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.
Vaemond Velaryon was too ambitious by half, always grasping for what should never have been his, a terrible conversationalist, always saying the quiet part out loud and thinking himself clever for it, a barely competent warrior with sword in hand, compared to his older brother, a just about mediocre ship captain, and perhaps worst of all, a dreadful bore. What set him apart from other men was the fact that despite all this he managed to deliver.
Never beyond expectations. But always capably. So set him to task and he would succeed at it 9 times out of 10. Set him a task thousands of others failed at and he would beat his head against it until either it yielded or he did. In this, the task had yielded for sure.
His flagship sailed at the head of a fleet that was just as whole as it had been when I had seen it off. Summer storms, and who knows what, must have assailed them at every place but still they had succeeded. I would have to reward him. But not too richly. Too ambitious by half, I reminded myself. Now what was a suitable enough reward that most would not think I had cheated him but would still avoid empowering him with the means to bring his ambitions to bear.
While I didn't think he'd be stupid enough to try to press his claim while a dragonriding son of Corlys with two sons of his own still lived, people in this world did drink the idiot Kool-Aid more often than was proper. His death in canon showed that he was definitely an imbiber. Calling the King's grandchildren bastards in disobedience of a royal decree in the middle of the throne room with no army of any sort at your back and little in the way of allies or support was the kind of stupidity that shocked the conscience.
So no, it would be best that I did not empower that stupidity any more than I needed to. I waited at the port as his ships were directed to begin their docking. It took the better part of an hour for the man to make it down the pier, walking towards me with his head held high and a swagger in his steps. He had two men on either side of him struggling with the weight of the massive chests they carried.
The chests themselves struggled to hold the content they were chock-full of. Vaemond himself was dressed for attention. He was clad head to toe in Yi-Tish silks that made him even more striking a man than he usually was, standing at six feet and with the broad Velaryon shoulders, slim waist, and general Valyrian looks. He looked to bury a shiver as a particularly cool breeze passed through the pier. Oh that couldn't have been comfortable to wear on the ride here at all.
When he reached me, our eyes met. I wondered for a second if this would be it. But no.
He showed uncommon wisdom for a man of his wit and knelt.
"My Lord," he said.
I looked down at him for a bit. Longer perhaps than I should have before I stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Rise, Uncle. You have done well. Tell us of your travels, will you," I said, accepting his embrace as he rose. It lasted a second and no longer, that much being the sum of the affection we were able to show each other. The crowd behind me began buzzing in excitement at my request. They so clearly wanted to know and I would not deny them that much.
"I have sailed the world, Nephew. East as far as East would go. Past the Summer Isles, Naath, through the Summer Sea into the Straits of Qarth, and the Jade Sea. To Yi-Ti, to Leng, to even Asshai in the Shadow Lands, and past there through the Saffron Straits. I have sailed the known world, Nephew, and I have returned with its wealth for you," he said, and at that obviously rehearsed cue, the men at his side opened the chests which might have just opened themselves if left shut for much longer.
They were filled to the brim and bursting with gold. Gold coins of an obviously foreign make.
"Their God-Emperor offers his greetings and respect to House Velaryon," he said, gesturing to the gold.
"A gift from him. More is within my ship. A gift to create a hand of friendship between his Kingdom and ours," he said. I almost sighed at that. Ours. We had no Kingdom. Not officially at least. Just what had Vaemond done in Yi-Ti? This was going to give me a headache, wasn't it?
"Thank you, Uncle," I said before he could say more.
I turned to the guard behind me.
"See to it that the contents of the chests to the left and right are distributed among the people here today. A gift from their Lord. Tell them I bid them only to spend it wisely," I said, speaking loudly to ensure that the waiting crowd heard.
"Velaryon!" they screamed with the love and loyalty of people whose hearts had been freshly bought. I gave them a good life, I was generous when I could afford to be, and I ensured no one suffered needlessly, but I would never be convinced that these people could ever truly love me.
Could a man truly love a god? I stood apart from them so much that I might as well have been that. So I turned my mind away from the chants of my name, and the prayers and blessings they yelled at the top of their voices for me. A performance, nothing more. They would do the same for the man that unseats me in a heartbeat.
"You must be tired from your voyage, Uncle. And this sea breeze is kind to no one. Let us retreat to the castle. You must meet your new nephews and nieces," I said with a smirk, enjoying the surprise on his face before he managed to school it into a wide smile and a congratulations that never did meet his eyes. Too grasping, indeed.
When I slept, my mind took me to the scene that I had seen so many times that it had become part of me by now. The Doom. I watched it again, sitting down and thinking more than anything else as the volcanoes began to erupt, that there was a beauty in this. Initially, it had just been fear that I had felt when I had this dream, and then the awe had come, but even that was tinged with fear, and then there was annoyance when the dream would just not stop, before boredom took its place as I dispassionately watched a civilisation that had held a stranglehold on the world meet its end.
But even that boredom had left now. Now I looked at it with wonder. It made me think of everything I had built in this life. One day, perhaps maybe not in a day, but it would fall nonetheless. Whether it fell the way Valyria or Pompeii did, with fire and smoke and ash, or the way Rome did, slowly and steadily with a thousand small cuts across centuries culminating in a final blow that most cared not to even note, it would fall all the same.
So what did it matter, I had thought for a while. But even that answer I found in the destruction of Valyria. It mattered because a thing need not be permanent to be beautiful. Even the destruction of a beautiful thing could itself be beautiful. I created a beautiful life for me and my wife, and hopefully my children, and one day their own. It was transient. We would all die. But while we lived, what else mattered?
Perhaps it was that thought, that understanding, that realisation, that spurred the change. Perhaps it was nothing at all and it was just random. Or perhaps it had been my mind keeping me from what I was not ready for until now, but the dream of Valyria began to shift. The boulders began to fly back upwards, the buildings began to reconstruct themselves. The volcanoes began to eat back their magma and smoke, rather than to spew it out, and the dragons began to rise, not fall.
Valyria's doom was being undone, and I did not understand it. This had never happened before.
"Nothing has ever happened before," a voice said from behind me. I whirled around, feeling my heart fly into my throat but the man whose gaze I met was not the Dragonlord who I feared had somehow maintained his possession, or the Red Witch.
It was an old man with white hair, dressed in black from head to toe. Brynden Rivers, my mind supplied.
"You know who I am. Good. That saves us time," he said.
"What are you doing here?" I asked. This made no sense. My presence in this world should have undone his. Canon should have been rewritten already. The dragons would not die in this world. So how would he still come to exist? Unless...
"Indeed. You have it. You fail, Laenor Velaryon. I know not how you know what is to come, but you must know that you fail. And my world is all the lesser for it," he said.
"So what are you doing here now?" I asked.
"The Others will rise again. It is almost inevitable. Almost."
"Almost?" I asked, catching the emphasis on the word. Was he here to tell me how to stop it?
"Yes. In order to stop the rise of the Others, you must take the youngest and eldest of your children and leave them in the Land of Always Winter as a sacrifice to the Others," he said.
I froze, not sure how to react to that. And then inexplicably, he just began laughing. A wide, full bellied laugh that racked his body, and as it did so, the black outfit began to shift into a red and gold silk. His form shrunk as well, hair lengthening until it was long enough to reach his waist and then the wrinkles on his face cleared away, the cheekbones shifting to sit higher on his face even as his chin sharpened to the point where he could have stabbed someone with it if he was determined enough.
"You should have seen your face," he shrieked.
"Who are you?" I asked now, my hackles fully risen and guard up.
"You don't want to hazard a guess?" he asked. He was Valyrian. That much was easy enough to see. But the age just didn't make sense. He was just barely out of his teens. So he couldn't be anyone whose journal I'd read back on Valyria and then gotten possessed through. Could he be a younger version of the man that had possessed Ben and then me?
"Aurion Belaerys?" I asked, already coming up with plans for dealing with this.
"Well, you're wrong but also right," he said.
"What does that mean?"
"The Aurion Belaerys you are thinking of was my Uncle. But we have the same name so you're not completely wrong, Laenor," he said.
"How are you here? What do you want?"
"Nothing really. Just to be entertained. And as for how? Think, Laenor. What have you been seeing for years?"
"The Doom," I replied instantly. So this was someone that had been a victim of the doom then. Then that made even less sense because I'd never managed to make it past Tyria to Valyria.
"The only way this can make sense to you is if I explain everything to you from the beginning, I suppose."
"And after that explanation, what happens?" I asked, wary that he was just buying time for something. I couldn't feel myself being consumed so that was unlikely to be it. Perhaps he was growing stronger with time, but that did not seem to be the case either.
"You decide. You can leave me here and never come back again, or you can come keep me company every night," he said.
"And if I decide on Option 3? Getting rid of you?" I asked.
"I fear you will find that to be much more difficult than anything you have ever done. I have slept within your soul for years now for a reason. Slowly and surely, I have ingrained myself deeper and deeper into your soul. No one. Not even your dragon will be able to tear us asunder, I fear." He said it in a matter-of-fact tone.
"That's what I'd say if I was in your place and didn't want to be destroyed," I pointed out.
"Yes, that does make sense. But when you wake up, you can feel free to check. Just know that I would not have shown myself to you now unless I was sure that I could survive whatever you tried to do to shake me loose. I've seen how you handle attempts to negotiate or appeals to your reasoning," he said, and the judging tone in his voice was unmistakable.
"Pardon me if I don't want to share my body," I snarked back.
"How Andal of you. I would have expected better from one who stole this body as well," he said. I stopped breathing.
"What?"
"I've been in this soul for years now, Laenor, or should I call you xxxxxxx?"
"How do you know that name?" I hissed, marching forwards and trying to grab a hold of his tunic. The space between us stretched and warped though. No matter how I moved, he remained the same distance from me regardless. I hadn't tried an attack earlier because I'd assumed he'd have a countermeasure for that. I was somewhat disappointed to be right.
"I have been in this soul. Are you lacking in wit? Everything you know, I know. I have travelled the depths of your memories, your existence. I know you better than the woman you lay next to now. I know you better than you even know yourself. All your darkest bits, the urges you hide, the worst parts of your nature have all been laid bare to me. I know you, Laenor. Knowledge is power, your people say, so imagine the power I have over you with this knowledge," he said. He was bragging.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"Like I said, nothing. Or rather, nothing you have any choice about giving me." That addition made my hackles rise even further.
"You are tense. Let me help you calm down. I'll tell you the story of Aurion Belaerys and when you understand me you will realise you have nothing to fear. I was born to the Lord and Lady of House Belaerys, one of the great forty. We were not the greatest of houses, but we were not Targaryens or houses of that level either. I was raised in luxury that would make your present existence seem drab. I had the best of the best of everything. Everything I wanted or needed was mine. But it all bored me. Until I was given to the pyromancers for my first lesson. Magic, Laenor Velaryon, brought life to this soul. Magic was everything. And I learned all of it. Pyromancy, blood magic, spell forging, all of it that existed and more. I was not a man grown when I had reached the point where nothing Valyria still had to teach me caught my interest anymore. So I sought to travel the world and learn all their magics. My father was convinced easily. No dragon bonded me and so he sought a way to replace me with my younger brother. This way, he would not need to have me killed himself. The world would do it for him," he said, weaving the tale.
"And then a sennight before I was to leave, the flames of Valyria wept and took our city with them. The Doom had come for Valyria, and I watched the city I had grown up in die around me. Even the dragonriders were not safe. There was no escape, no mercy given by the flames, and as I prepared myself for death, I felt it..." he said, stopping there. I just gave him a deadpan look. I wouldn't be taking that bait. He sighed and continued when he realised I would not ask.
"I felt my foolish uncle try to use the glass candle to scry into Valyria. And in my desperation, I worked the foulest magic I had ever done. I slit my own throat, and with my life as the sacrifice, I tore my soul in pieces and a piece latched onto my Uncle's soul and returned with him to Tyria. I was the one who gave him the idea for engraving his soul into his remains. And when he did so, I attached my own soul piece to his own. When you came and woke his soul, I did not wake however. My soul fragment was much weaker and did not take well to the centuries of rest. I did not wake until he had jumped into your body. And when I felt what his foolishness would lead to, I removed myself from him and clung to your soul instead. A wise decision as he did not last long. The man was a fool, but I can not resent him much. He got me here, after all. Even if he hadn't known that he was doing that," he said.
"So you are a horcrux," I surmised.
"Exactly. Something of the sort rather, but unlike in those books from your world, there is little I can do to you. I am a fragment of a soul. A fragment can not overpower a complete soul. Not to mention one as healthy as yours."
"And your Uncle? The Red Witch?" I poked. They had tried to overpower complete souls and had succeeded with others. Aurion with Ben, and the Red Witch with Mysaria.
"They were complete souls. I am much reduced from what they were. You can check yourself to be sure. That was why I could hide so easily. Two souls in one body would be easy to spot, but one and one-eighth of one? No chance," he said.
"Let's assume I believe you here. What is it that you want that you claim I am in no position to deny you?"
"Survival. I did not want to die then, and I do not want to die now. As long as you remain alive, I will be the same. You just had children so I know for certain that you will not foolishly spend your life. As long as you remain alive, I care little for what you get up to. I just wanted to show myself to you because I felt bored. If you want, you can speak to me when you are awake and I will answer, or you can ignore me and I will do the same to you. Just stay alive, and we won't have any problems, Laenor Velaryon," he said.
A/N: And yes, this was planned pretty much since they got to Tyria. It's just taken much longer than planned for us to get to the payoff. Discount on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) for those interested. Next chapter comes on here on Wednesday night/Thursday morning (depending on your timezone). 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.