A Song Of Plot Bunnies and Poor Impulse Control ( Snippets!)

[Firewillreign]

An old draft I had for a more fantastical take on ASOAIF - More high tier fantasty magic basically!

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It begins nigh a hundred years after the Doom fell on Valyria and sundered the great Dragon Lords of old, on a small and dreary volcanic isle as far west as west can be before reaching the shores of the sunset lands.

Dragonstone.

There, Aegon Targaryen awakes from a fitful rest with eyes still clouded with dreams of darkness and death and things far, far more wretched than even death itself.

His sister wives did not rise as he did. Visenya and Rhaenys remain abed, nestled and drawn close on either side of him - for time and grief and hurt have not yet rotted the easy love betwixt the three - and he does not rouse them as he slips out of bed and takes to the halls of his ancestral keep.

Despite his more feeble hopes, the walk he embarks on brings him no respite. The visions of calamity and devastation that had thrown him from his slumber and sparked unfamiliar fear in his heart haunt his steps unrelentingly, and the cold dread in his breast does not abate even as he senses his dragon rise from his own sleep atop the Dragonmount in answer to his rider's unspoken distress.

Balerion descends from his lair and lands within Dragonstone's greatest courtyard before Aegon even musters the desire to call for him on his own.

"Evil lurks in this world." He murmurs to his dragon when he emerges to meet him, pressing his forehead against gleaming black scales and inhaling the scent of sulfur and ash. "And one day it will crawl out of the shadows and strangle the light until not even the most pitful flame remains."

Had he expected his mount to balk at his words, Aegon would have been sorely disappointed, for the Black Dread only snorts at the words, undaunted as only a beast of primordial fire and raging wind and uncowed fury could hope to be, and graciously proffers his wing when his rider makes to scale his side.

Aegon spends hours soaring the skies of the narrow sea, thinking and lamenting and dreaming, and by the time Balerion descends back onto familiar sands and deposits him once more, something within him changes.

The fear is dulled and tossed away promptly - Fear would not give him nor his kin any semblance of salvation, and as the rider of the greatest living dragon in the known world, he had no taste for it besides.

None at all.

Instead, Aegon furrows his brows and begins to think - to truly think, and the first rays of dawn peak over the distant horizon, casting him in soft, golden light.

The kingdoms of the sunset lands - of Westeros - were divided and weak. Constant wars ravaged the land, the squabbles of petty kings who ruled houses that had long since forgotten what measure of greatness had once given them power plaguing the continent as a whole with strife and instability.

Their disunity would prove to be their descendant's undoing when the age of darkness comes unless, and they like as not never would, for no lord or king could bring so vast a land to heel.

A dragonlord, however...

Aegon looks to the west once more, peering past the looming dread to come, and this time, he sees opportunity.

"Westeros is a land of gold." He thinks to himself, a great and boundless ambition taking root in his mind. "Gold in the mountains, gold in the fields... and no dragons in the sky but mine."

A continent that was ripe for the taking, even in the face of the great threat to come.

Nay, especially in the face of it.

This could all be his, he realizes with a start, a glorious kingdom of his own. House Targaryen would reign triumphant through the might of their dragons, the last of Valyria's legacy, and in time they would rise to heights greater still when his bloodline brought forth the very Dawn.

A future of unparalleled greatness and legacy loomed ahead of him, and Aegon need only reach out to seize it.

And so he does.

In but an instant, Aegon's resolve is forged by a thirst for glory, tempered by duty and cooled with the heavy burden of a destiny to come.

"From my line will come the prince who was promised." He intones solemnly, and a part of him can almost feel the very world seize and crane its ears to listen. "No matter the price, the strife and the tribulations to come, my house and my blood will reign ascendant."

With that solemn vow made for the winds and the gods alike to hear, he turns and returns to Dragonstone, and the seeds of the Conquest begin to sprout.

...​

Later, Aegon's resolve will falter.

When a love is felled above the skies of Dorne, and bitterness and failure taint his glorious conquest and sap the joy from his days, his great dream will lose its luster.

His fires will dull, his legacy marred in his own eyes, and he will look no further than his own death for relief.

In the end, Aegon forgets the weight of his vow.

But the world does not.

Despite Aenar the Exile's great-great grandson's ambition and pride, there was much and more he did not know, could not know, nor very well even hope to grasp.

For when Aegon proclaimed his vow for all those slumbering in the ether to hear, he unwittingly wove into being a pact - and all his kin would come to be beholden to it in time.

Blood and sacrifice, in exchange for power.

From the Cruel to the Conciliator, from the Peaceful to the Usurper, the Dragonbane and the Unworthy, and all the others that followed - King and queens, princes and princesses, bastards and seeds - all of Aegon's descendants would bleed and suffer and unknowingly offer their pain as a sacrifice to a cause most would never come to know of, and none would understand until the time was right.

The fruits of their toil would continue to grow, power burgeoning and swelling within the House of the Dragon, untapped and unmarred from era to era, until -

A child is born

- and everything changes.

...​

280 AC:

Rhaenys Targaryen is born after her sickly mother labors for a day and a night, screaming her presence into the world and the greatness in her blood to all those who would know to hear it.

Her father takes one look at her and feels his very soul thrum with euphoria, for he was right.

The Dragon must have three heads.

Looking into his daughter's violet eyes, watching them burn with luminescence beyond even the ethereal look her Targaryen kin were known for, Rhaegar knows at last that he has sired the first of three and the righteous vindication that fills his heart could armies entire tremble.

Elia, always a mother first, simply craves the joy of holding her babe in her arms, never mind the manner in which her body trembles and the shivers that rack her frame in the wake of her birth.

The King and Queen come to her in time, and Rhaella's quiet, trodden joy is as effusive as Aerys's loathsome disdain.

"If it were not for her eyes, she'd be no better than a Dornish mongrel." He sneers down at the girl, and Rhaegar thanks the gods "he had the foresight to hold her in his own arms and prevent the midwife from potentially handing her off to his wretched beast of a father. "Pray the next one looks a dragon, boy, lest our blood

But the Mad King can not hide the flicker of in his tone as his gaze lingers on his granddaughter, for even his wits are not so addled that he cannot recognise the truth.

There was something special about the girl

All recognized it, but none could have understood the depths of it.

...​

Rhaneys grows up solemn and quiet, her comportment the very image of her father in his younger years.

She is soft-spoken and light-handed and as sweet as a princess of the blood can be, and she is Elia and Rhaegar's pride and joy.

The Darling of the Red Keep, the spark of sunlight in her Grandmother's eyes - Even Aerys can only find so many ways to fault her before snarling and turning his unwanted presence to other, more twisted pursuits.

For a time, all is well.

In the end, it is only Rhaegar who sometimes stops to stare at his daughter, to look into her eyes and acknowledge the strange, pulsing glow he can sometimes glimpse burning within her eyes.

It is no trick of the light, no mistake on his part - The truth is undeniable.

There is something other about his only daughter.

Most would be wary of it, perhaps even afraid.

Rhaegar only smiles in grim satisfaction and rejoices all the more when his son is born not a year later with the same strangeness alight in his eyes right from his very first breath.

One more to go.

...​

Rhaenys is but three namedays old when she first leaves the Red Keep to venture to Harrenhall.

She is three when she witnesses her first tourney, three when her father wins

She is three when the Seven Kingdoms are plunged into war.

...​

"You're leaving."

Rhaegar frowns and turns to find his daughter in the doorway to his chamber, eyeing him curiously.

"I am."

There is something in the silence that follows - a need for explanation, for consolation, for something - but Rhaegar neither offers nor does Rhaenys ask.

Instead, the girl who had always been much too clever for her own good nods, and trots over to him with a steady gait.

When she lifts her arms up in silent demand, her father acquiesces and pulls her up into his hold. The moment he gets his arms around her she goes limp she curls up in his arms, hiding her face in his neck.

"I will miss you."

The greatest tragedy of it all is that the words are true.

...​

When the news of Rhaegar's death comes, Rhaenys understands.

Children struggle with the concept of death, but not her. She knows, intimately and completely that she will never see her father again.

A part of her wants to weep as her grandmother had done, as Viserys had done, as even her mother had done despite all that had happened to her since Harrenhall.

Another part of her - the part she does not understand but is only just beginning it acknowledge is there - seems to sigh in resignation.

It is done.

In the end, she does not weep. She only nods before escaping into his chambers and curling up onto his bed.

It won't be long now.

...​

The day the Lannister army arrives at the gates of King's Landing, Rhaenys awakens - and the fire in her blood rouses with her.

At last.

She knows what is coming - has Seen it without ever truly understanding it until now - and denies it with the reverent power of a child who is also not, and all the more powerful for it.

Power thunders through her veins as she marches towards the Throne room, slipping past her assa guards with grace beyond the natural.

No more dead dragons.

Not a one.

Rhaenys suddenly stops and tilts her head in thought.

"Dornish spawn of a Dornish whore!"

Well.

Perhaps just the one more.

...​

She walks into the throne room just in time to watch Jaime Lannister finish slitting her grandfather's throat.

The Lannister knight gazes at her with a blank look, face pale, eyes distant, and blood splattering his once pristine armor from head to toe. The less said about his white cloak, the better.

Rhaneys takes this all in, flickers her gaze to her dead, butchered grandfather, and

"Well done."

Jaime staggers and his sword slips from his grasp and strikes with the clang of metal against stone, and then his knees follow quickly after as he tips forward and retches.

It is at this point that a harried Elia rushed into the throne room, Aegon clutched in her grip and

"Rhaenys-!"

Her mother catches sight of the mess before her and freezes, face going white with terror.

Jaime looks up, sees her, and somehow manages to pale all the more.

Rhaenys turns her back to them.

She feels her mother, hears her gasp in releif when it becomes apparent that Jaime will not strike at them and moves to follow after her with haggard steps.

"Don't come any closer."

The words are a murmur, mild as milk - and they wash over the room like a tidal wave.

Elia freezes once more and Jaime chokes, tangible power settling against their skin with horrible, horrible pressure.

All the while, Rhaenys continues to walk, and takes in the skulls of the dragons lining the walls of the cavernous throne room

The olden legacy of the dragons... and the beginning of the new.

She does not stop until she stands before the largest of them all.

A great black behemoth rises in front of her, gleaming black with rows of teeth over ten times her height, lining a maw large enough you could stack three men atop one another and still not reach its roof.

Balerion.

She looks up at him consideringly, before idly shaking her head.

No, not him.

Instead, she walks past the last remnant of the Black Dread, and past the one besides him - only marginally smaller, and stops before the last of them all.

Still gargantuan in its own right, but where the other two were pristine even centuries after death, this one was damaged. Spider-webs worth of cracks and jagged rents spread out across its jaws, and one of its horns is missing. There's a great chip in its eye socket, as though something had broken through it and embedded itself within the inside of its skull.

Perfect.

Without hesitation, she raises her right hand and bites down into the flesh between her thumb and forefinger, hard enough that she feels blood rush along her tongue.

"Rhaenys, sweetling!" She hears her mother only distantly, and she sounds on the verge of hysterics.

She ignores it in favor of allowing the blood to pool along her palm.

"Rhaenys! We must leave-!"

Do it now.

"We will."

And then she raises her palm and presses against the dead dragon's snout.

Behind her, Jaime and Elia can only watch as the little girl's blood seeps across the skull of its own accord, expanding further than should be possible, as though poured from a pitcher rather than smeared from a mere bite.

It continues to spread until the skull in its entirety seems to glow crimson, the metallic scent of a veritable ocean thick and clogging, and then it bursts into flames.

Someone screams.

Rhaenys may as well have been deaf to it.

The flames pulse with eldritch light, swelling and transforming to deep ropes of crimson muscle veined with white tendons and fat. Out of the blaze, white scales expand, slipping over-restored flesh like armor. The Throne room buckles as fresh bone begins to erupt out the back, the building blocks of a new spine, and only then do Jaime and Elia finally run towards her, fleeing as the Red Keep begins to quake.

The flames recede as they reach her, until they only spark between brilliant teeth, and the air comes alive with the scent of sulphur and ash and something altogether unique, unseen for hundreds of years.

And all the while, Rhaenys smiles.

...​

There is no warning.

The people of King's Landing are suffering the first encroachment of Lannister men when it happens, and then commoners and pillagers alike bear witness to it as one.

There's a great cacophony akin to two mountains getting ground together, and without further warning, half of the Red Keep bursts with a fiery eruption loud enough to echo across the kingdoms, and every man, woman, child and rat within the capital freezes in terrified awe.

Out of the plume of fire and ash and smoke, a brilliant white streak erupts on high, emerging from the dark cover and snapping out twin brilliant wings with a crack like thunder.

Two brilliant red eyes snap open, a deafening roar spills from an enormous maw, and two hundred and eighty years after her death, Meraxes the White lives.

...​

The people beneath them scatter, and Rhaenys tips back her head and laughs, free and joyful.

That she can hear her mother and Jaime wailing as they try to hold onto Meraxes's scales behind her only make her cackle harder.

At last.

Rhaenys had always known differently, and she'd felt no shame for it - but she had never been complete, and that had hurt.

Not anymore.

She was complete now, and there was so much to do.

She looks down, distantly spying the bulk of the army outside King's landing gates before she taps Meraxes's skull and turns her sight away.

The dragon heeds her will, and arcs her flight to turn South, away from the city.

Let her wretched Grandfather's rotten old friend savor a petty victory marred by fear - he'd not have it for long.

Until then, Rhaenys had her mother and brother to protect, and another to claim.

Meraxes snaps her wings once more, and onwards they soar - to Dorne.

...​

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