.

At first, there was confusion. That shifted to confusion, which grew tainted and heavy with disbelief that gave way to blatant incredulity the longer he spoke.

By the time he was finished, there was not one pair of eyes on him that was not wide with horrified bafflement.

All of them - even Ser Criston and the knights by the door - goggled at him the way one would stare at a court jester who'd dared mock a king to his face.

Aemond knew to expect it - he'd vowed to recount the whole story, from beginning to end, and even to his own ears it sounded like the height of a drunken sailor's folly. A ridiculous and witless blend of song and poor imagination... and yet it was the truth.

He'd seen it. He'd lived it.

And he'd dreamed of the nightmare to come.

In the face of that, disbelief and ridicule and mockery were all things he could endure if it meant that they were not found wanting when the order of things as they knew it came to a glacial, deathly end.

And then Aegon tipped back his head and began to roar with laughter, and all of that rational reasoning and good sense threatened to desert him as his blood turned to poison in his veins under the force of his black rage.

"Your grace." Grandfather began chilling, eyes flickering between Aegon and Aemond as he raised his voice over the near-deranged gales of laughter. "The prince has endured a significant ordeal-"

"I have," Aemond spat the words, hating the dismissive nature of the man's defense and knowing exactly what conclusion he was building up to in that oh-so-reasonable tone of his voice. "But I am not lessened for it, and my wits have not been lost to it."

"You've almost fooled me, then!" Aegon cackled, and his laughter redoubled in strength. Aemond's temper continued to darken. "You flew off into the storm as Aemond the fierce, and you return now as Aemond the Mad! Prophet of grumpkins and snarks! Gods, it's glorious!"

Aemond the mad?

The urge to leap across the table and inflict calamity on to him was growing with every beat. He could almost hear his own blood pumping at the back of his ears, such was the force of it.

"Perhaps my king would like to express his doubts to Vhagar, then," Aemond spoke levelly, and at last, Aegon graced the world with blessed silence. His eyes grew a little wide as he paused, mouth parted in disbelief. "If mine own words are... insufficient, mayhaps the state that of the greatest dragon of House Targaryen would suffice to prove the truth in my tale."

There was a clink of shifting armour, and he spied Ser Criston stepping up into the corner of his vision.

"Your grace, If I may?"

'Speak, Ser Criston." Alicent interjected quickly, silencing Aegon's impatient outburst. Aemond could feel her gaze on him, focused and bothersome.

"I... can not speak for the entirety of Prince Aemond's tale." The man spoke warily, without the surety that he had come to expect of him over the years. "But I can speak to Vhagar's state. The dragon has suffered - If I did not know better, I would say that she is nearing her death."

It took true effort for Aemond not to hiss at that.

Vhagar was already recovering - there would be no death. It was inconceivable.

The words seemed to give his brother a moment's worth of pause, before the useless lout shrugged and leaned back in his chair, bringing that accursed goblet back to his lips for a heavy draw.

"And? The hoary old bitch was old and slow in our grandfather's time," He declared when he was finished swallowing his swill. "If anything, I'm surprised she didn't fall out of the skies trying to get to Storm's end. Or perhaps she did."

Here he smiled meanly, as if sharing some great jest.

"Perhaps you took a tumble into Shipbreaker Bay, brother, and took a blow to the head along with it."

Kinslaying is a sin, Aemond reminded himself, and would be far more trouble than it is worth.

"With respect, your grace, it is more than that," Criston argued, and Aegon frowned heavily. "Vhagar has been wounded. Great wounds and gouges have marred her hide, and there are swathes of her scales that have been scarred. There is no question of it - Prince Aemond's mount did fly into battles against another in that storm."

With that, he fell silent.

Lord Wylde was the first to clear his throat.

"Vhagar has been wounded - and the prince Lucerys rides his own dragon, does he not? Could it not-"

"That ugly little worm with wings is not even Sunfyre's equal, let alone anything approaching the weight necessary to trouble Vhagar." Aemond strangled that imbecilic notion in its infancy. Surely there was some end to this indignity he was forced to endure? "A single swipe of her wings or a bite of her jaws and both it and its bastard rider would have been rent asunder."

They very nearly had been.

"Then perhaps there was more than one dragon."

Aemond turned away from that thought when his mother made her voice known once more.

"The rumors already whisper as much, and our enemies would see much promise in crippling our cause through Vhagar. Daemon Targaryen alone rides, and we need look no further than Ser Vaemond Velaryon's fate to know that he has no respect for the laws of gods and men both. What's to say he would not lay in wait and descend on an envoy if he so pleased?"

Maester Orwyle's eyes lit up.

"Indeed, my queen. The blood wyrm is storied for its savagery, and the veteran of a hundred battles beside. If Prince Lucerys's Arrax could not harm Vhagar, than Caraxes most certainly-"

"And just how-" Aemon began, words level and conversational, and Orwyle shut his mouth at once. "-would I have mistaken my rogue uncle's beast for a monster beyond even my Vhagar?"

Orwyle hesitated, sweat beading his brow. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again as he tried to measure himself.

"My prince," He began, carefully pressing his hands together and shifting back in his seat. Besides him, Ser Tyland suddenly seemed more interested in looking anywhere but at him. "In the darkness of the storm, you would not have had a clear line of sight. Particularly not if you were pursuing other quarry, and was set upon in your distraction-"

"Vhagar would not miss another dragon - and certainly not Caraxes, who she spent nearly a decade nesting with. And when we clashed, we clashed above the storm cover-"

"And-" Orwyle continued, ignoring him - which was more bravery than Aemond expected from him by far. "My prince, you were missing for over a sennight. It is entirely within reason to assume that Vhagar's wounds grounded her, and that you too did not escape unscathed."

Here, the maester began to trail off, eyes nervously flitting over his state - clothes encrusted with dirt and grime, pallor only halfway recovered, and an eye on the edge of being bloodshot.

"If you were wounded - or perhaps merely stunned from the battle..." The maester exhaled warily. "You may have... misremembered. The feverish mind can play most... merely fanciful tricks... An ice dragon? A girl threatening the realm entire? Visions in the trees... surely not ... strained memory can not be trusted..."

The words continued to trail off until Orwlye seemed to lose his nerve altogether and shut his mouth, courage deserting him at last.

"'Misremembered?'" Aemond asked softly "'Fanciful tricks?'"

The room seemed to hold its breath. Aegon leaned forward in anticipation.

"... Yes, my prince."

"I see."

His fist cracked against the wooden table with a sound akin to a splintering lance as he shot up from his seat.

They all jumped - even his grandfather, and Aemond went to speak - and then he heard it.

It was a snigger. A snort. Some unholy combination therein.

Slowly, glacially, he raised his eye to stare at Aegon.

And he saw it.

The look of joyful, petty malice he'd known from his earliest years, when the waste before him would punish him for daring to be better than him.

Dragonless. Second-born. Unworthy.

He had fought since that fateful night in Driftmark to be the better of the two, the greater - if not from the very second he'd realized that no one, not even his own mother would ever grant him anything he did not take for himself - and yet, somehow, it was Aegon who was always raised above and given the means to look down on him.

And now Aemond had to endure that mockery while bowing his head and calling him king.

No.

By the time the Kingsguard realized that he was moving, he was halfway around the table. By the time the members of the small council began to roar, he had reached Aegon, and by the time he was pressing down on the now wide-eyed and terrified fool's shoulder while his other hand reached for the dagger on his ill-fitting belt, his mother's panicked half-scream was too late.

Still. It was good to know what they all thought of him.

The Kingsguard closed in on him, but Aemond had already pulled away from the wretch, their father's valyrian steel dagger gripped firmly in hand.

One of Aegon's white cloaks attempted to place a hand on him - another of his drunken lickspittles - but Aemond shot him a quelling look and the gutless cretin retreated like he'd been burned.

"That's mine!" Aegon roared like a child, storming up and off his seat, but there were none in the room who were fooled by his unsightly display of authority.

Aemond could see the fear in his gaze, and it made him smirk widely.

"I am merely indulging a curiosity I harbor for our ancestral birthright." Aemond turned to him and spoke in smooth, fluent high Valyrian. "Unless my kingly brother can provide sufficient cause to deny me?"

Aegon looked trapped.

Weak.

Still, he opened his mouth to make a token protest - and what a joy that was.

"I...want knife... mine."

Aemond's smirk grew and grew with every word until it culminated with a low, cruel chuckle.

You cannot even speak our mother tongue, you disgrace.

At that sound, Aegon paled and seemed to lose strength at the knees as he lowered.

None of his advisors would even look at him, and Grandfather rose from his seat and stared him down at last, a heavy frown on his face.

"That is enough, Aemond."

"I quite agree." He turned on his heel and marched past the stunned knights. "I have had a long, trying journey, and I must rest. We shall continue this at a later time."

He had ten days, after all, and a dagger to inspect.

"My prince-"

"Aemond-!"

Protests rose to try and bar his path, but it was Aegon who silenced them.

"Let him go!" He bellowed, and Aemond heard the sound of a goblet being hurled against the stone wall. "I tire of his stench! Let him join my queen in her latest bouts of stupidity! They'll make a fanciful pair indeed!"

Aemond paused, one foot outside the chambers of the small council.

Beside him, Ser Criston paused as well.

"My prince-"

Ignoring the man's attempts to settle him, Aemond looked over his shoulder, past his mother and Grandfather and all the rest beside until he caught Aegon's gaze once more.

Somehow, his brother grew paler still.

"I am not a fool, or a liar. I am not addled, or witless, and I have not taken leave of my senses. Every word I have spoken is the truth - there is a great threat coming to the Seven Kingdoms, and your impotent denials - as true to your character as they are - will do nothing to change that."

His biting disdain landed like the blow of a whip, and Aegon recoiled in his seat.

"You-"

"Do not ever insult me again, brother. I will not be so understanding again."

And then he turned and marched away.

...​

Ser Criston followed him as he marched through the hall of the Red Keep, alarmed servants scattering about as they hurried to move out of their way.

"That was ill-done, my Prince."

"Enough, Ser Criston. It is neither the time nor your place to judge me, and I have no patience for either." He growled, and mercifully, the man knew to shut his mouth. "Tell me - how go the Lord Hand's efforts to muster men for our cause?"

A pause.

"... Passably, my prince."

Criston spoke. Aemond listened - and a part of him seethed.

Rhaenyra and her ilk had secured the lords of the Narrow Sea and blockaded the gullet with the fleet of the prideless Velaryons. Support had risen for her among the Crownlands, the Vale, swaths of the Riverlands, and the North was likely soon to follow.

On their end, Borros Baratheon had sworn his loyalty, but his muster was said to be as slow and ponderous as his wit. Jason Lannister was little better, and the Reach was divided, with a great number of houses yet to answer their call.

His grandfather held hope and sued for time and patience, but Aemond found the silence of the Tyrells to be particularly insulting, and his mother's insistence on peace pathetic.

Blood was already being spilled - The Brackens and the Blackwoods had taken the excuse for what it was and were already ripping each other apart, and they were far from the only houses that would leap for the chance to settle old grudges now that one so broad had been offered.

Daeron had been recalled from Oldtown days ago in response to Aemond's disappearance, but he'd yet to show his face. Worse, with his continued absence, and Vhagar's slow recovery, only Sunfyre stood to defend the capital against Rhaneyra's dragons.

One to seven - and his brother's mount was almost as useless as the cunt who rode him, untested and full of false vigor.

The only saving grace was that Rhaenyra was too afraid to attack - doubt and wariness regarding his disappearance making her fear a trap that was not there, but her bastard had been released before Aemond had and he would surely have told her of his and Vhagar's state.

She would know soon enough that King's landing was ripe for the taking - and it was galling to acknowledge that only Lucerys's testimony of the other dangers that were to come might grant them some time to act.

And act they must, as limited as they were - If only Dreamfyre was-

He paused, and a thought occurred.

"What did he mean?"

Criston frowned, confused. "My prince?"

"Aegon. When he spoke of Halaena's... stupidity" The word tasted foul on his tongue. "What did he mean?"

"See for yourself, brother."

Both of them snapped around, and Halaena stepped forward to greet him.

"Sister..."

He paused, taking in the sight before him.

Throughout the years, Aemond had seen Halaena in various states - almost all of them confusing and whimsical in a way unbecoming of a princess, yet he hadn't faulted her for them.

But this...

"Are you wearing breeches?"

Helaena smiled - truly smiled, in a way so free that he could not quite remember the last time he'd seen it's like.

If he ever had at all.

"Yes, I am. It'd be far too difficult to move around, otherwise."

"'Move around?'"

"The queen has chosen to... take up arms, my prince. A sword." Criston looked pained as he spoke, something beseeching in his tone - as if her begging Aemond to intercede where he could not. "She joins the squires in their practice bouts, and she spends at least an hour a day with the Kingsguard assigned to her."

"I-What?"

His mother allowed this?

Then he remembered rather abruptly that his mother had no say in such matters any longer, no matter how she desperately clung to that seat in the small council - she was no longer a queen.

Halaena was.

"Sister..." He paused, at a loss for words. "Why?"

Did she feel unsafe? Had the looming war scared her so? Or did Aegon-

"For the same reason you seek to place that dagger in an open flame, as you were told to."

Aemond's blood froze in his veins.

"What did you say?"

"You heard me the first time." Haleana stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a hug he was too stunned and horrified to protest. Her voice whispered in his ear. "You always hear me, but none of you ever listen. No matter how much I tried to tell you of my dreams."

Dreams.

Aemond had dreamed as well, in that cave.

"You saw."

"I did. The cold winter, and death. The song undone." She pulled back from him, still smiling beatifically, as if Aemond's world was not being ripped apart - Again. "I do, and I will have. All at once, and yet none at all. Not anymore."

"I-"

His answer was a whisper akin to her own, full of realization and disbelief and more questions besides.

"You don't understand, but that's alright. You've learned enough now that your eye is open where it was once closed, and that's good." His sister's smile widened, and a light of a sort he'd never seen before seemed to glint in her eyes. "Everything is changing, Aemond. Blood and Cheese no longer hound my dreams, and black and green fade beneath frost. We all may live to die as one, but at least there's hope where there never was before."

"Halaena."

He tried to say more, but his tongue would not move. The words died ignobly in his throat.

Ser Criston stared between them, confused and lost.

"What?" Aemond managed at last, and in response, her smile softened.

It grew less eerie and more gentle.

"Not now. You still have not placed that blade in a brazier. You can use my chambers while I train - the children will be pleased to see you, and we can speak tonight."

Without another word, she turned and walked away, brilliant silver hair spilling freely behind her as she went.

"Be prepared, brother. There is so much left to do."

She sounded delighted - and Aemond was once more left in the wake of another, feeling unmoored and helpless, with thoughts that tasted of bitter, bitter fear.

What games would the gods be playing with them now?

...


Aemond when Aegon and the small council lowkey call him crazy:



View: https://imgur.com/2AdhEr3


Aegon and the small council when they realize they just called AEMOND crazy to his face:



View: https://imgur.com/H2zgcGx


Halaena:



View: https://imgur.com/fbsTrJb​

One chapter left with Lucerys and the Blacks, and shit hits the fan things continue with Adara and Daeron in the Far North.

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous:

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

Currently quite sick, so my writing vacation isn't over - this chapter was already mostly done, so I just polished it up and added a few details. The next will probably be a out in a little while longer.

---

"-can not mean to indulge this-"

"-we must proceed with caution-"

"-Madness, Rhaenyra!"

Luke wanted to weep, but his tears had dried hours after his arrival on Dragonstone.

Arrax had scarcely announced his presence with a sonorous - albeit dulled - screech and looped around the castle to enter the pit before Moondancer had descended on them both with her rider astride her back in a flash of wings and gales of billowing beaten air.

Baela had been patrolling the Blackwater Bay as ordered, but she'd wasted no time bringing an end to that in the face of his return. Luke had almost choked in disbelief when she'd leaped off her saddle and fallen straight into a dead sprint toward him, furiously calling his name.

He'd tried to reply, but he'd hardly breathed before she was on him and pulling him into a desperate hug, and then there were only tears and sheer, aching relief.

The reunion with his mother and younger siblings had been much the same when they'd finally stopped making fools of themselves in front of the dragon keepers and managed to march their way into the castle proper, and for those brief moments, Luke had known only bliss.

And then his mother had stepped back, his shoulders still gripped in her hands as she looked him over, and she'd asked.

"Where have you been?"

And Luke - the utter fool that he was - has told her the truth all at once, pausing only for breath.

The moment spoken of the Song of Ice and Fire - whatever the gods willed that revelation to be - she'd gone nearly as pale as that girl in that wretched cave, and then she'd half-stumbled, half-dragged him and Baela to retrieve her sister and marched them to the chamber of the painted table.

There the small council awaited them, but she hadn't the presence of mind for any of them.

"Leave us."

The protests began at once.

"Your grace-"

"My Queen-"

"Out I said!" His mother had abruptly screamed, and her jabbering lords had reared back as if struck. "All of you out!"

Only Daemon and Lady Rhaenys she'd bid to stay, and had Luke retell his story before them and a wide-eyed Baela and Rhaena once more.

Then...

"Enough!"

The madness began.

"Caution? Negotiation? Peace?" Daemon spat derisively, eyes flaring and flickering across every face in the room before centering back on his mother. "Have we not all drunk our fill of that useless swill?"

"Perhaps you'd have us fill our cups from the rivers of blood this war would spread across the realm." Princess Rhaenys glared at him "No doubt that would be more to your liking, cousin."

Daemon sneered back at her.

"Victory is to my liking, cousin. Though I do not blame you if it is not to yours - you've never had enough of it to develop a taste."

"Daemon!" His mother snapped, but she did not need to waste her breath

The lady who was Luke's grandmother in name - if never in blood, or even heart - did not so much as flinch at the bard.

Rhaenys Velaryon had never shown much emotion in his entire life, and even then, it was only silent disdain that Luke had come to expect from her.

But for all that she was calm in the face of strife, she was not silent.

"As rash as ever. How much of Viserys's and the realm's woes could have been prevented had you only been able to control yourself?"

Luke knew the blow had landed at once from the eerie stillness that overcame Daemon.

"You utter cu-"

"Daemon!"

His mother stepped in between them, and the vile word died on Daemon's tongue - but the intent behind it did not. Luke could see it in his eyes - all of them could, in the instant before Daemon seemed to focus back on his mother.

He wished more than ever that Jace was home, but he'd not yet returned from Winterfell.

And wasn't that a terrifying thought - his brother, in the north?

"Is this not enough for you, Rhaenyra?" He gestured, and Luke started when his finger landed on him. The way his mother's eyes flickered to him made his heart stutter. "Your son was attacked by that one-eyed cunt. Guest-right thrown to the wayside. Whatever else may or may not have happened in that storm, you cannot deny that."

"I-"

"They drew blood first when that whore queen murdered my brother and stole his crown while he rotted in his bed - they left him for the maggots so they could glut themselves on the spoils" The words spilled out like poison. "And now they've almost cost you a child - another one!"

It was as if all the air had been pulled from the room. Baela's stunned silence and Rhaena's quiet, horrified gasp were a mirror to Luke's own, and his mother recoiled as if she'd been struck.

"You would throw that in my face."

Daemon looked unrepentant, but brittle in his adamancy.

"We have been wounded again and again, and we have done nothing. I should be in Harrenhall bending knees and establishing a foothold in the Riverlands, but instead, we are all trapped on this island by your world, flailing about like spineless cowards and all but begging for peace and mercy and decency from an enemy that will offer us none."

"And what would you have us do, Father?"

Daemon glanced at Baela, once, before turning back to Rhaenys.

"We must kill Vhagar."

Rhaena let out a soft, wounded noise, whilst Rhaenys merely scoffed.

"That is folly."

"It is not. We set out to King's Landing and descend on her with Caraxes and Meleys, and both dragon and rider will die. The usurper will be defenseless, and Otto Hightower's spawn and their cause ends in fire and blood. Only the the green boy in the Reach will be left, and he'll be no great threat on his own." Daemon took a step forward, face twisted in violence. "This war can end in a day. Fly with me now."

"I will not."

"That was a command!"

Rhaenys's answering gaze was as cold as the ice dragon's breath.

"Would that you were the king."

"You-!"

"Daemon."

How was it that Luke's mother was queen, and yet no one seemed to be listening to her?

"Daemon, we can not move without knowing more. You heard Luke's story-"

He laughed derisively.

"It was a fever dream or something of its sort. Surely you cannot believe-"

"I do not know what to believe! But the prophecy-"

"A POX ON THE FUCKING PROPHECY!"

Daemon's bellowing roar threw them all aback, even himself. He paused to take a heaving breath, frame shuddering from the force of it, and panned his gaze across the chamber once more.

"Dreams didn't make us kings. Dragons did." Daemon's words were soft, but no less dangerous for it. "We need only use them, and then we can chase fantasies in the North for as long we'd like."

"Fantasies?"

There was a pause. When his mother spoke next, it was her words that were clouded with steely anger.

"Rhaenyra-"

"My father did not place all his hopes and dreams on fantasies."

"No." Daemon agreed, and there was something in his voice that made his voice that made the hairs on the back of Luke's neck rise on edge. "He placed them on you."

There was a meaning there that Luke missed, but his mother did not, and hurt lanced across features for an instant before it was overtaken with cold, cold anger.

"I am of a mind with Rhaenys." She'd never looked more like her, either. "We will not move yet."

"We must-"

"No, Daemon." His mouth clamped shut at the refusal. "No dragons shall be unleashed."

"You cannot stop me from acting."

"I am your Queen, and I command it."

For the second time in as many moments, all of them stilled.

...

Then Daemon nodded.

"Very well."

Luke dared to breathe in relief-

"-I'll do it myself."

-and sudden horror was his reward as his stepfather turned on the spot and strode out of the door.

"Daemon?" His mother seemed just as stunned. "Daemon! Stop!"

She stumbled after him, but she abruptly doubled over and grasped her waist with a pained cry, and Luke was on his feet and scrambling to her side with the rest of them before he was even aware of it.

"You have not yet recovered from the birthing bed." Rhaneys said, sounding uncharacteristically thunderous as she glared at the door "More fool him."

"He cannot leave." His mother gasped in pain. "He cannot- Luke?"

Luke was already sprinting out the door and towards the dragon pit in pursuit of Daemon.

"Luke!"

...​

By the time Luke rounded the corner and began to scream for Arrax in the darkness of the caverns beneath Dragonstone, Daemon had already mounted Caraxes.

His call for the man was drowned out in Caraxes's sonorous shriek, the Bloodwyrm pleased at the chance to take to the skies with his rider in tow as he trailed across the volcanic stone and began to ready himself for flight.

Luke's heart nearly burst in his chest at the sight.

Ten days, Adara of the White Plains had said, Ten days for House Targaryen to assemble and seek her out, or else she would come for them instead.

If Daemon killed or was killed against Vhagar, war would erupt in full - and it would trap all of them in the south.

But it would do nothing to shield them from what was to come from the north.

The thought of facing that ungodly monster of a dragon or the things he'd seen and been warned of in her care terrified him far more than that Aemond and Vahagrar ever had, or Daemon and Caraxes ever could.

Luke felt Arrax before he arrived, saw the glint of his pearlescent scales, and did not wait for him to land.

"Gods damn it all!"

Instead, he sprinted across the platform and leaped over the edge, his stomach falling as he did in weightlessness, and he slammed down onto his dragon's saddle with an impact that drove the very air from his lungs. His hands shot out to grasp the reins even as he steadied himself, and Arrax - despite his lingering weakness and unease - did not hesitate.

His dragon's wings snapped out in full and they took off in an explosive burst that sent them hurtling in pursuit.

...​

In the end, they made it halfway across the Blackwater Bay.

Caraxes was older and stronger than Arrax by far, but the older dragon was preserving his strength for the battle against Vhagar, and there was no storm to hamper his wings.

Arrax chased Caraxes's tail until his stepfather's mount could not help but round on him, a warning screech erupting out his maw as he turned.

Luke was not deterred, and neither was Arrax. He was willing to stop Daemon from spelling out their doom even if he had to pull him out of the sky and into the sea below.

"Arrax-!"

He went to command his dragon to harry them, but he needn't have bothered.

A third, bellowing roar split the air, and Daemon and Luke both froze.

No

But it wasn't the ice dragon.

Before their stunned, stupefied eyes, the cloud cover was parted and another enormous, familiar dragon of blue and copper scales descended, hide glimmering in the sunlight as she fell from the heavens with her rider astride her back and laughing all the way.

"I'm afraid there'll be no satisfaction for you today, uncle!" Halaena Targaryen called joyfully, and it was as if the entire world stopped to listen in incredulous disbelief "Idakos, Dreamfyre!"

And in answer to that command, the mount of long-dead Rhaena Targaryen roared in challenge and dove into battle.

...


Daemon this chapter:



View: https://imgur.com/2JBWVn4


Luke and Halaena starting their badass arcs early:



View: https://imgur.com/iBhjyiI​

Next chapter: Adara and Daero in the far north!

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.