The lake house had grown again.
What had started as a single room with a hearth and a cot had become something that could no longer honestly be called a cabin and was approaching the size of a proper manor, spreading along the lakeshore in a series of additions that Arthur had put up over the course of the past year whenever he found himself with a free afternoon and an itch in his hands that only carpentry could scratch.
There was a long covered porch that ran the full length of the building now with a railing that overlooked the water, and a proper kitchen with a stone hearth large enough to cook for thirty people, and a dining hall that opened onto a garden where Cassie had planted herbs and wildflowers, and a bathing room fed by the same pipe from the lake that Arthur had laid down in the first week.
The smell of roasting lamb and fresh bread drifted out through the open windows and mixed with the clean green scent of the forest and the water.
Down by the shore, where the grass gave way to the narrow strip of gravel that lined the lake's edge, twenty-three children were playing.
Meggie, who was nearly nine now and had appointed herself commander of the younger children, was directing a team of six in the construction of a fort made from driftwood and blankets. Lena sat beside her with a piece of charcoal and a flat stone, drawing a map of the fort's defences.
Ben and Thom, who were twelve now and had grown tall enough that Arthur had started worrying about the their bunks, led the opposing faction from behind a wall of stacked logs and were lobbing pinecones at Meggie's position.
The newer children, the ones who had come over from King's Landing in the months since Alys had begun sending them in groups of three and four, were scattered among both sides. Little Pip, who was six and had arrived from Flea Bottom four months ago so thin that his ribs had shown through his shirt, was now brown and healthy from the island sun and was currently hanging upside down from a tree branch over the water while Hanna, a quiet girl of eight who rarely spoke but smiled constantly, tried to pull him down by his ankles.
Wren and Coll, two brothers from the Street of Flour who had come together and refused to be separated, were building their own secondary fort halfway between the two main positions.
Bess, who was the oldest of the new arrivals at thirteen and who had a sharp tongue, had stationed herself on a rock overlooking the battlefield and was providing running commentary on the proceedings to Derry, a boy of ten who followed her everywhere.
Lunk stood at the edge of the water with his enormous feet planted in the shallows and his trousers rolled up to his knees watching everything while he had a small bird perched on his shoulder.
The handmaidens that Arthur had hired from the mainland, three young women from Duskendale named Yara, Senna, and Moll, moved between the kitchen and the porch carrying platters and pitchers and keeping the long trestle table that had been set up outside stocked with food and drink.
The table was already half-destroyed, bread torn into pieces, a wheel of cheese with great bites taken out of it, bowls of roasted root vegetables and plates of chicken and a basket of the apples that Godric's orchards had begun to produce in their first modest harvest.
Rhaella sat at the near end of the table with a plate in front of her that would have fed a soldier for two days.
She was six months along and the pregnancy had done nothing to diminish her appetite, which had become a source of amazement for everyone who knew her. The princess who had once eaten like a bird at formal dinners in the Red Keep now tore through bread and cheese and cold meat like she hadn't eaten in weeks.
Her silver-gold hair was tied back in a simple braid and she wore the loose linen dress that Mira had made for her when her regular gowns stopped fitting, there was a flush of colour in her cheeks from the sun and the food and the sheer contentment of being exactly where she wanted to be.
Cassie sat beside her, five months pregnant herself, with Percival balanced on her knee. The silver-haired boy was fourteen months old now and had entered the phase of development where every object within arm's reach was either something to grab, something to put in his mouth, or something to throw at his mother's head.
He was currently attempting all three with a bread roll.
Mira was further down the table with Mordred and Morgana in the double seat that Arthur had built, a wide wooden chair with a dividing board down the centre that allowed both twins to sit upright without falling sideways into each other.
Mordred was staring at his porridge with an expression of profound offence. Morgana, who had inherited her mother's temperament and her father's stubbornness, had already tipped her bowl onto the table and was smearing the contents across the wood with both hands while Mira attempted to clean it up and Morgana attempted to prevent this with equal determination.
Mira was seven months along, the furthest of the three, and the swell of her belly was large enough now that she had to lean sideways to reach the mess her daughter was making.
"Morgana, darling, please stop painting the table with your breakfast."
Morgana looked at her mother with an expression of indifference and continued painting.
"She gets that from you," Mira called across to Arthur.
Arthur chuckled and turned away from her.
He was fifty yards away at the far end of the lakeshore clearing, on the flat stretch of packed earth that he had levelled and maintained as a private training ground, and the crack of wooden practice swords meeting each other drowned out most conversation at that distance.
Jory came at him fast.
The boy moved with a fluidity that had only grown better in the fourteen months since he started properly training him. Jory's feet barely seemed to touch the ground as he circled to Arthur's left, the wooden blade held in a guard that he had adapted from the Water Dancing forms Arthur had taught him, and when the attack came it was a feint to the right that flowed into a rising cut from the left that would have opened a grown man's ribs if the sword had been steel.
Arthur parried the cut on the flat of his practice blade and redirected it past his hip, but the boy was already gone, pivoting on his back foot and coming in again with a thrust aimed at the centre of Arthur's chest that was fast enough and clean enough that Arthur had to step back to avoid it rather than simply turning it aside.
"Good," Arthur said. "Again."
Jory reset and came again, and this time the combination was a three-strike sequence, a high cut followed by a sweep followed by a thrust, all delivered with a skill of boys nearly five years older than him. The boy's footwork was excellent, his weight balanced perfectly over the balls of his feet so that he could change direction at any moment without losing momentum.
Arthur blocked the first two and sidestepped the thrust, and then he came back with a counter that put Jory on the defensive, and the boy handled it well, parrying twice and ducking the third and resetting his guard without any of the wild scrambling that most beginners succumbed to.
His recovery was good.
It was clear the boy was a prodigy.
Arthur did not use the word lightly and he did not say it to Jory's face because the last thing a thirteen-year-old needed was to be told he was exceptional before he had earned the right to believe it, but it was true nonetheless. Jory learned sword forms faster than Arthur had, absorbed corrections on the first telling, and possessed an instinctive understanding of distance and timing that could not be taught and could only be refined. Given five more years of proper training, the boy was going to be w true menace with a blade.
They sparred for another twenty minutes, Arthur gradually increasing the speed and complexity of his attacks to push the boy without overwhelming him, and Jory rose to meet each new challenge.
Eventually Arthur stepped back and lowered his practice blade.
"Enough. Go wash off in the lake and have fun with the others."
Jory was breathing hard, sweat running down his face and his tunic soaked through, but the grin had not faded. "One more round, Ser. I almost had you on that last combination."
"You did not almost have me, Jory, you almost had the space where I used to be standing. Go. Swim. Be a boy for an hour. The sword will be here tomorrow."
Jory looked like he wanted to argue, but a glance toward the lake where the other children were now engaged in what appeared to be a naval battle involving two commandeered fishing boats and a great deal of splashing made his resolve waver.
He bowed quickly, dropped his practice sword on the rack, and sprinted toward the water at full speed, stripping his tunic off over his head as he ran and hurling himself off the end of the short dock in a cannonball that sent water spraying over Lunk and Pip and at least three other children who screamed in delighted outrage.
Arthur watched him go.
Then he walked to the large flat rock that sat at the edge of the clearing where the grass met the gravel shore of the lake, and he sat down and looked out across the water and let the warmth of the afternoon settle over him.
A year.
It had been a full year since he had sailed to King's Landing.
It had been the best year of his life.
The four of them had found a rhythm that worked, sure there had been arguments, four adults sharing a life and a bed and a set of children was not the kind of arrangement that ran smoothly without friction. There had been nights when Cassie needed Arthur to herself. There had been mornings when Rhaella felt out of place. There had been conversations that were hard and conversations that had ended with all four of them sitting on the floor of the kitchen at the lake house laughing so hard they could not breathe.
Now three of them were pregnant.
Mira first, then Cassie, then Rhaella, the announcements spaced roughly six weeks apart.
Arthur suspected the gods had arranged specifically to test the structural limits of his composure.
He had handled the first one with the same joy as before. He had handled the second one with slightly more complicated joy and a growing awareness that his household was about to become considerably louder.
He had handled the third one by sitting down on the floor of his solar and staring at the wall for fifteen minutes while the reality of his situation rearranged itself inside his skull.
Six children.
He was going to have six children.
Three already crawling and three more on the way.
The Rhaella situation was the one that kept him awake at night. His children with Mira and Cassie were Pendragons, born in wedlock, legitimate and unquestioned. But Rhaella was not his wife, the child, when it came, would be a bastard in the eyes of the law and the realm.
Arthur did not care what the law called his children. He would love this baby the same way he loved Mordred and Morgana and Percival. Mira and Cassie would too, he had no doubt about that, both of them had already started referring to Rhaella's belly as "our baby" in the same way they talked about their own.
But the world cared.
The world cared a great deal about such distinctions, and a bastard-born child of a Targaryen princess and a minor island lord was the kind of thing that gossips and lords would feast on for a generation.
He needed to write to King Aegon. He needed to ask, at minimum, for the child to be given the Pendragon name, which would require Aegon's approval. The letter would also, by implication, confirm what everyone probably already suspected but no one had yet said aloud, which was that Arthur Pendragon was sleeping with the king's granddaughter.
The open secret would become simply open.
He would write the letter this week. He had been putting it off for two months and putting it off was not making it easier.
He let the thought settle and turned his attention to things he could actually control.
Brightwater continued to grow.
The household guard now stood at two hundred and fourteen men, every one of them trained to a standard that would have made any lord in the Crownlands envious. They drilled six mornings a week in the training yard at Camelot, rotating between shield wall formations and individual sword work and archery and the long mountain runs in full kit that Arthur had modelled on the punishing conditioning regimes he put himself through.
Their armour was the best on the island, because Arthur could forge steel with [Genesis] that was as good as anything the armouries of King's Landing could produce.
By this time next year he hoped to double the guard again. Four hundred men was more than a small island in the Blackwater strictly needed, but the war was coming, and when it came he wanted his home protected by men who could hold the walls and the harbours and the forest approaches against anything that might try to reach his family.
The fortifications had expanded too.
Three stone forts now guarded the coastline at the island's most vulnerable landing points, each one equipped with catapults and ballistae that could reach any vessel within two hundred yards of the shore. The eastern cove below Camelot had been reinforced with a chain boom across the harbour mouth and a battery of scorpions mounted on the cliff face above.
The main harbour at the southern village had a watchtower now and a pair of war galleys that Arthur had purchased from a shipyard in Duskendale, crewed by island men who had been fishermen six months ago and were now learning to fight on water.
The steward, a man named Aldric whom Arthur had hired from the mainland, handled the daily administration of the island with a competence that freed Arthur from the endless small decisions that lordship demanded.
Beneath Aldric a small household staff managed the castle and the grounds, the tax collection which was minimal, the trade negotiations with passing merchants, and the correspondence that continued to arrive from lords across the realm who wanted to know what the young Lord of Brightwater was doing and whether his children were available for betrothal.
Everything was running.
Everything was growing.
Everything was working.
Which meant that Arthur could spend his time on the things that mattered.
He reached into the leather satchel beside the rock and pulled out the book.
It was not a large book. It was perhaps two hundred pages, bound in cracked black leather that had gone brittle with age, the pages inside were thick and covered in a script that did not belong to any language Arthur had ever encountered in this world.
The Dragon Dictionary.
Written, according to the inscription on the first page, by the last of a line of mortals who had been gifted with the soul of a dragon. Not the dragons of Valyria. Something else. Something from a place and a time that the book's author had never named directly, referring to it only as "the land of Skyrim."
The book contained words.
Not words in the ordinary sense.
The author called them Words of Power, and the book was organised as a dictionary, each entry containing a single word in the dragon tongue alongside a detailed explanation of its meaning and its effects and the philosophical framework that a mortal speaker needed to internalise before the word would respond to their voice.
Arthur had been reading it for the better part of a year.
The first word he had attempted was FUS.
The book described FUS as the concept of Force, not merely physical force but the assertion of one's will upon the world, the fundamental act of pushing reality aside. The explanation ran to nearly eight pages of dense philosophical text that Arthur had read and reread dozens of times, meditating on the concepts during his Hamon breathing sessions and turning them over in his mind during the long hours of the night when the rest of the household slept.
It had taken nearly ten months. Ten months of reading and thinking and sitting alone in the forest with his eyes closed and the book open in his lap, trying to feel the shape of what FUS actually was, the fundamental truth of force as a concept.
And then one morning, standing in the forest outside the castle walls at dawn, he had understood.
He had spoken the word.
FUS.
The force of it had torn twelve trees out of the ground by their roots and hurled them forty feet through the air. The earth had cracked in a line running outward from where he stood, a shallow trench carved into the forest floor by the sheer pressure of the sound, and the shockwave had rattled the windows of Camelot half a mile away and sent Horus screeching into the sky from his perch on the highest tower.
Arthur had stood in the shattered clearing with dirt and splinters raining down around him and his ears ringing and his hands shaking, and he had stared at the devastation and thought very clearly.
I cannot use this on a battlefield.
FUS was too powerful and too indiscriminate. On an open field, surrounded by his own men, a word that tore trees from the ground and cracked the earth would kill friend and foe alike. It was a weapon of last resort at best and a catastrophe at worst, and the two remaining words in its full sequence, RO and DAH, would only magnify the destruction.
He needed something more precise.
So he had turned deeper into the book, past the words of elemental force and fire and frost and storm, past the words that commanded time and space, past the words that the author had marked with warnings about the cost of speaking them, until he found a section near the end, a section that the author introduced with a note explaining that this shout had not been given by the dragons but had been created by mortals.
Dragonrend.
Three words.
JOOR ZAH FRUL.
Mortal, finite, temporary.
The shout did not burn or freeze or crush. It imposed the concept of mortality upon a dragon, forcing the creature to comprehend its own death, a thing that dragons by their nature could not naturally conceive of. The shock of that comprehension would ground a flying dragon, stripping it of the will to stay airborne, dragging it down to earth where mortal weapons could reach it.
Arthur was uncertain about whether the shout would work on all dragons or only the specific type the Dragonborn had encountered in his own land, which he described as immortal spirits of the sky that had never known what it meant to die.
The dragons of Valyria were mortal, Arthur was fairly sure of that, they had lifespans measured in centuries rather than eternities, and they could be killed by conventional weapons if you were brave enough or stupid enough to get close enough to try. Whether forcing the concept of mortality on a creature that was already mortal would have any effect at all was an open question.
But the wyvern on the beach had very nearly killed him, and that had been a creature without fire. A true dragon was something else entirely. If the enemy had wyverns then they might have dragons, and if they had dragons then Arthur needed every advantage he could find.
So he had begun to study JOOR.
The word was harder than FUS in some ways and easier in others. The understanding it demanded was personal. To speak JOOR with power, the book explained, the speaker had to understand mortality not as an abstract concept but as a lived experience, had to hold in their mind the full weight of what it meant to be finite, to know that every breath was one of a counted number, to feel the limit of their own existence pressing against the walls of their awareness.
Arthur had an advantage that no other living speaker of the Thu'um could claim.
He had died before.
He did not remember the specifics of it, but the feeling of it remained, the feeling of nothingness, of being in the void. The absolute cessation. The moment when awareness narrowed to a point and then vanished entirely, not sleep and not unconsciousness but the real and final end, the closing of a book that would not be opened again.
He had felt that.
He understood mortality because he had experienced it firsthand.
Which meant that JOOR was coming to him faster than FUS had. Where the first word had taken nearly ten months of meditation and study, the second was already forming in the back of his throat after only four months of work. He could feel it assembling itself, the concept of finite existence pressing against the inside of his mouth like a word he had known all his life but had simply forgotten how to pronounce, and the sensation grew stronger with each passing week.
Another two months, he estimated. Perhaps three. And then he would have JOOR, and then he would begin on ZAH, and if the gods were kind he would have the complete shout ready before the king's two-year clock ran out and the assault on Dragonstone began.
He set the book aside and pulled up his status.
────────────────────
STATUS MENU
────────────────────
Name: Arthur Pendragon
Class: Knight
Heritage: Valyrian / Stormlands
Age: 18
Level: 10
Unallocated Stat Points: 0
Title(s): Fledgling Hero
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COMBAT ATTRIBUTES
────────────────────
Strength: 28
Dexterity: 18
Constitution: 28 (+45%)
Intelligence: 8
Perception: 9
Luck: 8
Magic: 9
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TRAITS
────────────────────
[Comely]
You've got the kind of face that gets you smiled at, flirted with, and forgiven for things you probably should not be.
[Sword Prodigy]
You wield a blade like it belongs in your hand—faster learning speed, tighter reflexes, and better execution with swords.
[Sharp Ears]
Your hearing is unnaturally acute. You can detect faint sounds, whispers, and movement even from across the room.
[Blood of the Dragon]
The blood of Old Valyria burns within you. Magic coils in your veins like flame beneath skin. Grants access to the Magic stat, increased dragon affinity, and heightened emotional intensity when protecting what is yours.
[Dragon Dreams]
Your dreams carry meaning. They may reveal warnings, truths, or omens. Whether they are blessings or curses remains uncertain.
[Dexterous]
Your hands and fingers are exceptionally nimble. Tasks requiring precision, balance, and control are performed with greater ease.
[Gift]
You may transfer one trait or skill to another individual. The recipient gains a weaker version. The trait or skill is permanently removed from you.
[Inventive Genius]
You instinctively imagine, design, and improve tools and mechanisms beyond your era's understanding.
[Demon Back]
When pushed beyond natural limits, your musculature synchronizes for explosive power. Strength temporarily exceeds normal human thresholds. Overuse strains the body and increases aggression.
[Linguist]
You instinctively understand any spoken language and learn magical or ancient ones with unusual ease.
[Arcane Script]
You can read any written language, rune, or magical script.
[The Shining]
You sense emotional and psychic impressions left on people, places, and objects. May induce out-of-body awareness in moments of extreme trauma or magical proximity.
[Ambidextrous]
No penalty for using either hand.
[Hyper Mobility]
Enhanced joint flexibility and range of motion.
[The World] (Stand not incl.)
You may momentarily freeze time.
Current Limit: 4.5 seconds.
Duration and frequency scale with Magic (+0.5 seconds per point).
Frequent use causes extreme exhaustion.
[Uchiha Bloodline]
Exceptional talent for unarmed martial arts and throwing weapons. Heightened reflexes and visual acuity. Latent potential to awaken the Sharingan through extreme emotional trauma or breakthrough.
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BLOODLINE TRAITS — HOUSE PENDRAGON
────────────────────
[Dragonheart]
Powerful inner will. Resistance to fear, torture, intimidation, mind control, and despair. Continues fighting long after others would collapse.
[Crown of Command]
Ancient kingly aura. Soldiers fight harder under your command, nobles defer more easily, smallfolk trust by instinct. People believe you were born to rule.
[Blood of Avalon]
Connection to old magic, sacred kingship, and the hidden power of the land. Resonates with enchanted weapons, ancient relics, and places of spiritual importance. Greater likelihood of awakening magic tied to light, healing, protection, fate, and prophecy.
────────────────────
MYTHIC TRAIT
────────────────────
[Genesis]
You no longer merely construct. You author. Converts stored energy into matter with vastly improved efficiency. Complexity penalties substantially reduced. Objects possessing intrinsic magical properties may now be created, provided comprehension requirements are met. Living matter remains beyond your reach.
└─ [Revelation] (Sub-ability)
By placing your hands upon an object and focusing your will, you perceive its complete structure, composition, and method of creation. Knowledge obtained is permanent and immediately satisfies the comprehension requirement for Genesis.
────────────────────
SKILLS
────────────────────
[Observe]
[Carpentry] (12/100) (Journeyman)
[Conditioning] (68/100)
└─ Recovery (Sub-skill)
└─ +45% Constitution
[Novocaine] (78/100)
[Cooking] (75/100) (Expert)
[Tracker] (22/100) (Legendary)
[Axe Mastery] (52/100) (Novice)
[Carnal Knowledge] (45/100) (Expert)
[Shibukawa-ryū Jujutsu] (88/100) (Apprentice)
[Lumbering] (58/100) (Journeyman)
[Falling Star Style] (15/100) (Adept)
[Water Dancing Style] (12/100) (Journeyman)
[Massage] (12/100) (Master)
[Poison Resistance] (15/100) (Journeyman)
[Acrobatics] (5/100) (Adept)
[Mathematics] (60/100) (Adept)
[Hamon] (12/100) (Journeyman)
[Alchemy] (52/100) (Novice)
[Jousting] (85/100) (Novice)
[Horse Riding] (8/100) (Legendary)
[Haggling] (28/100) (Novice)
[Royal Swordsmanship] (50/100) (Journeyman)
[Battlefield Leadership] (35/100) (Master)
────────────────────
FAMILIAR
────────────────────
[Horus] — Pet Shop (Rare)
────────────────────
Arthur studied the numbers for a moment.
Every unallocated point from the past two levels had gone into Magic, pushing it from three to nine. The decision had not been difficult. Strength and Constitution were already high enough that he could throw a grown man across a room without assistance, and Dexterity was climbing on its own through the relentless training he put himself through.
But Magic was the stat that governed [The World], and the stat that would eventually determine how much punishment the Thu'um extracted from him when he spoke the words. He needed it higher. He needed it as high as he could push it, because the war that was coming was not going to be won with steel alone.
The skills had come along well too. Hamon had advanced to Adept through sheer volume of daily practice, and the difference between Journeyman and Adept was not incremental but transformative. He could sustain full-body Hamon for nearly an hour now without significant fatigue, channel it into objects with enough force to turn a thrown pebble into a projectile that could punch through plate armour, and the healing applications had advanced to the point where he could knit shallow cuts closed in minutes and accelerate the healing of deeper wounds by days.
Falling Star Style had finally tipped over into Adept as well, and the forms that defined the style had become so deeply embedded in his muscle memory that he could transition between them in the middle of a fight without conscious thought. Royal Swordsmanship sat at the halfway point of its Journeyman tier, which meant he still had a great deal to learn about the faith-and-will channelling that the art demanded, but the fundamentals were sound and the advanced techniques were beginning to reveal themselves in his practice sessions.
Horse Riding at the Legendary tier was something he still had difficulty believing, even though he could feel the truth of it every time he mounted Quiet and the two of them moved as a single entity, his thoughts becoming her movements without the intermediary of reins or heels or voice.
He hoped it would be enough.
He hoped all of it, the stats, the skills, the Thu'um, the armour, the men, the fortifications, the sheer bloody-minded determination to survive, would be enough when the two years ran out and the king called him to war.
He closed the status menu and picked up the book again and opened it to the page where JOOR stared up at him in angular script that seemed to vibrate faintly when he looked at it directly.
A shadow fell across the page.
Arthur looked up to find Mira standing over him, silhouetted against the afternoon sun with her wheat-gold hair loose around her shoulders and her belly round and prominent beneath the linen dress and one hand resting on her hip.
She lowered herself carefully into his lap, settling against him sideways with her legs stretched out along the rock and her back against his chest. She reached up and plucked the book out of his hands with two fingers and held it out at arm's length.
"Arthur Pendragon. Why are you sitting here with your nose in this dusty old book on the most beautiful day we have had in a month."
"It is a perfect day to read."
"It is a perfect day to be with your family, who are right over there having a wonderful time, all of them, except you, who is sitting on a rock reading about whatever this is." She squinted at the page. "I cannot even read this. What language is this."
"An old one."
"An old and boring one."
"It is not boring."
"Arthur. Everyone you love in this world is right there, right now, in the sun, and you are sitting on a rock squinting at words that look like someone let a spider walk through ink."
She turned her head and looked up at him, her blue eyes were teasing and entirely unimpressed by whatever ancient dragon mysteries the book contained.
"You are getting old, Arthur. Old and bookish. I married a warrior and somewhere along the way he turned into a scholar."
Arthur laughed and shook his head.
"Put the book down, my love," Mira said softly. "Come and be with us this can wait till tomorrow."
Arthur looked at her then he looked at the lake and the children and Rhaella laughing as Percival tried to grab the apple out of her fingers and Cassie lifting Morgana out of the remains of her porridge.
He took the book from Mira's hand and set it down on the rock behind him.
"You are right," he said quietly. "This can wait till tomorrow."
Mira kissed him and then climbed off his lap with considerably more effort than climbing on had required, given the belly, and she took his hand and pulled him to his feet and led him down the slope toward the lake where his family was waiting.
(AN: The first time skip is here and I think the next one will be the start of the war arc. Anyway Arthur has started learning from the dragon dictionary finally. He'll probably learn a bit of alchemy too. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)
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