[2668 Words]
—Westeros, King's Landing, Maegor's Holdfast, Axel's Chambers, 291 AC—
Within Axel's bedchamber, the boy lay restless upon his silken sheets. His small body was shaking and shivering as though he had a winter chill, yet sweat poured from his forehead and his body, soaking linen and pillow alike. His breath was ragged and uneven, as if he battled some unseen foe. Then, all at once, the trembling ceased, and his body stopped moving completely.
His eyes flew open; they were both a dark, sickly green, glinting with something that was not quite his own; within Axel's mind, he wandered.
A forest stretched before him, vast and otherworldly. The trees soared impossibly high, their trunks thicker than castle towers, their crowns vanishing into a misted canopy far above. To Axel, they rivaled the height of the Hightower in Oldtown, as he had once heard knights boast in the yard.
The air was vibrant with life.
Strange beasts moved through the towering wood. Purple monkeys with four arms leapt from branch to branch, great stones drifting behind them as if bound by unseen sorcery. Silver-furred tigers prowled the undergrowth, each bearing a single curved horn upon its brow, crackling faintly with streaks of lightning. Lions of black and gold stalked in great pride(group of lions), their manes ablaze, not with common flame, but with fire dark as night.
Above, red birds wheeled through the sky, their feathers shimmering like embers caught in an endless blaze. And deeper still, a stag stood watchful over the trees and predators, its antlers sprawling wide like the limbs of ancient trees.
Axel turned slowly, his gaze wide with both wonder and dread. 'I have never seen anything like this… Is this a dream… or something worse?'
Though but seven years of age, his strength and stubborn courage were not easily broken. Fear gripped him, yet he did not cry out. Instead, he searched carefully for some place to hide, some shelter beneath the monstrous canopy.
Then it came.
A roar seemed to sound throughout the world.
It was not merely loud; it was deafening, a sound that seemed to tear the air apart. The ground beneath Axel trembled.
He froze, slowly, and, filled with dread, he turned. The beast that flew above him defied all reason.
It was a dragon, yet not the dragon he had heard about in the past, before the dance. Its vast body blotted out the forest, its sheer magnitude making the towering trees seem no more than a single claw upon its limb.
Its scales shimmered black, gold, and silver, shifting like molten metal beneath unseen light. Four colossal legs hanging lazily from its chest, each as thick and powerful as ten elephants connected into one monstrous form. Its wings, unfurled, stretched wider than any squadron of planes, vast, terrible things that could swallow the sky whole.
Its body was immense, a mountain of flesh and scales. There was a mane around its neck, and its horns looked like those of antlers from a stag; its tail coiled behind it like a living serpent, long enough to crush forests in a single sweep.
And its presence was overwhelming. An ancient yet young, terrible yet nice, but in the end, he felt a feeling of unyielding power.
Axel could not move. His breath caught in his throat as the creature's gaze fell upon him. 'I cannot run… It would find me before I took a single step…'
The forest seemed to fall silent, as though even the strange beasts dared not challenge the dominion of such a creature.
And there, beneath the shadow of something vast beyond reckoning, Axel stood small, trembling, yet unbroken, as the dragon beheld him from the place above the trees that made way for it. Each flap of its wings stirred the air like a gathering storm, its presence pressing upon the trees as if they ever considered touching it, it'll burn them to ashes.
Then his gaze lifted, and he saw a figure astride the beast; it was a man, Axel felt, as though he had seen this person once before in a dream half-forgotten. Yet no name came to mind, only that gnawing feeling of familiarity.
"So it is finally time," the man said.
His voice carried easily through the wind as he leapt from the dragon's back, descending as though the air bent to his will. He landed before Axel with the grace of a seasoned knight, unshaken and as though he had just jumped off a massive dragon in the air.
He was a handsome man, with golden-blonde hair, and eyes of a sickly green that did not convey warmth, but something older, something wrong. His armor gleamed, made from dragon-scale, dark and shimmering, and about his neck lay a mantle fashioned like a lion's mane; it was thick and regal.
"Sorry… do I know you?" Axel asked, suspicion clear in his voice as he took slow steps back, careful not to alarm the man. Every instinct urged him to distance himself, yet the man advanced without haste.
"Yes and no," the man replied, calm as still water. "Your soul knows me, for it has a piece of mine within it. Your body knows me, for it was shaped by what remained of my soul. But you… the person called Axel… you would not know me."
Before Axel could react, the man moved. In the blink of an eye, he was no longer before him, but behind him. His hand came to rest upon Axel's shoulder; it was a firm grip, impossible to remove.
"Ahhh, what do you want from me?" Axel demanded, struggling against the grip, but it was like a cat trying to escape its owner's hold, and Axel did not have claws. He twisted, pulled, tried to free himself, yet found no success against the man's strength.
"I'm Adam," the man said, almost gently. Then, as suddenly as he had seized him, Adam released his hold.
Axel stumbled forward, breaking away at once. He ran several paces before stopping, breath unsteady, his heart hammering like a drum in his chest. Slowly, he turned back around, facing Adam.
Adam had not moved.
"All I want," Adam continued, his voice calm, affected by something that might have been weariness, "is to explain a few things… before I am gone. Before I fade from... well... everything."
The dragon loomed behind him still, silent, and watchful, as it awaited Axel's answer, its great form unmoving as a mountain, the only movement from its wings keeping flapping in the air.
"Sure, say what you wa..."
"Wait," Axel cut himself off, his voice stuttering in his haste. "Where am I? What is this place? Who and what are you? Where did that dragon come from? And how long until I can return home?"
The questions came in quick succession, like arrows shot in panic rather than with aim. Adam looked at him for a long moment.
There was something strange in his expression: amusement mixed with annoyance, yet a hint of satisfaction was in his gaze. At last, he smiled, faint and unreadable, as though he had expected no less.
"You are within your own mind," Adam said, his voice even, as he spoke truth. "This place is my inner world, bound to my soul once… and now, it would seem, to have transferred to yours, but it is smaller and weaker than what it was."
He said as he looked at the world around them, and so did Axel, but it seemed like Adam could see far more than he could. Then he spoke as he looked deep into Axel's eyes.
"For who and what I am, I am Adam Kaiser, the emperor of an empire in my home world, Arid, and I am an amalgamation of many things, but I was once a weak human before, so just picture me as a human."
Once he finished speaking, his gaze drifted briefly toward the great beast behind him before returning to Axel.
"As for the dragon… that is not knowledge for you yet. In time, you will come to understand." He paused, then added, answering his last question, "When I have said my piece, you will return to waking consciousness. No longer than that."
"Right…" Axel muttered, though doubt and suspicion were plain on his face. He glanced once more at the towering creature above, its presence pressing heavily upon him, but at times the presence felt warm more than heavy. "So, will this take long? And if it does… is there somewhere I can sit?"
Suspicion had not left him, nor had fear. He was still young, and whatever courage held him upright was strained by the multiplicity of back-to-back things happening to him.
Adam gave no spoken answer.
Instead, he raised a hand and made a small motion, as though beckoning something unseen. At once, two chairs took form from the barren ground. They were solid, as if carved from dark wood, their design simple.
Adam seated himself without hesitation. After a second, Axel followed, lowering himself cautiously, his eyes never straying far from either Adam… or the dragon.
"So," Adam began, folding his hands with measured calm, "I was meant to take your body for my own; that was the design."
His tone held no pride or malice; he was speaking only a fact.
"But when you were about to be born, you started dying… and in truth, I desired to die to end up with my wives, but that's not what happened." He leaned back slightly, his gaze steady.
"And seeing you upon death's edge, I gave you all that remained of my soul's strength, that you might live. It… brought with it certain favorable consequences."
"What do you mean by favorable consequences?" Axel asked, his voice calmer than before, though a faint unease still lingered beneath it. Though he was still afraid, and the place he was in was one he did not completely know, there was something in the man before him, something unspoken yet certain, that told him this man would not, or perhaps could not, harm him.
Adam looked at him with a look, the sort that said, let me finish in his eyes. Still, he answered.
"Did you not take heed of it?" he said, his tone even. "How smart your mind has become as you have grown. How your strength has grown beyond what it once was every year. And that scar… tell me, how came you to keep your eye, when lesser men would have lost far more?"
"Wha..." Axel began, the word faltering on his lips. He meant to ask which scar, to deny it even, but the past would not be held at bay.
It came upon him like a flood Joffrey attacking Persia. He had tried to stop him, to keep him from hurting Persia. But Joffrey, his brother, his own blood, had not stopped even when Persia was out of his hand. No… he had struck with intent not to hit, but to kill him. And still the question he keep asking him self did not stop after he remembered.
'Why? But then I thought back to the training incident, but I did not plan on killing him, just to make him feel pain, but if that's what he wants, then...'
"Ah," Adam said softly, as though watching the storm rage in Adam's eyes, both turning a sickly green like his own, not like the dark blue and green he originally had.
"So you finally remember why you have come here at last." There was no warmth as he spoke, only amusement, and that made Axel look at him with hate, but Adam kept talking.
"Yet time is a fleeting thing, and soon I shall fade, like ashes on the wind, and I would not squander what moments remain." He got out of his chair and stepped closer, but not in a threatening way.
"So hear me well. I shall speak only what must be known. The rest… Mai will tell you; she will be a Memory Artificial Intelligence, though I doubt such words would be known in your world. Think of it as a fake life, a culmination from my memory, set in place so that you may not walk this path blind with the gifts I have given you."
Axel said nothing. He was confused, hurt, and his thoughts scattered from his brother's betrayal; it was still fresh, still cutting, and now this torrent of strange truths lay before him.
"So I shall grant unto you all that I have gathered in the long many years I have lived," Adam said, his voice steady, though his form had already begun to wane, like mist, but black, and it was his body turning to mist.
"Be it my vast knowledge of the magic arts, spells, rituals, and more, the discipline of the blade, the ways of leadership, politics, future technology, the arts of war and close combat, and much besides. I have walked a long road to claim what now must pass to you. If there is something you seek, you only need to ask Mai. And the second, and final gift I leave you is the immense and great potential of my body and soul."
Even as he spoke, his form began to unravel, as it had once before, yet slower now—each fragment of him fading like embers drifting into the dark.
"Though your form is that of a man for now, it need not remain so," he continued, his voice thinning like the wind but still audible.
"Such matters you must seek of Mai, for the path is not one to tread blindly. And heed me well, do not mess with your soul until many years later, lest death claim you. As for magic, your world is not the same as mine was. The mana there runs thin, nearly gone. You must work with what remains, through trial and error, as any true seeker must. Yet you may still cloak your body in it, drawing upon the new core that has fused with your heart. The flow is faint, but I have glimpsed its return… though it will take some time till it comes back full force."
By then, all of him above the lower half of his torso had faded into nothingness, his presence unraveling piece by piece, as though the world itself no longer held claim over him.
"Lastly," Adam said, his voice now distant, echoing as if from some far hall, "I have bound a pact with a being in your world, one far greater than any so-called god. But fear not, for you will not have to do much now, Mai shall tell you what I cannot." A faint, rasping laugh followed, edged with defiance. "Curse you, wretched shit, even in the end I have the last word."
His voice softened then, carrying something far more human.
"And… I am sorry, my loves." With that, he was gone completely, as though he had never existed, and with that the dragon let out another world-shaking roar and flew off to God knows where.
The last whisper of his passing was lost to Axel, unheard and ungrasped, as the space itself seemed to loosen its hold on him, casting his mind back to his body in the Red Keep, and Westeros is not ready for what will come.
—Arid, The Demon Realm, 4th Hell, Kai's Experimenting Chamber, 2003.5 AC—
Kai, who was experimenting, trying to make the world, or at least the demon realm, better from the aftereffects of Adam's death, but then he felt it. "So it has ended for now, meaning either Adam has come back, the world will have found someone new, or no, it can't be," He said as he got out his Experimenting Chambers to look at the outside world, and he was shocked by what he was seeing.
But that's for the next chapter
[Author's Note: If you're confused about anything, stick with me; I'm making this as we go! Did you like the changes I made? Yes, no, leave a comment and tell me I will do what I can, so leave a review and tell me what you may want to see; and as you know, this is a harem, so who would you want in it?
Disclaimer: I have a rough idea of where this is going, but I haven't mapped out every single detail or an overarching idea. So if you have suggestions to make the story better or who you might want to see, please leave a comment and review! I hope you like the story. While I do use AI, I don't think it is slop, and if there is any, I will try to change it and or add humanity into it, but just give me a chance.
Next time: So the next chapter will show the reactions of every important person I would want, without it being too long. You can thank Fearlesso for this.
Ending Note: Thank you for the support. Have a great( if you're not religious) and or blessed day, and check out my other account where I publish Og novels. It's called Fiction_Dragon! :)]