ARC III: THE AWAKENING OF THE DRAGONS AND THE WAR OF THE EMPIRE
Alright everyone, just a quick heads-up: this chapter contains scenes with somewhat heavy sexual content and elements of mind control, so consider this a warning. If you're wondering why I wrote something like this, it's to practice for my next story—the one I mentioned a few days ago—since the protagonist there will be a "villain." Anyway, enjoy the chapter, and I believe the next one will be out later today, as it will be the final installment of the saga.
Chapter 54: The Black Thorn and the False Dragon
POV: Aegon Targaryen (303 AC)
From high upon the battlements of my fortress, the relentless, icy wind of the North whipped against my face with the force of a thousand blades of frost. I rested my bare hands on the dark, impeccably polished stone of the parapet, gazing out at the white vastness stretching as far as the eye could see. Where once only forgotten ruins and a desolate border existed, my domain now stood. The castle was already entirely complete, a feat that still made my mind falter whenever I paused to contemplate its sheer magnitude. The speed of construction within the Northern Empire bordered on terrifying—a testament to the overwhelming power Arawyn Stark held in his hands. What in the South would demand decades of human toil, the deaths of thralls crushed beneath rocks, and completely drained treasuries, had been finished here in a matter of mere months. The colossal labor of the giants had made it possible. To see those immense creatures carrying whole blocks of mountains as if they were simple clay bricks, aided by the mystical precision of rune-smiths and stone-singers, was a sight that marked my soul forever.
The lands of the complete Gifts—both the ancient Brandon's Gift and the New Gift—were granted entirely to me by the Emperor, for the purpose of establishing my own branch of House Targaryen and governing the vast agricultural stretches of the North. Such a massive land grant was only possible due to the colossal geopolitical and structural shifts brought about by Arawyn. The Emperor had raised a monumental Second Wall, extending directly along the border with the Lands of Always Winter to permanently contain the true evil harboring in the far north. With this new living, runic barrier in operation, the Night's Watch abandoned the old castles along the former Wall and moved entirely to the front lines of the far north. Beyond the old Wall, my brother Aemon reigned grandly as King of those northern lands, ruling from a gleaming, magnificent castle built in the deep north.
The exact location of my fortress, however, carried a geopolitical symbolism that I suspected had been meticulously chosen by Arawyn. My seat had been erected directly upon the ruins of ancient Queen'scrown. The crumbling old stones from Queen Alysanne's era were completely obliterated and flattened to make way for my home, granting me direct dominion over a vast expanse of arable land, where dozens of lesser houses and vassal knights were settled under my authority to ensure the production of grain and supplies for the Empire.
The visual aspect of my castle, nonetheless, had always been a cause of quiet conflict in my mind. Deep down, I desired a fortress of refined, melancholic beauty. I had imagined something of white stones and slender towers, elegant and bright, much like the white castle my brother Aemon possessed north of the old Wall. I wanted a monument that reflected the nobility and light of Old Valyria under the snow. However, my dear betrothed intervened in that planning with an authority that admitted no argument. Myrcella argued, with her usual coldness, that a Targaryen living in the lands of the North needed a fortress that instilled respect and dread—a castle immediately recognized as the home of dragonblood. Her logic was implacable, and I eventually yielded. As a result, I now ruled from this black, brutal, and terrifying castle: a structure bristling with sharp angles and dark volcanic stone that rose like a giant, menacing black thorn thrust into the white vastness of Winter.
My betrothal to Myrcella Stark progressed in a perfectly functional and stable manner, founded upon a pragmatic arrangement of which I had been fully aware from the very beginning. Since my youth, I had discovered that my desires and natural attraction belonged exclusively to men. I never feared marriage to Myrcella, nor did I harbor any dread regarding our intimate life; I accepted my fate with serenity and was already thoroughly accustomed to our marital routine, having shared a bed on numerous occasions over the months. Understanding that my lack of biological attraction to women would be an obstacle to producing heirs, it was my mother, Princess Elia, and Cersei Lannister who conceived the perfect solution. Upon discovering the unique nature of Myrcella's mystical gifts—having specialized her sorcery and greensight in the direct manipulation of neural impulses and suggestions—both women suggested the union.
The mechanics of this agreement were something I understood and accepted. From a purely physical and mechanical standpoint, I utilized my blood magic combined with the water magic of my mother's Rhoynar lineage to regulate my own blood flow, ensuring my body's erectility without any difficulty. However, vascular mechanics alone could not generate the impulse, the genuine arousal, or the necessary climax; a spark of desire was required in the brain. And Myrcella delivered precisely that. She did not mold or move my body like an inanimate puppet; instead, she sent subtle, minute suggestions directly to my brain's receptor centers, igniting an overwhelming impulse of attraction and need for her. Beneath that mental haze, the desire felt terribly real and visceral to me during the act.
What truly disturbed me and made my blood run cold was not the fact that we were intimate or that she influenced my impulses—after all, that had been arranged and I was well accustomed to it—but rather the deeply dark, playful, and sadistic mind Myrcella revealed whenever she exercised that dominion. She did not treat our intimacy as a cold duty; she loved to provoke me and play with my head.
Just as she had done a few hours ago in our private chambers.
The memory was still vivid and throbbing against my skin. We were in our immense canopy bed, beneath the dim glow of the runic embers. Myrcella rode my hips with an implacable rhythm, her pale face sporting a cold, playful smile. She found amusement in noting that, although my core consciousness knew that desire was the fruit of her neural suggestions, my body responded with an animalistic, desperate hunger, taking her with overwhelming ferocity. I held her firmly by the waist, driving into her while the small waves of pleasure she suggested flooded my mind. I spilled my seed into her womb repeatedly, sustained by my own vascular magic, until reaching the absolute limit of exhaustion.
When finished, she leaned her body over my heaving chest, placed a soft kiss on my sweat-slicked forehead, and murmured the words "good boy" with a teasing sweetness—a provocative affection that demonstrated just how much she enjoyed having a Targaryen prince surrendered to that induced frenzy. When she stood up, the excess of my seed overflowed and spilled across the sheets. Immediately, the cleaning runes carved into the bed and the arrays on my skin reactivated my physical energy and purified the room.
Yet Myrcella's mischievous and disturbed mind was never satisfied with the conventional. Only seconds after standing, she turned abruptly, walked back, and shoved me against the pillows with a challenging glare.
"— I changed my mind. I want more, —" she decreed, a playful smirk on her lips.
She laid on her back and spread her legs wide. With a simple, subtle mental flick, she injected a fresh wave of need into my brain. Even with my consciousness knowing exactly what game she was playing, my body lunged over her like a starving man. I pulled her legs to the sides of her head and possessed her wildly. When she finally reached a powerful orgasm, digging her nails into my shoulders, I realized the twisted complexity of my betrothed: she possessed the power to control me passively, but preferred giving me impulses of wild hunger just to watch me act as the impassioned aggressor.
When the act ended and she left the room to bathe, I was left alone staring at the black stone ceiling. I was already used to that routine and had accepted my role, but facing the mind of Myrcella Stark was always a reminder of just how deep and unpredictable Northern nobility could be.
I sighed heavily, pushing thoughts of the bedchamber aside, and climbed down from the battlements. I washed, dressed in an impeccable tunic of crimson wool with the three-headed dragon embroidered in onyx thread across my chest, and made my way to the great hall for dinner.
The banquet was proceeding with a pleasant normalcy. The long oak tables in the lower hall were laden with roasted meats, warm root vegetables, and dark bread, feeding the knights, rangers, and lords of the lesser houses that Arawyn had settled in the Gifts under my command. At the high table, elevated on a stone dais, I sat between Myrcella, who displayed her usual aristocratic composure, and my mentor and sworn bodyguard, Ser Gerold Hightower. The White Bull wore a heavy wool cloak emblazoned with the emblem of Winter across his chest, his advanced age doing nothing to diminish the ferocity of his posture or the skill with which he wielded his blade.
The clamor of conversations regarding harvests and garrison training was interrupted when the hall's heavy oak doors swung open. The castle's maester entered the chamber with hurried steps, carrying a silver tray upon which rested a parchment newly arrived from the fortress's rookery. Like practically all current maesters serving in the North, he was a native Northern man—a necessity the Citadel in Oldtown had been forced to accept after every single original maester of Southern birth had been summarily expelled from the lands of winter by imperial decree.
"— My prince... my lady, —" the maester greeted, bowing respectfully before the high table. "— A messenger raven has just landed in the rookery, arriving from the South. The letter bears an extraordinary seal that I deemed necessary to bring before your presence immediately."
I reached out and took the leather tube. Upon observing the red wax seal, I furrowed my brow in pure bewilderment. It was the crest of House Targaryen, but it was none of the official seals currently used by my family. It was not the mark of my sister Rhaenys, who had adopted a personal crest displaying the three-headed dragon holding a Dornish spear to honor our mother, Princess Elia. Nor was it the seal of my brother Aemon, whose mark grandly fused the dragon of Valyria with the direwolf of the Starks.
That seal was the ancient, immutable seal of the Royal Crown—the symbol of the Targaryen kings of King's Landing, an emblem that had not officially seen the light of day since the fall of the old dynasty in the South.
I broke the seal with my fingernail, my brow furrowed in confusion, and unfolded the parchment. As I read the first few lines written in elegant Southern calligraphy, my confusion turned into pure perplexity.
Myrcella, watching me out of the corner of her eye while lifting a goblet of rich wine to her lips, noticed the change in my countenance. She set down her goblet and let out a cold chuckle.
"— What happened, Aegon? Did you happen to write a letter to yourself and forget? —" she inquired, her tone laced with sharp mockery.
Her teasing was due to the fact that at the bottom of the parchment, the signature proclaimed in bold, proud script the name "Aegon Targaryen." I was Aegon Targaryen, and I was absolutely certain I had not written that manifesto. Nor was it the result of any suggestion from Myrcella; as playful and provocative as she was in the bedchamber, she made a point of keeping my consciousness entirely lucid regarding the facts of the world.
I ignored her perverted joke and returned my attention to the text, reading every word with growing disbelief.
I finished reading and passed the letter silently to Myrcella. The mocking expression on the Stark girl's pale face crumbled in a fraction of a second, replaced by pure shock, her blue eyes widening as she absorbed the message's contents. Without a word, she handed the parchment to Ser Gerold Hightower, and soon the contents began to be whispered among the nearby tables, where the lords of the lesser houses in my domain held their breath, waiting for me to speak.
The letter was a declaration of war and a brazen usurpation. Signed by a man self-proclaimed as "Aegon VI of House Targaryen," the text claimed he was the true son of Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and Princess Elia Martell. The impostor described, in dramatic detail, how he had been secretly swapped in the cradle by the former Master of Whisperers, the eunuch Varys, right after birth while my mother was too weak to notice the fraud. According to the document, the true infant had been taken to Essos, while the child raised in Winterfell—namely, myself—was nothing more than a street bastard with Valyrian traits bought in Flea Bottom.
The manifesto did not stop at the audacity of his origins. The alleged Aegon announced that he had landed in the Stormlands backed by the swords of the infamous Golden Company. He claimed to have taken Storm's End with extreme ease and, to make the continent's geopolitical landscape even worse, stated that he had captured Lord Renly Baratheon, holding him prisoner in the dungeons of the storm fortress itself. The text concluded with a pompous summons, calling upon all loyal vassals of Westeros and his own "kin" sheltered in the North to bend the knee and join his righteous cause to reclaim the Iron Throne.
The silence in my castle's hall was thick enough to be cut with a blade of Valyrian steel. Every face was turned toward me.
It was Myrcella who broke the silence.
"— What utter idiocy is this? —" my betrothed hissed, her eyes flashing with hatred as she slammed her palm against the wooden table.
"— Yes. It makes no logical sense whatsoever, —" I replied, trying to keep my voice steady, though hatred was beginning to boil my blood. "— How would my own mother, the woman who gave birth to me, not know I was not her baby? How would Rhaegar not have noticed? How would the Kingsguard not have realized?"
I turned to my old mentor, whose thick white eyebrows were furrowed in an expression of silent fury.
"— What do you say to this, Ser Gerold? —" I asked, seeking the wisdom of the man who had been my father's shadow.
The White Bull rested his broad hands on the table, grunting with the disdain of a veteran of a thousand battles.
"— This is the most low-born nonsense I have ever read in all my years, my prince, —" Ser Gerold declared, his voice booming through the hall and hushing the whispers. "— Someone is trying to exploit the chaos and fragility of the Southern houses after their defeat to the Winter Empire to orchestrate a coup. I saw Rhaegar grow up. I trained your father and guarded your cradle when you were born. I can tell you with the absolute certainty of my knightly oath and my honor: you are the legitimate son of Rhaegar Targaryen."
One of the lesser lords settled under my authority, a hard-featured man who governed the lands near the ruins of Shadow Tower, cleared his throat nervously and dared to raise a question.
"— But... forgive my insolence, my prince, but if this man proclaims such a thing to the four winds across the entire continent, he must believe he possesses some proof or witness to back his claim, right? The letter mentions he was raised and is supported by Lord Jon Connington. Was not the Lord of Griffin's Roost your father's best friend?"
The mention of Connington's name made Ser Gerold's face darken even further.
"— Friend? —" The White Bull laughed, a dry sound devoid of any mirth. "— Yes, he was considered a friend. But Jon Connington was blindly and sickly in love with Prince Rhaegar. Even if the griffin lord thought he was discreet and that no one noticed his yearning looks, all of us in the Kingsguard knew. Jon was humiliated, defeated at Stony Sept during the Battle of the Bells, and exiled to Essos, spending the last twenty years in mourning, consumed by failure and the grief of losing the man he loved. An embittered, desperate man like him will see absolutely whatever he wishes in the face of a silver-haired youth to soothe his own demons and give purpose to his misery. He is no witness; he is a victim of his own grief."
I observed the hall carefully and realized that, although the White Bull's words were powerful, some of the lords still exchanged guarded looks of doubt. Uncertainty was a poison that spread quickly whenever the inheritance of a throne was at stake. The humiliation of having the purity of my blood questioned by some random mercenary from Essos demanded an immediate, unquestionable response.
With a subtle movement of my right hand, I commanded mana to circulate through my spiritual channels, connecting me to the essence of water present in the room.
In that same instant, the red wine filling the goblets of all the suspicious lords in the hall began to tremble. The crimson droplets levitated into the air, rising from the cups in perfectly round, glistening spheres, swirling above the oak tables in a precise, mystical ballet before returning to the bottom of the goblets without spilling a single drop onto the wood.
The silent demonstration of power crushed all doubt in the room.
The lord who had questioned the letter widened his eyes, turning pale at the evident sorcery.
"— That is... water magic, of the ancient masters of the river Rhoyne, —" the noble stammered, lowering his head in immediate reverence. "— That irrefutably proves the lineage of your mother, Princess Elia Martell, my prince."
"— Yes. Exactly, —" I stated, my voice icy. "— And I highly doubt this self-proclaimed dragon from Essos possesses the blood of the Rhoynar running in his false veins to accomplish such a feat."
I turned back to Ser Gerold, my mind piecing together the dark chessboard unfolding in the South.
"— He mentioned the Golden Company, Ser Gerold. Do you think this impostor could actually be a remnant of the Blackfyre line?"
The mere whisper of the name "Blackfyre" seemed to chill the hall's hearth. Westeros's aversion to that line of rebel bastards was rooted in generations of spilled blood.
"— It is the most logical and probable answer, my prince, —" the veteran knight answered, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. "— The Golden Company was forged by Bittersteel and the losers of the First Blackfyre Rebellion. They could never defeat us with honor on the battlefield. Now, exhausted of swords and direct bloodlines, they attempt to win through lies and deceit."
In that moment, Myrcella snapped her head toward the hall's high windows. Her gray eyes glowed with an emerald tint for a fraction of a second—the unmistakable sign that she was using her skinchanging gift to bond with a bird nearby.
A few seconds later, a massive white hunting owl, bearing the stature of an imperial predator, swept down past the roof beams. Under Myrcella's mystical command, the bird landed softly on the table directly before us, bearing on its talons a leather tube sealed with the dark-grey wax of the Empire.
Myrcella reached out, untied the parchment, and unfolded it, reading the imperial message before passing the document to me.
I rose from my chair, bringing complete silence to the hall.
"— Emperor Arawyn Stark summons all princes, high lords, and military council members to an immediate emergency meeting at Winterfell, —" I announced, my tone heavy with gravity.
I folded the parchment and faced the lords and knights who depended on my command.
"— We shall depart as soon as the retinue is ready, —" I declared fiercely. "— We shall see what the Emperor has to say about this affront. But I make a vow before the old gods and the new tonight: I will not let a filthy impostor use my name and usurp my family's suffering and history to spread chaos and spill blood in the South."
Myrcella stood at my side, her gray eyes flashing with anticipation and her lips curving into a dark smile, ready to use her own methods against the enemies of the North. Ser Gerold Hightower unsheathed his sword just enough for the steel's reflection to catch the hearth flames, his stance promising death to false dragons.
I looked out into the darkness of the night, feeling the weight of Winter on my shoulders. It seemed the false peace hanging over Westeros had lasted next to nothing. The winds brought ashes once more, and yet another bloody war was about to tear the continent apart.