Whom Powers Answer
Elsewhere, Elsewhen
To most time seems a line, a string that binds together moments joyous and sad, but fly high enough on the winds of sighs and it begins to fall away beneath you, the arc, the bridge that seers glimpse in revelation. Yet what would happen if you flew higher still, you wonder, as the mists that are all colors and none swirl around you?
The mists turn white, the shapes within them familiar—streets, high walls, and brackish waters that move with the ebb and flow of the tides. A door painted red creaks ajar, the arc keeps turning and closes at the last. Within you hear a sound so unexpected you almost do not recognize it for all that you know the voice that makes it very well indeed. Dany does not cry anymore.
Thus do you see, with eyes of flesh and eyes of soul, the porter Mothos is dragging the heavy furniture towards the door with the aid of another man in rough dark clothing. Dany lies on the floor, mercifully still moving, trembling in fear, a red mark on her face. She looks so small, so fragile, so far from one who has defied gods and broken fate itself to her own will. For a moment you are again a boy of three-and-ten, the bearer of a hollow crown and an empty name, reviled and forgotten.
The stranger...
the dead man is speaking: "... safer to just kill the brats, the watch might listen to them, seeing as they're highborn."
So does the line of the last of the Dragon Lords end with a whimper at the hands of common cutthroats... In that moment you wish with all your heart and soul that you could have a measure of the power of your legacy. You would pay any price, call on any power, to have the strength to save Dany at least.
This is not the first time you had heard such desperate pleading, nor is it the first time when your soul had risen to answer it. To the boy in the ransacked house you might as well be a god. With the tip of one ethereal wing, unknown and unseen by waking eyes, you give him all that he wishes, all that he might ever need.
Power answers. Not the Gods of the Andals or even those of Doomed Valyria from without, but the power of your blood ignited in your veins surging from within. Time stands still, in your mind you perceive a myriad of voices, some human and some markedly not, bequeathing on to you a torrent of lore. If you could hold it all,you would be as a god among men.
Only a fraction of a fraction of the song you had sung had been heard, and that too you recall with the sharpness of steel, for if you did not know that power beyond telling was hidden in your blood, how then would you have come to seek it?
Words of enchantment ring out, then words of deception and plans of vengeance already hatched in the heart of the prince whose power is not so hollow as it had been.
Still unseen, still unheard, you smile, the expression doubtless uncanny should any witness it upon a dragon's face. Before you can even think of saying one more word, offering one more nudge, the winds of time envelop you and through the mists they carry you far away, and it is only when they clear that you realize your power feels more free somehow, less armor of steel and flame and more like a mantle that swirls around you in a windy Braavosi evening. A
gift more easily given...
You wake laughing. Not just a chuckle or two, but genuine full-throated laughter.
The best kind of fate is the one you make yourself...
OOC: So here's the thing, I normally make these about history, I show you things from past and from your ancestors. I could have just shown you some one of the Fourteen empowering their acolytes in the War against the Dragons, but that just did not feel personal enough given the nature of Ascension which is basically handing out aspects of your own mythic power to people, making them shine as the sun does the moon. So that got me thinking of Viserys' own ascension. You know how he crowned himself rather than let any god or priest do so, well turns out it went deeper than that.
