The midnight had tolled over King's Landing, leaving only the sounds of the sleeping city and the distant tread of the gold cloaks. In the warren of narrow lanes that clung to the shadow of Visenya's Hill, a single figure moved, a patch of deeper black against the gloom. A heavy cloak swallowed his form, the hood pulled low. He moved silently, pausing in doorways to let a patrol clatter past.
Finally, he stopped before a nondescript door in a narrow lane of tightly packed houses. Three sharp knocks. A moment later, the door cracked open. A man with a weary face peered out, then immediately bowed his head and stepped back, opening the way. The cloaked figure stepped inside without a word.
In the dim light of a single candle, the visitor pushed back his hood. Silver-gold hair, pale in the gloom, and eyes of cool, assessing lilac. Prince Aegon looked at the man who kept his head respectfully lowered.
"Where is she?" Aegon's voice was flat.
The man simply gestured towards a closed door at the back of the sparse room. "Waiting inside, my prince."
Aegon walked to the door, turned the handle, and entered, closing it softly behind him.
The room within was a stark contrast to the antechamber. It was warm, lit by several perfumed candles. Tapestries softened the stone walls. Sitting before a polished metal mirror on a small table, her back to the door, was a woman in a gown of deep wine red. Her hair was silky black, unbound and shining in the candlelight.
Aegon did not move from the doorway. His face was of plain disinterest. "Thalara," he said.
The woman went still for a heartbeat. Then, slowly, she rose from the chair and turned to face him, offering a graceful bow. "My Prince. You are here."
She was beautiful, in a way meant to be noticed. The pale white skin, and the swell of her breasts above the low-cut gown, were magnified by the rich red fabric. Her features were sharp and alluring. But Aegon's gaze swept over her and settled for only a second on the jewel at her neck, a ruby the size of a man's thumb. He dismissed the rest.
"Why am I here, Thalara?" he asked. A thread of annoyance ran through his tone.
A flicker of disappointment crossed Thalara's face, quickly smothered. She had taken care with her appearance. The prince's impervious calm was a familiar, frustrating wall. Seeing his expression harden, she spoke, her voice a low murmur.
"The books, my prince. They are here." She turned swiftly to the table, opened a drawer, and withdrew two heavy volumes bound in aged, dark leather. She offered them to him.
Aegon stepped forward and took them. His eyes, which had been so cold, lit with a brief, focused intensity. He ignored her completely, cracking the first book open, his fingers moving with quick, precise turns as he scanned pages dense with strange script and diagrams.
"Shadow-Binding and…the Blood Rituals…" he murmured to himself, flipping through the second. After a minute, he snapped them shut, the brief spark in his eyes gone, replaced by the same expressionless face. He looked at her.
"And? Do you want me to thank you?" he asked, his voice dangerously soft. "For making me wait two whole years on your promise?"
"It was not my intention to delay," Thalara replied, meeting his gaze steadily. "You know this. If not for the wars choking the ports and the roads in Essos, you would have had these texts a year ago. The turmoil has made all travel and communication… difficult."
Aegon said nothing. He closed the distance between them in quiet slow steps, standing so close she could feel the heat of him. He studied her face for a long moment, then an unseen field of force radiated from him.
"Mmm…" a muffled gasp escaped Thalara's lips. Her knees arched, her body suddenly feeling heavier, as if an invisible boulder was pressing her down. She did not pull away, but knelt before him. Her dark eyes were wide, fixed on his calm, unreadable lilac ones.
She felt his right hand come up, not to strike, but to caress her strained face.
"Well," he continued, his tone conversational, "since I have the books now, I don't need to allow you to continue staying here in King's Landing." His thumb brushed over her lips, and she shuddered, silencing the groan in her throat, her hands coming to rest weakly on the floor for support. "After all, the King would be truly wroth if he learned a red priestess of the Temple of Volantis had been quietly nesting in his city for two years."
Thalara's breath came in ragged hitches. "As you… wish, my prince," she managed, her voice drained. "I have always been… at your mercy. It is an honour to serve… the one who wields the living flame of our Lord."
Aegon watched her struggle for composure for a moment longer. Then, as abruptly as he had initiated the contact, he took his hand back. The field of force vanished. He stepped away, his face unchanged. Thalara sagged slightly, one hand bracing on the table as she pushed herself up, the other pressed to her heaving chest, fighting to regain her breath.
Aegon was already turning toward the door. He paused with his hand on the latch. He did not look back.
"You may continue to stay," he said, his tone now one of clear, cold warning. "But I do not want to hear a single whisper of your religion spreading in any quarter of this city. Not one. Is that understood?"
Thalara straightened, smoothing her gown. "As you wish, my prince," she breathed.
But he was already gone, the door closing silently behind him. In the outer room, the weary man bowed once more as Aegon swept his cloak back over his distinctive hair and slipped out into the hungry dark of the alley, the two books weighing against his side.
The morning sun was a pale, watery gold over King's Landing, washing the cobbled streets in a gentle light. The city was already awake. Carts rattled over stones, shopkeepers shouted their first prices of the day, and the smell of baking bread and stale nightsoil mingled in the air.
"Morning, my prince," a pair of gold cloaks at the Iron Gate greeted, dipping their heads as the rider passed.
Prince Aegon gave a curt nod in return, his eyes fixed ahead. He rode a sturdy bay mare, and a leather satchel hung heavily from the saddle at his side. He guided the horse away from the main flow of traffic, taking a lesser-used track that wound its way out of the city and towards a dense patch of forest on the northern outskirts. The sounds of the capital faded, replaced by the chirp of crickets and the rustle of leaves.
As he neared the tree line, the forest itself seemed to shift. A massive head, the color of sky blue, rose slowly from a thicket of ferns and young oaks. Dreamfyre blinked her great golden eyes, the vertical slits narrowing against the morning light. She unfolded her wings with a slow, leathery rasp that sent small birds scattering from the canopy, the webbed expanse blotting out a significant portion of the forest clearing. Over two years, her growth had been relentless. She now outstripped Vermithor in length and bulk, a true leviathan of the sky. Now second only to Vhagar.
Aegon dismounted, looping the horse's reins loosely around a low, sturdy branch of an old oak. The mare, well-used to the dragon's presence, only shivered once before settling. He walked to Dreamfyre, who lowered her head with a soft, rumbling exhale. He placed a hand on the warm scales of her neck, rubbing gently. "Good girl," he murmured.
He then turned his attention to his satchel. Unbuckling it, he reached inside and pulled out a small, heavy object. It was a black metal puppet, about the size of his palm. It was featureless, a crude humanoid shape with simple joints.
Sitting cross-legged on the mossy ground, Aegon held the metal puppet in his cupped hands. He closed his eyes, and his breathing slowed. Slowly, carefully, he began to channel both magic and spirituality into the inert metal.
At first, nothing happened. Then, faint lines began to etch themselves onto the puppet's surface. They were runes, intricate, glowing with a dim, sickly white light. As Aegon poured more energy into the construct, the runes burned brighter, the light pulsing in time like a heartbeat. The process was not quick. Sweat beaded on his temple. The transfer of such concentrated power was a strain, a draining tug on his very core.
Finally, when the puppet was a miniature star of gloomy white sigils in his hands, he stopped. He opened his eyes, his expression tight with fatigue. He placed the glowing puppet carefully on the ground before him and stood, taking several steps back.
For a moment, it just lay there. Then, from the ground around it, dark mist began to seep forth. It wasn't smoke; it was thicker, more substantive, like a living shadow. It swirled around the puppet, engulfing it, rising in a column that grew taller and taller until it matched Aegon's own height. It churned silently, a fountain of darkness against the green of the forest.
Then, as swiftly as it had gathered, the shadow-mist dissipated. In its place stood a statue of glossy black crystal. It was Aegon's exact height and build, a perfect, featureless replica carved from obsidian.
But it wasn't finished. Color bled into the crystal. The glossy black deepened in places, lightened in others. The surface smoothed into the pale tan of skin. Details emerged: the silver-gold of hair, the lilac of eyes staring blankly ahead. Clothes formed, boots, trousers, a tunic, all an exact match to what the real Aegon wore. In less than ten seconds, where a crystal idol had stood, there was now a second Prince Aegon.
The real Aegon watched, his own face tired. "So?" he asked, his voice hoarse.
The new Aegon looked down at his hands, flexing the fingers. He touched his own face, then ran a hand through his silver-gold hair. A slow, familiar smile spread across his features… Aegon's smile, but with a slight, eerie emptiness behind the eyes. He gave a thumbs-up. "Everything's alright."
The real Aegon nodded. The [Shadowmirror Puppet] was activated successfully.
It was a runic construct mimicking the Shadow Clone Jutsu. Similar to the Jutsu, it forms an exact replica of the caster, complete with its own independent consciousness. It can speak, act, and behave like the caster.
When deactivated, the consciousness within the puppet is absorbed back by the caster as pure spirituality, transferring all its accumulated memory and experience.
However, it possesses significant drawbacks when compared to the Jutsu. The caster can only create one such puppet, due to the enormous amount of magic and spirituality it consumes. Furthermore, the activation is very slow, rendering it ineffective in combat scenarios.
On deactivation, the spirituality returns to the caster, bringing with it the puppet's memories and experiences. The magic invested in the construct, though, is consumed during the puppet's operation and does not return.
The caster can later replenish this magic from the 'magic sea', as the spells and runes within his mental space naturally attract ambient magic over time, with meditation accelerating the process.
The puppet's primary advantage is a powerful mental link with the caster, allowing the exchange of messages like a radio signal over vast distances. It can exist independently for a maximum of one week, though its active duration could be fine tuned by controlling the amount of magic and spirituality initially injected during its activation.
All in all it was a 'miraculous creation', made possible due to the maxed out classes: his third Tier 3 class - the [Rune Artificer] and its prerequisite Tier 2 classes, the [Rune Initiate] and the [Craftsman].
"Off you go, then," the real Aegon said, gesturing back towards the city.
The clone nodded. It walked to the oak tree, its movements a precise mirror of Aegon's own gait. It untied the bay mare, swung smoothly into the saddle, and with a final, identical nod, turned the horse and started back down the path to King's Landing.
Aegon watched until the clone disappeared into the morning haze. Then he turned, his shoulders slumping slightly with residual weariness. He walked to Dreamfyre, who had watched the entire display with indifference, like it was used to it. She lowered a wing. He climbed the familiar, scaly ladder up to her back, settling himself at his riding seat.
With a deep, booming push of her hind legs, Dreamfyre launched herself into the sky, her vast wings beating down with a thunderclap that shook the trees. Aegon felt the wind against him as they climbed above the world. While a perfect copy of himself rode calmly back through the gates of the Red Keep, Aegon's eyes were on the northern horizon.
***
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