Chapter 2:
The softer, bendy branches of a pine's top caught me first. Then came those as thick around as my forearm, my bicep, and my thigh. I cracked through them, slowing down, and they bruised me for the trouble before depositing me gracelessly on the ground.
I hit the stone and soil with one final, merciful thud. As I was gasping in pain for the first second, I realized that I needed to get up, in case the dragon looped around to light the area aflame while I was weak.
Groaning and rolling over, casting a quick look toward the sky, and ignoring everything from my shin to my wrists was throbbing, I forced myself up with my left hand. My right hand could move, but the locked tight, screaming pain at my shoulder let me know my instinctive attempt to throw out my arm and try to catch myself had done more harm than good.
I looked at my legs, and found the slightest comfort in that they weren't obviously broken or anything. Scooting my left side against the tree that had saved me, I got my feet under me and pushed up.
Another glance at the skies revealed nothing, and I could just make out what I thought was the distant, black speck of the dragon flying away on the horizon through the treetops. I'd lost my hold on the dragon bones as I hit the tree, but I resolved to look around for them once I got myself sorted out.
I grasped for the latent drip of my magicka, and brought my left hand up. The faint light that formed in my palm gave me immediate relief, minor abrasions beginning to close up, but my limited spring was there… then just as fast, gone.
My shoulder was still in pain, and my arm was out of socket. Everything ached.
I wasn't by any means a talented hand at restoration magic. My limit was the most basic of spells, something half the people accounting themselves mages learned as rudimentary understanding of the concepts. I learned enough to keep myself going.
That was what made it so annoying.
It was enough at one point.
The magic was more difficult, more costly, in this Not-Nirn. Tapping the weight of my limited reserve to try to bring the light back, I noted it wasn't exactly returning at the speed I expected either. Not even a flicker, and it hadn't been enough to really do much for me.
The hard way, then.
I turned and lifting my right arm painfully, carefully pushing my right side against the tree. My own muscle fought me, locked tight, but I managed to get my elbow near vertical. Drawing in a steadying breath through my nose, I closed my eyes and slowly bent my arm at the elbow, bringing my hand across.
I pushed it back into the socket with a crunch that I felt as much as heard. The relief was immediate in one way, but the echo of the sharpening pain reverberated through me a moment later. It did nothing for the soreness, but I was back in fighting condition.
With the threat of the dragon seemingly out of the way for the moment, and a glance around to be sure there wasn't going to be another immediate threat presenting itself, I took time to finally check my hip. Lowering down to sit against the base of the tree, I turned my weight to the right to look at the hole on my left.
The cramping in my leg had already faded, which was faster than I expected if not the same end result. That was the largest venomous creature I'd ever encountered. Which was saying something. The larger spiders of home could envenomate a man with such excess that they were unconscious in seconds, and slurping ale in Sovngarde by a minute.
At least that was the joke.
As I disturbed it, the sting of salt water touched me again. It was just pain without real damage though, so I pushed the edge of the wound back to affirm what I'd felt before. Rivulets of blood slipped loose, beading up from the edge and dripping down the curve of my leg and butt, into the grass. Where it landed it began to hiss faintly, a tiny wisp of smoke momentarily drifting up and then just as fast blown away by wind..
I frowned down at it.
An effect of the venom?
I couldn't be sure. I wasn't feeling the pain of the venom any further, but that didn't necessarily mean something wasn't lingering. There wasn't much I could do about it anyways yet, if it was.
Carefully touching and looking into the hole punched in my skin by the dead bug, I affirmed what I'd initially thought I saw. I'd grown scales within the wound, a layer beneath my skin that likely prevented any further bleeding. They were tiny, so fine and small that at a glance, it was just like the attack had only cut some layers of the skin. As I dragged my fingernail along their edge carefully, I could just barely feel the notch, the pass of it dropping from one to the next.
The shout.
That was my gut instinct, and nearly a certainty. I had reached for my voice almost as soon as I landed. As something had gone wrong. Some kind of attack or wrongness that obviously wasn't the bug that came after. I just wasn't sure if it was because of that place I'd been in, or something about the new lein I'd found myself in potentially, either.
Sitting there and listening briefly, the sounds of the sparse pines across a rocky hillside were all I heard. They didn't grow far down the hillside, and already I could see through their gaps a distant rocky terrain, which descended into flatlands that looked more arid and unforgiving. Far away from where I had landed, I realized the sky was more the blue I was expecting without the red particulate that seemed to billow all over that other place at the slightest breeze. What light came through those reddened clouds, had been cast into that color.
Not here, though. If this land had looked like that at one point, I could find no sign of it now, except maybe in its desolation.
Looking down at my newfound scales again, I drew in a breath through my nose. I reconsidered the shout and its deeper purpose, its fundamentals by its tied words.
Truly mortal users of the voice were all almost exclusively descended from the teachings of Paarthurnax. They offered praise to Kyne, truly named Kaan, who had, in her graciousness in the far past, been convinced that man needed that edge to combat the dragons. They could spend decades meditating and seeking to understand the expression of Mundus through the will of Akatosh, from whom the language of dragons and their manner of speech controlled.
That had never been the case for me. I understood the language of dragons instinctively. It was my language after all, so I grasped the nature of everything permitted by time as much as my brothers.
I just wasn't sure why it hadn't done what I'd wanted. While I could stress upon different points and potentially even change the wording to generate something slightly different with a deep enough understanding, what I knew should have worked.
What of the thu'uum I knew was mostly knowledge gleaned in final combat with my fellows. To take from their experience and perspective and integrate it into myself. To absorb a wealth of it as I sent them adrift from the physical. Dragons tested themselves to grasp new understandings, even among each other. To the death if necessary, given they too could have taken from one another though it was not so common.
That meant my understanding was lacking in some way.
Or in some things.
I couldn't find it in myself to be angry about the discovery. Instead, I nodded to myself. It made a strange sense.
To embrace ignorance, again.
That my voice worked at all meant my knowledge, my perspective, my understanding, my experience still ran deep, old enough to drive my will across this Not-Nirn. So some truths still held their weight at least.
Touching a fingertip to my wound again, and huffing faintly, I acknowledged a necessity nevertheless.
I'll need to be careful.
I resolved to take some time to first deliberate at length upon what it meant, for my will expressed to bring my nature to the fore to do as it had. It was not beyond possibility for even a dragon to wound themselves with their voice. The strange, cloying magic of the new land I found myself in acted in an unusual way. Leapt upon my words, but lacked in the fine control I would have suspected.
Maybe a subtle difference in the principles of the mystical or divine.
I pushed up, one last weary eye on the horizon for that black dragon and began to search around for the spikes I'd dropped. I resolved to headbutt that dragon if we crossed paths again, for seeing me so beneath them.
Maybe I'll pass onto you the truth of "respect" if you're lucky enough to be victorious.
I chuckled to myself, but then the sound rolled through the hills.
I quieted.
Right.
I would have to try to get that under control. I recognized the effect at least. For some, typically true mortals whose tongues had grown too mighty like the Greybeards, or those who had grown too accustomed to deliberating on it, the voice became their standard. Like taking control of your own breathing, but… in reverse. Where you had to teach yourself to consciously breathe when around others instead of just letting it happen naturally.
Because if it happened naturally, you could speak someone's head off.
It wasn't something I ever expected to deal with. My grasp of the thu'um had always been as simple and natural as thinking, once I claimed the first bit of perspective from my victory over Mirmulnir. I suspected most dragonborn died having achieved their purpose, long before that became an issue for them. That, or faded into obscurity completely.
Of course, there was Wulfarth…
Maybe I was not the first dragonborn to want a little more after the end.
Wulfarth's legendary battles were so twisted up into themselves with allegory, metaphor, and speculation, no one really had any idea what had actually happened. Some people weren't even sure whether he was dragonborn at all. I'd never asked the Greybeards. While I knew certainly that he was betrayed by Tiber Septim who would become Talos, neither the Nords nor the Dunmer could be accounted for a good recollection of those events. Even Hermaeus Mora's own information on those events was filled with the Prince's frustration about something nonsensical, with excessive ink smears, and repeated vagueries regarding Lorkhan-who-is-Shor. He was fixated on other things for his recount.
Something, something, heart, something, CHIM. Other unimportant things.
That, and a lot of frustration about "Vivec the Lie".
From my limited reading, I couldn't blame the Daedric Prince for that. Never had I read so plainly of a loathsome mer with a need to make things up constantly. Nor had I ever seen any writing that required the Prince to clarify so many lies for their falsities in the boundaries of his books, for completeness.
There was a vast difference between embellishing for the fullness of a tale and raw deceit! Still, for the manner of which his implications in his telling of things, I could at least see why he'd be popular with the King of Rape.
Even if nearly all of it was lies.
Lost in thought and in no particular rush, it took me a few minutes to find the pair of curved dragonbone spikes of different sizes.
Then, considering the distant, arid landscape again through an opening in the trees sloping downhill noted something important.
A clean line cut the horizon, and focused on it, I could make out the firm edges of stone. The air was surprisingly clear. Even from among the vertical spires of the trees around me, I was struck by it as almost unusual, but I couldn't put my finger on why. It wasn't the Throat of the World by any means, but it was a bit easier than I expected to find something that gave me direction.
Roads mean villages, or towns, or cities.
I started to make my way down the hills toward the distant road. Were I in Skyrim, I would have thought its position likely meant some time in the late morning. Of course, that didn't mean much. The angle of its passage would tell more than anything.
As I jogged across stone, dirt, and different varieties of grass, I kept my eye out for anything that looked like it might vaguely serve as shoes firstmost, and provide me some decency second. Alas, the land seemed to have an aversion to larger-leaved plants. I could possibly have taken the long grasses, and maybe with a great deal of effort woven something, but I'd never learned. It wasn't something important for me before.
I caught the road in no time, and my first steps on its surface were enough to feel the rising heat. It wasn't painful for me, but I suspected the sun's position overhead and the constant heat of my surroundings regularly cooked it so much that traveling on it would be uncomfortable. At least for most people.
Turning left and right, to look down the different directions it went, I hesitated.
Thinking about where I'd landed and the vague direction the dragon was headed, I decided the right was heading back vaguely toward the sea I'd already been dipped in, and the place I'd initially found myself. Given the ruinous lay of that land, I was of the mind that people were not settling there much if at all.
That settled it for me. I would follow the road continuing at least vaguely in the direction the dragon had gone.
Left.
I turned and started to run. The stones were warm, and there was a wind drifting through on occasion, but it offered no relief. It was like someone blowing hot air into my face, without the humidity.
I ran for some time down the seemingly endless road, without incident.
As miles began to pass, I found no further signs of recent travelers. If anything, the strangest part of that was that the wide road seemed so well kept despite no other real signs of frequent travel.
Who's maintaining this?
At the same time as I was looking for it, I was slightly worried about the inevitable of coming across signs of people. I was naked and most holds in Skyrim enforced laws regarding public indecency. When exactly it was accounted for depended greatly on who was enforcing it and against who as well, but I'd never heard of anyone that allowed "cock in the wind", in the market. I doubted even I could get away with that.
The guards would ask nicely of course, but still.
As I ran and it became repetitive, I concentrated only on the distant shape of the road stretching out in front of me. It let me begin to lull myself into a kind of trance. The sound of my own breathing in my ears, the thump of my heart, the thud of my bare feet on stone as I moved, it all became repetition of a previous rhythm.
My thoughts were of where to go next. What to do with my newfound freedom. Naturally, I wouldn't have real ideas until I saw what was going on more generally and learned about the place I'd arrived in, but from the girl on the dragon I'd at least learned a few things.
Her clothes were quite well made. Modest in a covering manner. Despite the heat of the land I'd arrived in, she had been garbed conservatively, which didn't bode much well for my conditions. While they were dirty, that didn't change that it was clearly an adornment that fit the upper quality of garment in Skyrim.
What was she doing on a dragon?
Thinking back on the fight, the behavior of the dragon in flight, I realized more than anything… it was trying to keep me from her, and not throw her off.
Working together.
Not very common for my siblings to have worked closely with people. Much less let girls ride around on their backs.
Then again, whether this is a different kalpa, or an entirely different… everything, then these siblings of mine are maybe for the better in some ways.
I ignored the quiet part of me that whispered that they could be worse. It wasn't worth dwelling on, and I'd find out presumably when I had more people to speak with.
It doesn't matter.
Regardless, they were dragons.
My shoulder itched, and I scratched at it briefly before snorting a breath through my nose and beginning to speed up.
The sun crawled across the sky. My stamina was not limitless, but I suspected only the most fleet of Altmer could have kept pace with me over such distance and unlikely for long. That same Altmer would be folded in a moment if I got my hands on them though, given my strength. I wasn't built for running.
I was born for combat. Explosive violence and a mighty voice were my inheritance.
Nevertheless, I continued to run.
Many hours later, in what I felt like the late afternoon, I noticed a distant shape moving off of the road on the horizon, walking the yellow grass and rock's edges.
That's a strange looking deer.
It probably had a name of some kind.
Even from afar, it began to move off as I came up the road.
Cautious.
That wouldn't save it.
I sped up to give chase, huffing and puffing faster. The animal was beginning to bound away from the road's edge, cutting a line toward open deadlands. It was much faster than any deer I had ever observed, I realized. It could have easily outran most men on those flats of grass and sudden dips and rises of hard stone, with its strange springing run.
Making note of the road, I charged off it and into a more direct line for the direction the doe was going to minimize my travel. I assumed it was a doe at least. It lacked antlers.
I wasn't in the habit of chasing animals down on foot without weapons, and while part of me coaxed me to shout, I hesitated for a variety of reasons. I didn't want to risk blowing it away into chunks that couldn't be useful, or potentially burning it to ash. Even ignoring the other risks. I hadn't tried many of the words I could have spoken, in this new land. Seeing what one of my shouts had done to me, I had a lot of reasons to think long and hard before risking something new.
As I chased the deer-thing across the rocks, I spared a glance for natural obstacles but didn't see any that could be used to my advantage.
If the Peace of Kaan could be brought on the doe, she would just stop moving. Stand there, even, as I walked up and seized her. The thought was there in the back of my head, but I would not instigate in Kaan's name a trust I intended boldly to betray. Assuming even that it would work still and not do who knows what as some odd unintended effect.
The thu'um I had spoken for the venomous monster in the ruins would slowly kill something as well as enfeeble it or corrode its natural protections, but that would be a long and drawn out death of suffering. It was the direct nature of the shout, to make something suffer.
That was a poor way to hunt.
My mind cast to the first word of the shout which bled foe of their life force. It was one of the untried shouts in the new land.
The effect I most needed was in the first word alone, enabling me to potentially keep whatever happened at the lowest intensity. That made it more ideal. Less varied in its effect, less complex in idea, and weaker.
I rolled it over in my head, as the deer lept a big, tangled bit of thorny brush. I doubt it expected me to follow its lead, but I did anyway with less grace and a few more scratches on my calf when I didn't quite make the entire thing and my left foot caught brush on the other side.
Stamina. The ability to exert further. The breath and blood of motion, of activity. Endurance and exertion.
I was trying to think of how that might potentially come to an effect I didn't expect. It was used almost exclusively in the taking away. The deer diverted in a series of dashes left and right as I neared, but they weren't particularly effective, as I had no intent to spring toward it like whatever likely predators it faced in the wild. At least yet. If I got my hands on it, I would certainly kill it, but I could bide briefly.
I decided it was worth the risk just to be certain I had the kill.
Pushing my legs to keep on despite having not eaten for the day, ran most of it, and then not had anything to drink either, I closed the gap a little more. Then I lifted my voice.
"Gaan!" I cried.
The cloying presence of power, the strangeness of the land's magic I was becoming accustomed to, bent around my will. The speed of thunder delivered it to the small deer. It stumbled momentarily as the dust kicked up from my voice, and then sped up instead of slowing.
I watched it start to create a gap between us, sides flexing as its little hooves beat the rock and dirt to try to get away.
I slipped further back as the gap grew slightly despite attempting to keep pace, first to twenty five feet, and then nearing thirty five.
Its strength gave out shortly after. The sudden plunge and natural weariness that settled in the shout's effect might have scared it into giving it everything it had to escape, but that would only tire it out more.
My breathing evened out very slightly. I could almost feel the exertion in my limbs ease up the tiniest little bit.
Interesting.
I was near certain I'd pooled some of what it had lost. Which was not how that used to work. It was more akin to cutting something in some fundamental way in the past, letting aspects of their endurance, magic, and their general well-being drain away. Their vitality drained into the Gray Maybe. Bleeding, without the wound.
Not taken. I wondered what that implied for this land's fundamentals.
The deer stumbled over a stone it would have had the agility to spring over, not ten minutes ago. It was tired though, now. Enough to make a momentary mistake.
It fell.
I was on it before it could get up and brought down one of the curved spikes I was carrying as I threw myself down atop its body. I drove the dragonbone through its eye with a sharp crack, and wedged the slight curve harshly around in its skull.
It died instantly.
The legs were still twitching slightly, but I paid them little mind as I worked to get my breathing back under control. Crouched over my kill, I registered the distant irritation of my skin. A redness was creeping into my extremities, and a tingling along my shoulders and back. With no sign of human life otherwise and a pair of carrion birds beginning to circle, I forced myself to a knee and grasped one of its forelimbs, tilting it back.
Rolling it over to its back and holding the leg for leverage, I set aside the larger spike and used the smaller one, cutting it neck to groin. I wanted to make quick use of the time I had to get rid of its intestines, and without thinking long on it, did much the same for the rest of its organs. I wasn't going to be able to eat the deer fast enough on my own with no conditions for preservation to enjoy it all either way, so it would have been pointless effort. Initial cleaning done, I made more cuts and took the moment to figure out the best angle to get its fur peeled away.
In a way, the near black-brown of the dragon bone was perfect for my uses, as it was sharp enough at the point to apply pressure, but didn't have a lot of natural cutting power beyond my leverage. That meant that while my initial cuts were rough, I could be more casual in ripping away the thin film of white connective tissue that connected its hide to the rest of its body with the curved bone spike.
I was no hunter by trade, and with a makeshift knife besides, but a short while of bloody work later, and I had peeled its hide from its body as a mostly intact single piece. My strength helped. With the right treatment, it might have been a rug or something.
It wasn't nearly ready for that though, and I didn't have the intent.
A glance at the sky told me the sun was working its way lower still. I likely wouldn't have many hours left until nightfall, and it had been a long day of running.
I left the muscle on the bone and the animal's shape mostly intact on a flat bit of stone as I turned to consider my options. Most of its blood had already drained.
The road.
It would be better to make fire nearer to the road, if I wanted to potentially find people. So I cut about its head, and flipping the skin inside out, laid its hide over my shoulder. Then I drove the slight curve of the dragon bone into its neck, and used it as a meat hook to lift it over my shoulder on the hide and keep a good grip without me fighting constantly with its dead weight.
I made my way back toward the road, halting occasionally to pick up dried, long dead brush. While there were no immediate dead trees in my vicinity, the rugged terrain grew plenty of thorny, wooded bushes it seemed.
A doe over my left shoulder, and an armful of hateful wood under my right, I returned to the stretch of stone that was beginning to feel like it was without end. Having run for most of the day and pushed myself hard for it, I was confident in the distance I'd traveled being at least thirty or more leagues.
And still nothing.
Of course, even in Skyrim there were extremely remote locations rarely visited. I had been to many of them, but the road was really throwing me off.
Magical?
I looked it over, but it told me no secrets, so I turned to prepare my rudimentary camp for rest. I didn't have any intent to run along in pitch dark in unknown lands. I didn't want anything sneaking up on me.
While I was dubious that it would do any damage to them, I decided not to use the dragonbone to dig the basics of my pit. Nor would I try to manage the necessary, small control to shout a hole in the ground.
I didn't want to risk damaging the nice road.
So instead, I found a rock of a fairly right size, and after smacking it against a few others and choosing among select pieces, had one that was wedge enough like on one side and smooth and round on the other for me to grip.
I used it to dig out the basics of a firepit. It was essentially just a hole in the dirt near a sheared face of stone, nearby the road. I gathered a few larger stones to ring it, and hopefully keep the risk of me starting a larger fire than I'd like to a minimum.
I took a bit more time to gather wood as the sun was setting. I could tell by how long it took that the days were longer than I was used to in Skyrim. My brushwood pile was about as large as it was going to get when last light was filtering red across the unforgiving horizon. Among my setup, I found a position to lay the gutted and stripped carcass. I cut away its head entirely and threw it into the desert further from my camp as a final act, before stretching the hide inside out over a nearby rock with stones on the corners.
Then, content to get to the thing I'd really been thinking about, I moved back over to the firepit I'd dug. Despite myself, as I settled in to sit on a fairly large rock I'd dragged over near the dug out hole as a natural seat, I glanced around again. I couldn't be absolutely certain of the distance I'd run over the course of the day without a better way to keep track of time, but I knew from the distances I'd traveled in a hurry in the past at least the vague idea. If I hadn't found anyone in near a hundred miles running that road, the odds that there would be someone just sitting around watching me now were low.
Moreover, much of the terrain was such that I could see far along the road. The real risk of being spotted and watched would come from the rockier hills anyway. Which I wasn't ruling out as a complete impossibility either. People this far clearly out from whatever amounted to community were just as likely to avoid people as anything. For probably very justified reasons.
The further from gatherings of people, the less things like law tended to mean.
Wetting my lips and looking over my firewood, I picked a little bit from the pile and placed it in the center of the hole. I didn't want to use too much, because I didn't have a limitless amount and I didn't want to be gathering it in the soon to be dark surroundings.
Yol.
It was the first truth of flame. Fire in the dragon's tongue.
The heat of potential in all things. Of change, and power freed.
I opened my mouth, hesitating. Then, as low and quiet as I might manage, I let my voice escape.
"Yol."
With my tongue touching the roof of my mouth at the end of the syllable, I breathed that potential forward. The crack of sound came all the same with its intonation and fire leapt from my mouth. It spilled over the rocks with an unmerciful strength that baked it all black and sooty instantly. The little bit of wood I'd put in the bottom of the pit burned away almost as fast as I could cut my breath to end my enforcement of the effect.
"Shit." I breathed without thinking.
The word thundered along the badlands, and I tilted my face into my palm.
She had a great many regrets in her life. In the last few years, that number had only grown.
The silver shimmer that affected the blue of Dreamfyre's scales by the moonlit night sky was an echo of the ripple of light that wavered on the waves below. There were clouds high up, fluffy things that a dragon might have flown over, but the air was harder to breathe there for the untrained and she would have thought it more likely Aerea might fly where she could see landmarks. Even with the moon's assistance, it was unlikely she'd see even her daughter's wayward dragon.
Still, she hadn't been able to bear turning back for Dragonstone even as the sun was setting.
Rhaena couldn't begin to guess what would possess her daughter to take to the dragon that had killed her father and ride off into the sunrise, but she knew in some manner that the fault lay with her.
If there was one thing she had been forced to come to terms with regarding Aerea's sudden disappearance, it was that things couldn't stay as they were if she was found.
If she isn't…
She couldn't bear to think of it. She had lost too much already, and she didn't want more of it to be her own fault.
This unfortunate life.
Her daughter, for all her time in the court of her uncle, did not grasp some of the unfortunate nuances that existed for being a Targaryen during turbulent times. Part of that might have been her age. The other half, she suspected, was that obviously Jaehaerys wouldn't be so stupid as to make plain his part to play in any of it. Aerea was barely becoming a woman, and while she'd been removed as the heir with the birth of Daenerys, the possibility of there being a rebellion was at greatest risk as Jaehaerys settled into his seat of power. Every year that passed, the danger became less. Never gone.
Just less.
Now, the common people and court both all spoke of Jaehaerys who had reconciled the faith and the crown. The Targaryen that had brought order in the wake of Maegor.
It drove her to a deep and disquieted rage she had never spoken. The rage of one more concession. One more gentle twist of unpleasant life, where simply having a cock meant having the future in your palm and being lauded over others.
It was not Jaehaerys who had brought order to the land.
It was me.
She was not blinded by the way it would be told in history. Simple facts, presented gently, followed by becoming a light in the dark against the cruelty that was Maegor. Jaehaerys wouldn't have to ever lie. There was no lie necessary. She saw it as it was. Saw it the way people hadn't been willing to voice in the beginning, and now, with time, would likely never voice.
Jaehaerys had done nothing more than sit around and wait for other people to die, to claim power. He would not even resist old Visenya in his youth, and sat his ass upon Dragonstone until she passed.
His flight, and the death of his brother Viserys and another potential challenge for the throne?
It mattered less than securing his future sister-wife from their uncle potentially. Of course it didn't.
What a fortuitous exchange.
Jaehaerys gets Alysanne. Maegor removes a future contender for the throne for him. Why, if only Maegor had chosen hostages that she was loosely incentivized to see dead, but no, he'd used her children, naturally. The one saving grace was that she was certain the Hightower, in their unwavering faith, would not allow the death of Rhaella who was pious.
Then Jaehaerys just waits. Jaehaerys disappears off to who knows where, fleeing while his elder brother who would be next in line for the throne is tortured to death, to wait. To let Maegor root out the faith, and brutalize the population and tear it down, to weaken it, and to drive people over inevitably toward any alternative that wasn't Maegor.
While I was kept in the Keep… kept because I was of proven fertility.
They called her one of the Black Brides, meant to taint Maegor's choices in the subtle, but it tainted her just the same. Shamed her in a way that would follow her until all history forgot her name. They would name her many things, and then, as a little dollop of sweetness on top, that she was taken to bed by the man who had killed her husband to be the field he sowed his seed in.
She could only be grateful his get never took.
The only good Tyanna ever did. Fitting that she was too broken to know it, the same.
What no one was saying, the truth unspoken that drove her to quiet rage, was that Jaehaerys had done the exact same thing that every other Targaryen had done one generation prior. He made a grab for power. A grab for power that by all rights, shouldn't have belonged to him. A grab for power urged on by some lord or other who had their own incentives and ambitions.
Still, she could remember hearing of it. A servant relaying that Rogar Baratheon had claimed her youngest brother the rightful king and rallying lords to him. The realm had finally reached its last breaking point and they'd found an oh so convenient champion. That was when she realized the truth, where she was kept in the Red Keep.
That as soon as Maegor was dead, assuming they could even be successful in the face of the Black Dread, that it would only be the herald of another twisting, bending struggle for the throne…
… unless she was the one who committed to peace.
While her daughter was the rightful heir, and her just as much the true queen twice over, some of them would see grievance with a woman at the height of power. Others would see it as an opportunity to try to sit their own progeny on the throne, through marriage.
From that would come the next conflict. Truly, the only thing that could tear down her family was itself trying to maintain the capricious necessities of the Seven Kingdoms' factions. They would simper, poke, prod, everything, that had her family tearing itself apart if it worked. Not always undeserved, to be fair, either. Even the Maesters were conspiring against Maegor by the end.
That day when she heard of Rogar Baratheon and Jaehaerys's claim, she made her decision.
A decision that would bring peace.
A lasting peace if only she had the strength to bite her tongue and give up her birthright by being first born and queen twice over.
She made it easy for Jaehaerys.
She gave Jaehaerys undeniable legitimacy. She supported him, silencing the already forming whispers of new loyalties and debate. She gave up her claim to power or any necessity, to deny the internal factions already forming their own plans.
Further, she was the one who had stolen Blackfyre, the symbol of Maegor's office and gifted it to Jaehaerys in the same breath that she denied Maegor her dragon as another weapon.
Maegor's sudden death was a surprise, but a welcome one. The rumor was that the Maesters had taken flight already, and that Maegor was weakened, confused, and odd in behavior on the day of his death. Who had really done the deed was up in the air, but if she had known he was so weak, she might have weighed the value of doing it herself. At least she was spared their drivel over kinslaying.
Except that even her killing him might make it another question of succession, an argument in her favor.
He was likely poisoned by connections with one of the Free Cities.
The place some of the maesters had fled to, conveniently.
If she had not been the one to step down, a new conflict would have been simmering in the gut of the Seven Kingdoms, that day. There were still a few that had been loyal to Maegor, and they would have gone to her. She hadn't wronged many of the others that supported Jaehaerys, and likely many of them would have turned to her, in a split.
It simply wasn't enough that I gave him everything.
Nothing was ever enough.
The heir should be in King's Landing, he had suggested. Suggestion was putting it lightly given the nature of Aerea's better claim. If Aerea had been a boy it would have been beyond reproach.
Jaehaerys's suggestion was about control. It was a time honored tradition, after all, that those people who presented risks to the throne have an important child kept in the tender care of someone who was unquestionably loyal. Not unlike Maegor had done. Even turning a blind eye to the risks, Jaehaerys's suggestion had a pragmatic reasoning that was undeniable even beyond keeping things tightly knit in the wake of the inter-family conflict leading up to that day. Another of Jaehaerys's conveniences was that Aerea was the heir and her fostering would be with him directly until he had truly consolidated the majority of his power and stabilized the realm at the very least.
More likely, until a child of his own was born.
To say no would have been received poorly.
Rhaena didn't fear for her daughter in her brother's care. She knew that the girl would be treated as a princess, because she was. She knew that whatever her brother's efforts, Aerea would flourish with the right care, and ideally gain a great wealth of experience necessary to one day hold some position of power in the Kingdom, even if only indirectly through her husband. A matter which presented its own problems.
She even knew, without doubt, that her brother cared for her. That her sister, Alyssane cared for her. She just knew the limits of that care. Viserys was the one to pay the price of that lesson.
In many ways, she had sought to spare Aerea some of the pains she herself dealt with, the tragedies of her own life. Maybe, had she spoken more plainly of the nature of Aerea's long stay, growing up without knowing her, the girl would have understood.
Perhaps not.
It wouldn't change that Jaehaerys and Alysanne were the family that had been there. Were good to her. The nature of there being a fog of necessity wouldn't draw away or change the fact that Aerea had no substantial bond with her, but did with them.
That was part of what made raising your potential competition's children so worthwhile.
Rhaena had little to no good memories of King's Landing. Maegor's ghost alongside many others tainted the place, and it was difficult to willingly return to the seat of power of the man who had killed her first love, her brother, and then forced her into marriage and his bed by leveraging her daughters.
Even if that seat of power should have been rightfully hers, and her daughter's.
Her younger brother was an intelligent and ambitious man, though. She had little doubt he was of generally good intentions, and perhaps had gleaned the dangers of instability taught in Maegor's rise to power. At the same time, she couldn't turn her eyes from the truth, that he would not have reasonably inherited without many of his direct actions to bring it about, and had effectively seized power over her twice over.
Perfect still that the Lord Baratheon be named a position of power to be close with the other now-widowed former queen, her mother. The consolidation of that man's own grasp for power. She knew for fact that Jaehaerys was not blind of Rogar trying to get his own wedge between him and Alysanne prior to their consolidation of position, but it seemed they were of like pair and played their own private game.
Dreamfyre's tail lashed, a sharp whisper that spoke of the agitation she was beginning to take on. She reached down to pat the dense scales of the dragon's neck with a heavy hand, to be sure she felt it.
The pang of her mother's death didn't help the anger. It stirred it violently, and her dragon would take part of it, like a reflection. That was part of being bound to a dragon.
A deep bond among rider and dragon gave an instinctive awareness of one another if you developed it and learned what to look for, but also more beyond that. It was a shared pool of emotion in many ways, though she could quite easily differentiate hers from Dreamfyre's if their moods were far enough apart. A pair well-accustomed to one another could react to threats even without the need for commands to a degree. The emotions alone could be enough to call for a dragon's aid. Of course, it also required a Targaryen rider to keep themselves under control or risk a dragon acting out wherever it might be.
Thoughts of Rogar Baratheon were fast to turn her toward violence. All her mother had been was one more grasp for power, one more chance to sire children with blood he wanted. That he chose to kill her for the chance of getting a second child, after already having his heir, gave her every urge to turn the kingdom back to war. A brief one, that would end in his entire line being fused with the slag of their so-believed indestructible keep.
Calm. I must be calm.
She had been told often enough that there was a fire in her heart. One unfortunately that Aerea had inherited.
She had still been angry with her mother, when she died. They had quarreled over her abrupt marriage to her now dead third husband, Androw.
But she couldn't see.
Couldn't see that it was a simple convenience. An ugly one, but necessary and unworthy of celebration. She couldn't bear to see her mother looking at her, hopeful for some love she didn't feel for the man. The same manner of behavior that made Rogar Baratheon need to plant a banner in her mother and try to see more children despite her advanced age was carried out many times more so with her by the houses she darkened the steps of. She was a Targaryen woman that also had a dragon, was unwed, and still in the years to have more children.
Androw Farman had been a simpleton, and a coward often enough, but he had been friendly and aware that she was more inclined to his sister. She wasn't sure she would ever consider loving another man as she had her first husband and she was more often inclined to women than men typically anyways. Something that rankled most of the Seven Kingdoms deeply.
Naturally, not even that could go right.
Rhaena searched the night sky for moving shapes, scanning as her pale hair twisted and bent in the breeze behind her, where she'd bound it.
It felt at times like no decision she had ever made could come to a good conclusion.
She bore children for her brother, whom she had loved and supported as was her duty, and it had brought her only being kept like a flower pot in the Red Keep to potentially bud again for her uncle.
She stayed back, to protect those children their union had created, and her husband died as soon as the war began.
She tried to hide them to keep her daughters from the danger, and it was weaponized against her.
She remarried to satisfy the farce of societal expectation once more with the Farmans, thinking finally, hopefully, possibly that she could simply grant a secondborn the highest comfortable cushion to sit upon, repaying his father's kindness, and enabling him to enjoy a long and healthy life fucking whatever maid servant or whoever else he would like. All while having an ally in her, but like all of them, in the end even he grew jealous, entitled in a subtle way. She could well guess that he felt disrespected, when the reality was just that he was not treated above them.
And in that, was the disrespect he so perceived.
Her marriage? She wouldn't have married him if they hadn't been friendly and him aware she just wasn't interested in him, in that manner. Of course she would be punished again for trying to do something right, with the deaths of her ladies-in-waiting. With Lianna Velaryon's death in her arms.
She tightened her leather-gloved fingers on the edge of the saddle until her arm shook for her fury.
What great injustice Androw faced, living as Princes and Kings of Targaryen past had enjoyed in a stay upon Dragonstone, with the freedom to do nearly anything he very well wanted as nobility. That he might be given offers to ride her dragon with her, as she had her favorites, but he was too afraid even to manage that.
What punished me was the very inferiority that had made me select him. He would have wanted that he be treated more important in my dealings.
What ate him, she believed, was that he knew he could never be well-measured against his sister Elissa who was a woman first, and fucking his wife second. The pair together undoubtedly made him feel less of a man.
Not even being invited to my bed would have made him more of one, though.
Which brought another thing that could not go untwisted in her life forward.
She fought to arrange everything just so for Elissa, on an island that was a haven practically for their variety of illicit relations. A haven for a woman who loved women, among those who could understand. What was her reward? A priceless theft, that her paramour might live a life doing whatever struck her fancy on far isles and shores at the cost potentially of the very peace she had already given up so much for, if those dragon eggs ever hatched.
It would mean war. It would mean it was all for nothing.
She should have just let her go. Just gave her the coin and let her sail into the sunset, a bittersweet memory… but love made that feel impossible. Love was the only reason Elissa could ask the question, and the love that would get her her boon was what she was casting aside in the receiving.
To sail away.
Dreamfyre rumbled out a deep sound of implied violence, but no threat was there for her dragon to react to. She made herself give her companion a soothing rub, and led a bank left to begin a slow curve back in the direction she'd come by the beat of the dragon's wings.
No concession in my life could ever be enough.
No bend, that last little bit to see something simple and good.
And even when I made the ultimate concession, and gave the kingdoms true peace through Jaehaerys…
It cost her both her daughters again. One to the Sept as she had decided, remaining in the protection of the Hightowers, and one to become a ward in all but name. There wasn't a word for being a ward of your own house, which you were the true heir of.
Beyond farce.
Rhaena knew it would only be a necessity for as long as it took Jaehaerys to truly settle, and yet, she hadn't really gleaned how important those early years would be. Instead, she was faced constantly with this lord, that lady, this house, that one, all making their own subtle attempt to get a dragon, and the blood.
She wanted to be a good mother. She tried. She made efforts to connect. It was not easy, by any means. They didn't have the same experiences, and she was a stranger besides. Further, she had her own duties, her own necessities, and even her own interests still. She sought to connect with her daughter over the thing that was most unique to them. Over the thing which bound them deep and wasn't something Aerea shared with the others in her court. Their blood that made them dragon riders.
It was just the same that Elissa was as good with her daughter as she'd been with her, and that one more aspect of her life was worse off for her departure.
Sometimes, life was not as easy as simply wanting something.
Her lower half ached for a tenday almost exclusively in the saddle, ankles, shins, thighs, bottom, the lot of it. Adjusting gently to try and relax and keep pressure off of her building aches, she guided Dreamfyre in another slight adjustment of course. She needed rest, and after scouring most of the eastern coast of the Seven Kingdoms over the last number of days for reported sightings of Balerion, she'd come up with nothing.
If Aerea was dead then…
She tried not to think about it. Tried to cast her mind back to the root of her problem. A nagging thought she was struggling to placate.
Jaehaerys had been a good king for the last seven odd years. That was what everyone said, when she cared to listen. It quieted her self-loathing, for not stopping Aegon that day. For not going with him. For not stepping up to challenge her younger brother after her true husband had died over that throne. Had paid the ultimate price.
She had not left Aerea to grow up at King's Landing as an idle choice.
She had only ever sent her daughters away the first time to hide them from Maegor. A failure, when they were found anyways of course, but she had not wanted to. They were at war, among each other as much as with the constantly bucking lords that managed the land in the crown's stead.
It was Jaehaerys that had wanted Aerea.
"No." was not an option.
By taking Aerea close, they looked like a unified front. That took the power away from other groups to potentially stir further conflict among House Targaryen's dragons.
It would also assure that I didn't change my mind.
She was not blind.
Ostensibly, had something terrible happened, her daughter would sit the throne. In the meantime, every interested party would make happy, and resistance would have meant further conflict that literally none of them wanted.
She wasn't sure whether Jaehaerys' clever political manipulations went as far as to include the obvious knowledge that she would be haunted by the thought of returning there. At the same time, she couldn't be absolutely sure. The plight of a woman in her position was rarely acknowledged, much less that she would revisit it every time she stepped into that keep.
Meaning her daughter was raised without knowing her, without her advice, or her input in her ear. Without any other perspective or guidance than what Jaehaerys, Alysanne, or whoever else in the court sought any number of things from her wanted.
Rhaena could hold little ill against Alysanne who faced the same plight she did. A shared uniformity in their struggles having been born to be princesses instead of princes. But in the end, Alysanne played second to their brother who wore the crown. She might do great good in his stead, and truthfully, so might Jaehaerys himself. She couldn't even really be sure the king and queen had done much beyond just incidentally or intentionally creating that distance.
It wasn't as if Aerea had given her any inclinations that her brother and sister had poisoned her against her mother. She could hardly take her teenaged angry outbursts to even be indicative of anything either.
She resolved herself.
If she found her, something would-
Dreamfyre let out a trumpeting cry, part aggression and part warning. She jerked up in the saddle, swiveling first to check her periphery as her dragon started to beat her wings and gain altitude.
Then she spotted it, the cause for alarm. A black shape against the night sky, wings carrying it lazily along much higher up. It passed the front of a cloud from her angle, to give a distinct suggestion of shape and size.
Balerion.
A heartbeat spent looking on the Black Dread brought it back. That this had likely been the last thing Aegon had seen.
But it might have carried her daughter.
She gripped the saddle tight and called for an ascent and despite the threat, Dreamfyre immediately climbed.
Her heart was in her ears, worried what she would find. She couldn't see a rider from her angle, and as she climbed and closed the distance, she feared more than anything to find nothing on his back. That Aerea might have died from a graceless fall in an unknown place, or worse.
Her panic, her despair, her aggression, it made Dreamfyre let out another trumpeting roar despite being dwarfed by the Black Dread as they closed, and her heart skipped a beat. She was misinterpreting emotions. Maybe even drawing upon the vague sensation that Balerion had taken something of importance.
It could be difficult to tell where the line was drawn in the exchange.
No!
"Daor, daor!" She shouted over the wind to her dragon.
Balerion was not just old and great in size. He was experienced, and ill-tempered in his superiority. He would not suffer what seemed like aggression from Dreamfyre. Not least when something as simple as a well-timed strike to his wings could put him from the sky. That was one of many ways in which she and Aegon had considered the possible defeat of Balerion. To ground him, and if that did not kill him on its own, then resort to other measures.
She saw his head turn just barely in the moonlight, the amber yellow of his gaze focusing on Dreamfyre as she closed, but his bearing in flight didn't change.
The old dragon watched them, on the wing.
Smoke swept back behind them as it came from Dreamfyre's nose, but the blue dragon heeded her command.
When they rose enough in line by the beat of her dragon's wings that she could see Balerion's back, she didn't see Aerea.
Then her eyes caught upon his neck.
A sound escaped, one she hadn't meant to make, that would be lost in the wind. A jerky, stuttered breath as she inhaled.
Aerea was on his neck.
She didn't have a saddle. She might have resorted to his neck for better seating. With Balerion's size and a less motion-filled flight in general due to it, that would have served a decent seat for lack of ability to sit on his shoulders. It wasn't as if her thighs could hold his neck at the base. Balerion was huge. Higher up, it was at least a possibility.
"Aerea!" She shouted over the wind.
Her daughter must have been half asleep because she was sluggish to react.
Rhaena realized that it was the likely reason Balerion was flying so straight. An old dragon was capable of a surprising amount of intelligence. That was true, and yet, she wasn't sure what to make of its placidity, and complete disregard for Dreamfyre's aggressive cry.
Aerea's shoulders moved, and her head turned enough from its place leaned against one of Balerion's spines to look at her.
Rhaena couldn't make out her face well, but she motioned with her hand downward and toward Dragonstone and Aerea gave a nod.
They must have been returning. Or Balerion was.
She was doubtful that Aerea had the practice and perspective to guide a dragon about Westeros or Essos with a good awareness of the location. A dragon's eye view of the land required more personal experience than could simply be conveyed in a flat map. The shapes of the land more often than not could confuse the Targaryen not yet accustomed to viewing the territories as a dragon.
She glanced at Balerion, and though his eye tracked her and Dreamfyre, the Black Dread seemed mostly uninterested. It was a bit strange. She had seen him in flight near other dragons, and snapping jaws and threatening bellows were the gift of drawing too close. That she was able to get so close at all, she could only lay at the foot of a suspicion she had that Aerea wasn't treating her like a threat.
It didn't change that she kept close.
She kept ready, because if by some stroke of unfortunate luck, Aerea was to fall now, she would be there to catch her before the waters below. That, or they would die together.
When they touched down in Dragonstone, she threw herself off of Dreamfyre and on her feet. She winced at the impact, at the stinging pain of legs mostly unmoving and yet forced to hold tight for hours on end. She had not ridden Dreamfyre so much in a very long time.
She walked forward, toward where the colossal weight of Balerion's form lowered down, but stopped a good ways back. The dragon was unfamiliar with her, and she knew well that approaching even a dragon you knew could be a life and death experience. Dreamfyre was a reflection of who she was, and so with her positive feelings pushing it, she could take others on the dragon's back.
She was less certain that Balerion would be so welcoming of her presence.
So she waited. Waited the agonizing seconds for Aerea to climb down. Waited while her daughter's riding dress got caught on one of Balerion's spikes, and Aerea fought with it to get it free.
Rhaena had seen it made for her in the hope that she would hatch or find herself with a dragon. She hadn't foreseen it being used to take flight on Balerion without a word between them.
Still, that fluttering in her chest eased into something deeper as she watched her struggle a little further and then finally get herself loose.
As Aerea trudged to the boundary of Balerion's reach without movement, a line she wasn't going to risk getting close to just yet, her daughter hesitated.
Balerion's great amber eye blinked lethargically and then closed.
She took that opportunity by the sea's chill to look at her daughter, stood there dirtied and ruffled for a trip more than a tenday to who knows where, living by whatever measure she had. Her daughter, who danced on the border to being a woman within a few years.
Rhaena looked at her and burned it into her mind, aware it might never have happened had anything gone differently.
Aerea's lips pressed in tight, and her eyebrows… eyebrows she saw in her own reflection often enough, they tucked in too. Almost sullen.
She felt every desire to list the ways, and there were many, in which Aerea had risked her life, and risked things even beyond it.
That she would leave me behind, grieving her.
Instead, she stepped in and swept her up against her chest as tightly as she could.
Aerea was slack for the first moment, but then a sigh she recognized, shuddering as it was, came from the thin girl. Her daughter's arms came up, and tightened around her in turn. Not a sound escaped Aerea's mouth. She buried her feelings, but she was not so practiced that they could go unseen to a mother's eyes.
Rhaena thanked whatever gods had seen her safely back to her, as Aerea's shoulders shook and bunched in.
"I was afraid." She admitted into her daughter's pale, windblown hair. "I'm so glad you're safe."
Maybe, in all of the ways life had ground her down, Aerea need not be one.
Post Notes:
Thank you for reading. Let me know what you think of course.Last edited: Jul 2, 2025 Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:CommanderDragon, Abnormal, Faucar and 650 othersProcrastinationJun 16, 2025Reader modeNewAdd bookmark Threadmarks Jason WuConnoisseur.Jun 16, 2025Add bookmark#50Thanks for the chapter. Balerion got vibe checked, you ain't the big boi of the block no more.
Well he is physically but metaphorically no.Last edited: Jun 16, 2025 Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:TalesDeMileto01, PlainSoul, ubioct and 65 othersThedudeManBroThe Dudeliest Man on the block, Bro!Jun 16, 2025Add bookmark#51Procrastination said:Balerion's great amber eye blinked lethargically and then closed.... By the Nine the guy got his ass kicked so hard by the Dragonborn he's suffering a concussion at the absolute least.
Get clowned on Balerion, you dumbass dragonLast edited: Jun 16, 2025 Like Quote ReplyReport Reactions:Deviliant, SirThrowaway, PlainSoul and 89 othersThe golden kingLOBOTOMY KAISEN VETERAN(CHAINSAWFOLK RESIDENT)Jun 16, 2025Add bookmark#52Balerion obtained Dragon class CTE bro gon be feeling that for the rest of his existence