Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter. Here on time! Next four chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
The offer was a joke. Submitting myself to her whims was something I could never see myself doing. I had no idea just what this gem could be. What she said about transferring her essence into it reminded me too much of the concept of a horcrux. Of course, that was a different magic system so it was unlikely that things would work the same here, but there was still the risk that having myself linked to her would lead to her having more influence over me than I was comfortable with anyone having.
But then what was my recourse. It was either play ball with her or sign my son's death warrant. I was stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. I refused to accept that there were only two options though.
"Perhaps we can come to a compromise. You said you need magic to sustain you in this form. What has more magic than a dragon. We have eggs back on Driftmark. One of them will hatch sooner or later. If they don't, I'll obtain one from the Crown. I can help you bond with a dragon. That should be more than enough magic to sustain you," I said. And since she felt comfortable I could bear the strain then it wouldn't matter to a dragon. And once I got her out of my son, well, a dead dragon was a tragedy but a bearable one.
She smirked like she knew what I was thinking about.
"I care little about just living. What I want is you, Laenor Velaryon. Rhilor wills it that I exist by your side. That is why he did all this. That is why he made it so my bracelet would find its way to Mysariah. That is why we stand here speaking to each other now. It is the will of the Lord of Light, and who are we to refuse it," she said. I silently decided that that was it. No more Red God in my Kingdom. These people were fucking insane.
"Well, you can't have me."
"And so your son will die."
"Do that and I will destroy you. Nothing is unbreakable. Not even this gem of yours. Trust me, I will find a way."
"I know you will. You are that kind of man, after all. But your threat only works if I care about my life. I do not. I would happily give my life to see the will of Rhilor done. Would you sacrifice your son to see me dead?" she asked. Fuck. She had me and she knew it. Was this what it felt like to be beaten? To be thoroughly outmaneuvered in a game you didn't realise you were playing until the very last second.
Okay okay, I had lost but I just needed to control how I lost. I accepted my loss. I would fall here. I just had to make sure I landed in a way that left me better poised to rise again. That meant I could not sacrifice my child here. There was no rising from that. We needed to do something easier to reverse.
"I am willing to play your game, but I have conditions," I began. She just smirked.
"You are not in the position to negotiate but speak your words and I will decide whether they please me or not," she said, nay ordered. She was already ordering me around. That rage, I took it and buried it deep within. Let me get out of this first.
"Link yourself to me but I want you out of my son completely. No residual threads. You don't get to remain with him," I said.
"And then lose what leverage I have over you?" she asked with a chuckle.
"You said Rhilor showed you visions of you advising and helping me. Standing by my side. There is no way for you to get there while holding my son's life over me, I assure you. Instead what we can do is begin a real partnership here. A symbiotic one. You link your life to mine, and our interests are aligned," I said.
"And then what stops you from killing yourself to get rid of me?"
"How much do you think I hate you? Not enough to kill myself, I assure you. There is no reason we can not build a good relationship with each other in the end. But if we start with you holding my son's life over my head, even if I bond with you, I will never trust you. Is that the role that Rhilor planned for you?" I asked, knowing just which strings to play to get this insane woman to dance to my tune.
"I see. However, I must warn you that once this is done, there is no separating yourself from me. Our souls will be intertwined. My existence will be powered by your power and I will remain in the gem. You must wear it of course. If you are separated from it, from me, for too long, our souls will snap, strained from trying to reach out to each other," she said. I nodded, accepting the explanation and warning.
"Do we have a deal now?" I asked.
"Of course. Your terms are acceptable to me," she said, offering me a smile. I gave her one of my own as well. I had no doubts about it, we were both planning on betraying each other the second we came together. It would just be a matter of seeing who would complete their own betrayal first.
"So how do we do this?" I asked.
She chuckled before stepping forwards and pressing her lips against mine. Her lips were cold. Ice cold. I did not return the kiss, but as her lips pressed on mine, I felt something knocking at my metaphorical inner doors. She was asking me to let her in. And against every instinct of mine, I did so.
The drain was almost immediately noticeable. I felt lesser just seconds later. She leaned away from me with the smile of a woman that had succeeded. And then I felt for just what she had done. I could feel her, wrapped around my power like a sort of parasite. She reminded me a lot of Aurion Belaerys. A foreign presence that was trying to snag a ride on my soul. That meant I had an idea now.
She had at least abided by her end of the bargain. I could feel now that whatever link she had to my son was gone, and he was crying now. Speaking of Aurion Belaerys, I had an idea.
Her eyes widened the second the thought came to me. She could read my mind then.
"Don't do it," she screamed, but I opened my eyes in the real world instead. Aegon was looking over at me curiously. But not in the way he would have if I'd zoned out for too long. Time had passed differently in that realm.
"No," her voice rang out from within my head.
I ignored it, pocketing the gem.
"Hold him the way you were taught," I told Aegon as he began to stare down at the crying infant with visible panic in his eyes. I chuckled as he tried to hand him over to me, and as much as I wanted to hold my son, I could not risk it. Any contact with either Aegon or him ran the risk of this woman jumping ship. And this ship was one she was going to go down with. Well, not like the ship would be going down—the ship was me, after all—but you get the point.
When Ser Cargyll finally reached us, I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Good Ser, I need you to escort Aegon back to the palace. There is a situation going on in the birthing chambers. I want you to take charge of it. See to it that my wife and children are taken to our rooms and a guard is placed outside. Triple the size of the regular guard rotation please. An attempt has been made on the life of my children already, and I would rather not risk another," I said.
"What about you?" Aegon asked.
"I have a few things to investigate. I trust the both of you to take charge," I said, giving the boy a nod. Cargyll, even though he had no business obeying my orders, nodded as well, and the two of them set off. I watched their backs as they did so. Sunfyre followed in his rider's wake, jumping from tree to tree, making each one rattle and shake with his weight. I sighed to myself. I had failed already. Because I knew it now, just as sure as anything else, that I viewed that boy as my own son. Aegon might have been Viserys' get, but that boy who had just easily helped me resolve a disaster in the making had been all my creation. I loved him.
That would be a mess for another day, I decided with a sigh and started to move in the opposite direction even as the woman in my head pleaded and begged. She could see what was coming now as clear as day.
Her pleas took on a more hysteric tone as we reached the end of the forest. I had walked in the opposite direction from Aegon, taking it a bit slower as I crossed most of the island to reach the other end of it. The beach there was far more wild than this one. The waters were still calm for the Stepstones, but there were way more living creatures just milling about here than there had been on the beach where we had chosen to build our castle. We had decided against this end because of how the forest pushed right up to the edge of the beach, leaving only a few meters of sand between it and the water.
The living creatures that had ignored me suddenly began to scatter as Igneel landed on the sand with a roar. He looked pissed as he gazed down at me. Could he see what I had done with my soul by allowing this parasite perhaps?
That was probably the case as before I could even order it, my best and oldest friend had taken in a deep breath and exhaled a firestorm in my direction. I was unburnt. Fire could not kill me. And yet in the face of that storm, I was tempted to flee, to cower, or to escape. Or even to use my magic to save my life here. I did none, clamping down on the urge with iron will.
I was a man, not an animal, and that meant I could do more than listen to my instincts and temptation. The fire hit me and the bracelet I held. I felt it begin to burn through whatever ties this woman had been able to create between her soul and my own. I was right in the end then. Dragonfire, or at least Igneel's fire since I had no evidence about any other dragon, was more than just regular fire. It was more than magical fire even.
It burned not just the body of a thing, but its soul as well. I was immune to fire, but this woman was not. Our bond burned and after minutes of holding my breath as I stood surrounded by bright blue flames—a sign of just how much effort Igneel was putting in this—it was all over. I could not feel her anymore. The bracelet was still alive to my senses, but the bond she had forced on me was gone for good. Good.
What was less than good was the fact that I now stood on the beach butt naked. Getting back into the palace like this would be a nightmare. But I'd take that over having a soul connected to mine doing god knows what.
Igneel was calmer now as he looked down at my naked form. He pushed his snout against my chest in a playful gesture that should have bowled over a man my size. I held my ground and scratched at said snout the best I could, putting in enough force that even I felt uncomfortable about it, but I knew that his scales were thick enough that this was the only way he could feel it.
After I was sure that he had had his fill of my display of affection, I stepped backwards and held the bracelet out towards him. He growled, his neck retracting slightly. It was a strong reaction. One that made him even more enraged. He snarled at the bracelet. So he could feel what was wrong with it, then? I had stopped hearing the witch's voice in my head after his fire had cleansed me of her taint but like I had sensed earlier, the bracelet was going to take more than that to destroy.
"Reckon you can destroy this, bud?" I asked, referring to the bracelet and nodding towards it to make it clear.
He snarled, this time at me. Asking was an insult then. Noted. For all that he was the most reasonable of his kind, Igneel was still a dragon and he had his pride. Probably even more pride than all the other living dragons. He just showed his in a different way. His pride came from confidence in his abilities and years of training meant that he was so sure of himself that he was not often challenged into proving his strength the way another dragon might be. He knew his place in the pecking order—the very top—and saw little need to engage in the jockeying and competition that lesser dragons needed to.
I set the bracelet down on the sand and took a few steps back to create distance between me and it.
Igneel took one massive step forward and gazed down at the bracelet. Those reptilian eyes held none of their usual warmth. In them, all I could see was rage for now. He breathed in, and exhaled a torrent of deep red flames that consumed the bracelet. He maintained said flames for close to a minute before stopping. The bracelet was there, looking like it hadn't even been touched.
He looked just as shocked as I was to find that his fire had had no effect, but while I was already working my mind towards the next thing I could try, he was still focusing on the same thing. He took a deeper breath now, focusing for even longer, trying to tighten the radius his flames covered to ensure that the brunt of the heat was borne by the bracelet rather than the surrounding environments.
When he breathed out this time, the flames were a bright blue that spoke to their incredible heat. They hit the sand, and I could feel the impact of it even after taking a few steps away from the point of impact. He maintained the flames for even longer. Hotter, more focused, and then longer on top of that.
Yet, I knew the results before he had even stopped. The sand around the bracelet had melted into pseudo-glass while the bracelet itself, beyond being partially enclosed in one of said pseudo-glass structures, remained unscathed.
When I finally reached out to rip it free, it came loose easily. Unharmed, untouched. This was a nightmare, I could see it now. To have an enemy I could not kill. This must have at least been part of what Brandon the Builder had felt when he faced the army of the dead for the first time. Of course, there was a massive difference between our situations. He had something that he was sure could hurt his enemy. An enemy that could not be destroyed could not be defeated, and the fact that the bracelet had somehow managed to make it to Mysariah's hands, and then to within my own castle, deep within my circle of trust.
Something like this was both too dangerous to just leave lying about as well as too dangerous to keep within my vicinity as well. It did not speak to me as things stood, but it clearly had some ability to influence people even while lacking a host to latch on to.
A situation where an over-curious servant—whether by nature, or with some aid from the bracelet itself— comes upon the bracelet and gets tempted into putting it on and playing into her hands as the next host for this witch was just going to lead him either back to this situation again, or something even worse.
I couldn't risk it. I had to be sure that I had exhausted all means available to me and after leaving the bracelet with Igneel, I walked back to the palace to find something else.
If the bracelet was just like a horcrux, then there was one surefire way to get rid of it. Valyrian steel was the closest thing to a one-to-one alternative in this world to the Goblin steel of that other universe and luckily I had said Valyrian steel aplenty.
"Watch that for me, will you?" I asked, pointing at the bracelet that Igneel's somewhat confused eyes had never left for even a second since it had survived his renewed attack. He growled in my direction, and I took that as my affirmative answer and then began walking back to the palace. I would be seen naked once I left the other end of this forest, but that couldn't even be one of my top ten problems for the here and now. I needed Valyrian steel to prove capable of dealing with this thing that had now fallen into my lap. Else, I would be forced to make one hell of a choice.
I ran back and by the time I was reaching where Vhagar stood, it was only inhuman reflexes that managed to help me catch what was hurled straight at my head. I looked at it in shock. It was a dragon egg. Vhagar had been sitting on top of it. She'd laid an egg. So that was why she'd been even more of a bitch recently. The roar I heard in my wake as I ran into the palace told me she had something of a good idea as to what I'd been thinking. I ached to go see my wife and children, but they were safe. And the only way to make sure of that was to deal with the threat at the metaphorical gate.
A/N: Vhagar laying an egg has significance that probably won't fully pay off for a minute, but it does matter here. Discount on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) for those interested. Next chapter comes on here on Sunday night. Next four chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.