ARC IV: THE SECOND DANCE OF DRAGONS
Chapter 60: Warhammer vs Wildfire
POV: Aegon Targaryen (304 AC)
The night before a great battle brings with it a heavy silence, an air thick with the uncertain scent of mortality. For any man about to march against fire and steel, the darkness before dawn demands an anchor—something to hold him to the world of the living before the chaos of the battlefield tries to take him.
For me, that anchor was between my wife's legs.
Myrcella Stark had been my betrothed for a long time, our union arranged in the fortresses of the North long before we marched south. The only real issue with tonight was not our commitment, but the fact that we chose to marry here in King's Landing, in haste, without the full family present. Taking advantage of Emperor Arawyn's sovereign presence in the capital, the ceremony was conducted by him under the cold shadow of the runic weirwoods. I know perfectly well that Myrcella will get a monumental earful from her mother, Cersei, for making such an impulsive decision away from the family's eyes. But the girl didn't care in the slightest.
And there was another truth, deeper and more secret, that made our dynamic between the sheets unique.
I have never been attracted to women. My desire, my inner nature, has always belonged to men. Yet as a Targaryen and a lord of the Empire, I deeply desired to build a family, raise a home, and carry on my bloodline with loyal heirs. That was precisely why Myrcella was the perfect sanctuary for me.
Myrcella possessed a rare and frightening gift: pure skinchanging ability. She did not master blood magic or complex rituals; her art lay entirely in projecting her mind and weaving her consciousness into other beings. In bed, knowing my lack of natural physical attraction to women, Myrcella used her skinchanging magic to reach straight into my brain. She touched my sensory pathways, manipulating my perceptions from within and transforming physical touch into an electric surge of pleasure. She made me become, as Arawyn bizarrely puts it in his strange expressions from another world, "on crack"—a phrase it took me time to understand, but which I grew to recognize as the absolute, uncontrollable addiction I felt for my wife's touch and mind.
Before we joined together, I was down between her legs, giving her oral sex, making her body writhe and tremble with delight until she reached her first climax, sweat glistening over her pale skin as her ragged breaths echoed through the room. Afterwards, as I tried to mount her with care, Myrcella locked her thighs for a second with a teasing smirk.
I simply couldn't hold back. The physical urge shaped by her mind spoke louder.
My hand clamped against her delicate neck, pinning her firmly to the mattress, and I drove into her with a ravenous hunger. The surprise in Myrcella's eyes turned instantly into pure pleasure. That initial resistance had been nothing more than a little game guided by her magic to force me to take her fiercely.
Projecting into my mind, she made my brain explode with sensation. The warm walls of her body tightened around me as a loud moan escaped her lips. I reached my limit within moments, but the flow did not stop. Using her skinchanging magic to keep my nerve endings hyperactive, Myrcella made me experience multiple consecutive climaxes, one after another, without my shaft losing its firmness. It was an almost painful, overwhelming trance, keeping me on the verge of sensory overload until my vision blurred completely and I passed out exhausted on her chest.
I woke some time later, my mind still hazy. Myrcella was stroking my silver hair with a victorious, knowing smile.
— Rest time is over, my husband... — she whispered near my ear.
Without a single word, I pulled her back beneath me. Against the friction of our sticky, sweat-stained skin, we began all over again until the first rays of sunlight cut through the twilight of the windows.
At dawn, preparations for battle were complete. The blast of war horns echoed throughout the city as we put on our combat gear and adjusted our steel plates. I wear my armor engraved with the three-headed dragon sigil with pride; I have never abandoned my Targaryen name, and I never will.
Arriving before the imposing gates of the Red Keep, I found Emperor Arawyn Stark already waiting for us.
Even for me, having lived beside him for years under the Empire's protection, the sight of Arawyn ready for war never fails to instill a kernel of primal dread deep within the soul. He wore his dark imperial runic armor—a colossal structure of dark runic alloy, adorned with spiked pauldrons, layered plates, and an iron crowned helm that completely hid his face behind a dark visor. The mystical aura emanating from that dark metal caused the air temperature around him to plummet, freezing the stones beneath his boots.
With our retinue gathered—myself, King Aemon Targaryen, Princess Rhaenys, my half-brother Roderick Dustin son of my mother Elia Martell from her second marriage to the loyal William Dustin, the Imperial Guard, and the Southern lords—we marched toward the outer gates of King's Landing.
Crossing the walls, the vastness of the open field revealed the enemy army arrayed in battle order. There stood the gleaming ranks of the Golden Company and the banners of the few Southern nobles who had chosen to gamble on the East's farce. Yet what angered and saddened me most was seeing the banners of Dorne unfurled among the rebel host. Knowing my mother's homeland had been dragged into such disgrace was a bitter pill to swallow.
Circling the skies above the rebel host, the dragon Viserion made slow turns. The cream-scaled beast with golden wings swooped down in a low pass before climbing again with its rider—the boy calling himself Aegon—strapped to its back.
At that moment, I saw Arawyn extend his right hand. In a dense glow of ancient runes, his weapon of war materialized: a heavy single-handed warhammer with a head carved from pure black stone and trimmed with runic gold plates. The history of that weapon was legendary within the Empire: Arawyn had personally unearthed it in the deep tombs of Brandon the Builder. It was a relic bearing the most terrifying trait any magical being could face—the capacity for absolute nullification of magic. For a creature made of sorcery and dragonfire, that weapon was mortality incarnate.
— Their cavalry is moving into position... — I remarked, adjusting my shield on my arm. — They'll try a direct charge to break our center before the dragon attacks.
— Let them come, — Arawyn's voice echoed deep and muffled from behind his crowned helm.
The horn of the Golden Company sounded, and the mass of heavy cavalry launched their charge. The ground shook under the thundering hooves of a thousand iron shoes. At the same time, Viserion let out a high-pitched roar and dived from the skies toward our line.
Arawyn drew no blade. He simply summoned the magic of the winds around him. In an impossible leap defying gravity, the Emperor vaulted dozens of meters into the air, launching himself directly onto a collision course with the flying beast.
Viserion opened his jaws and unleashed a devastating column of cream-and-gold fire at the Emperor. Yet instead of incinerating him, the fire touching Arawyn's armor seemed drawn as if by an invisible funnel into the palm of Arawyn's open left hand. The Emperor's elemental sorcery compressed the dragon's flames into a colossal, super-dense sphere of pure incandescent fire.
Realizing his breath attack had failed, Viserion lunged forward with claws and teeth bared to snap Arawyn out of the air.
Without a moment's hesitation, the Emperor twisted his body in midair and delivered a brutal blow with his black stone warhammer against the side of the dragon's jaw. The sound of the impact crackled like breaking stone. A deafening yelp of pain erupted from Viserion's throat as the weapon's anti-magic struck the beast's flesh, fracturing its scales and throwing the flying monster off course.
On the ground, however, the enemy cavalry charge was mere yards from hitting our infantry.
— Hold the line! — I shouted, bracing my feet against the earth.
Before the lances of the Golden Company could crash into our shields, Myrcella, standing high atop the city walls, unleashed her skinchanging magic across the enemy frontline. The effect was instant and chaotic: dozens of warhorses panicked as her mind invaded their senses, throwing their riders or colliding into one another in a brutal tangle of flesh and iron. The momentum of the charge was completely shattered. When the cavalry finally reached our shieldwall, the impact was weak and awkward.
— ADVANCE! — roared my brother Roderick Dustin beside me.
We crashed into the battle with absolute fury. Beside me, I watched the veteran former members of my father Rhaegar's Kingsguard—Ser Arthur Dayne, Ser Barristan Selmy, and Ser Oswell Whent—move with terrifying speed. It didn't look like they were fighting for their lives; it looked as though they were harvesting wheat in a field. Every thrust from Arthur Dayne cut throats and pierced breastplates with frightening precision.
King Aemon Targaryen stepped forward and drew his legendary sword Lightbringer—the blade forged for him by the Emperor himself. As the steel cleared the scabbard, Aemon's sword burst into blood-red flames, carving through the enemy cavalry with a force that melted steel armor at the slightest contact.
I raised my own blade and parried a Golden Company knight who tried to run me through with a spear, deflecting the strike off my shield and severing his head on the return stroke.
In the skies, the aerial clash raged on. Viserion, enraged by the pain of the hammer blow, tried to maneuver around Arawyn. The dragon feinted another dive at the Emperor, but it was a trick: the beast veered sharply and plummeted toward the ground, targeting our infantry line!
Viserion opened his maw to incinerate our ground formation. Aemon reacted in the same instant, raising Lightbringer and shooting a concentrated beam of blood-red fire from the blade to intercept the dragon's breath. Yet the sheer firepower of a creature that size was too immense to be contained by a sword alone.
— Rhaenys, with me! — I called out to my sister.
Drawing upon the water stored in the massive runic barrier shielding King's Landing right behind us, Rhaenys and I joined our Rhoynar water magic. We pulled a colossal mass of water from the dome, shaping it through the air into a pressurized liquid spear dozens of meters long, and hurled it with full force at Viserion's chest.
The dragon, however, proved his impressive aerial agility: spotting the water projection in time, Viserion beat his wings violently and dodged at the last split second, demonstrating how absurdly difficult it was to score a clean hit on a flying beast in open sky.
Viserion wheeled around quickly above our heads, preparing for another deadly dive.
He just hadn't accounted for Emperor Arawyn.
Plummeting from the heavens like a dark meteor, Arawyn didn't try to grapple the dragon. He simply took his black stone warhammer in his right hand and hurled it through the air like a spear thrown by a giant.
The hammer broke the sound barrier as it streaked through the sky. Arawyn's target wasn't the dragon.
A sickening scream of agony tore through the air. The stone hammer struck Young Griff's right arm directly on the mount's back. The force and magic-negating properties of the weapon were so brutal that the boy's arm was literally torn off his shoulder in a spray of blood and shattered armor!
Viserion let out a piercing screech of sympathetic pain, feeling the shock of his mutilated rider. Entering a state of panic and wild fury, the dragon beat his wings erratically, spraying wild bursts of fire indiscriminately across the field.
— Cover the line! — I ordered, using Rhoynar water magic once more to form a dense liquid shield in front of our infantry to absorb the chaotic flames falling upon us.
With the dragon disoriented and wounded in the air, the ground troops of the Golden Company and Dorne finally crashed into us in full force. But our Northern shieldwall did not give an inch. Marching like an iron fortress of death, our soldiers advanced, crushing the rebels underfoot.
High above, Viserion tried desperately to pull away from Arawyn. That was when the Emperor decided to end the display of power.
The sphere of cream-and-gold fire that Arawyn had compressed in his left hand since the start of the battle—accumulating all of the dragon's own breath—was finally thrown.
Arawyn hurled the concentrated orb of energy at the dragon. Viserion tried desperately to dodge, but the margin was too thin: the sphere grazed the tip of his left wing, incinerating membrane and scale. The dragon shrieked in agony, but the projectile did not stop there.
The super-compressed sphere continued its trajectory, passing over the dragon and landing squarely in the rear of the enemy army.
When the fireball struck the ground, the world seemed to split open.
The explosion sounded like a thousand thunderclaps hitting the exact same spot at once. A colossal shockwave swept across the plain, shaking the earth so violently that knights and foot soldiers on both sides were knocked to the ground. A cloud of dust, fire, and shrapnel rose hundreds of feet into the air where the rebel rear guard had been standing moments before.
Young Griff, covered in blood and drifting into unconsciousness from the loss of his arm atop the dragon, and the severely wounded beast itself finally learned their lesson: they could not win this war.
From the rebel camp, the desperate call of retreat horns began to sound. The troops of the Golden Company and Dorne broke formation and fled in utter disarray.
— THEY ARE RETREATING! PURSUE! — shouted one of the Southern lords beside us.
Our troops took their first steps to hunt down the fleeing enemy, but stopped abruptly as they looked to the sky.
Coming from the enemy's rear lines, dozens of large ceramic spheres were launched by catapults toward us. As they cut through the air, their sickly green glow revealed their contents: Wildfire.
Arawyn descended from the sky and landed heavily in front of our line. Without missing a beat, the Emperor raised both hands toward the remaining water in the city dome. With a single elemental command, he transformed that entire mass of liquid into a towering wall of dense, gleaming ice right before us.
The spheres of wildfire slammed headlong into the ice wall, exploding into sticky green flames that tried in vain to eat through the frozen structure.
With a slight gesture, Arawyn melted and vaporized the ice wall using the wildfire's own heat, sealing off the area. He turned to the soldiers and shouted, his voice booming through his armor:
— Pursuit is impossible for us on this front! Let them run! It seems the Golden Company remains the same as ever: weak cowards before the true power of Westeros!
A mighty roar of victory echoed through the imperial and Southern infantry. Soldiers raised their swords and axes, celebrating a relatively easy and devastating victory over the invaders.
Later, inside the grand War Tent set up outside the walls, the commanders gathered to tally the battle's toll.
Thanks to the runic protection matrices, Rhoynar water magic, and the Emperor's overwhelming leadership, our casualties were ridiculously low. Among the Northern and Imperial troops, the dead count was exactly zero. The Southern armies suffered a few losses during the initial cavalry shock, but even for them the numbers were surprisingly small.
Arawyn removed the crowned helm of his dark runic armor, revealing his calm face as he wiped sweat from his brow:
— I took the boy's arm with the hammer... The trauma and blood loss will keep him out of the fight for a long time, if he survives the infection at all. Furthermore, the dragon was wounded in both wing and jaw. Still... I must admit that beast's scales were considerably tougher than I initially anticipated.
Ros, sitting in one of the chairs in the corner of the tent looking over the maps, tilted her head with a curious smile and asked:
— Tougher than the Ice Dragon you fought north of the new Wall, Arawyn?
Arawyn looked at her and gave a firm nod:
— Yes. Even though that Ice Dragon was at least three times larger than Viserion, the scale density of this fire creature offered an unusual resistance to impact. Nothing I can't handle next time, however.
Lord Mace Tyrell—who obviously hadn't taken part in a single second of frontline combat, staying safe behind the city walls—was wiping sweat from his neck while boasting loudly about his son:
— My boy Loras fought like a true lion today! I've never seen anyone strike with such fury!
I looked toward the corner of the tent and saw Loras Tyrell sitting in silence, wiping blood off his blades with trembling hands. The young knight had fought today as if possessed by a demon, driven by grief and unquenchable vengeance for the brutal death of Renly Baratheon. The rebels had paid dearly for throwing Renly's head into our camp.
I was about to resume the discussion regarding our next steps to corner the remnants of the Golden Company when I noticed Arawyn stop dead in his tracks.
The Emperor froze in place. He turned his head toward the northeast of King's Landing, staring intently at the canvas wall of the tent in the direction of the open sea[1].
The entire room fell into dead silence. Every lord and commander stopped what they were doing to watch our leader's reaction.
I stepped closer to him and asked in a low voice:
— What is it, my Emperor?
Arawyn didn't break his gaze from the sea. He blinked slowly and answered in a cold, calculating voice:
— A certain queen... has just landed on Dragonstone.
It took me a few seconds to process the exact meaning of those words. Daenerys Targaryen and the remainder of her eastern fleet had arrived in Westeros.
A bitter knot twisted in my stomach. I looked at Aemon and Rhaenys beside me, and all I could think at that moment was a single, simple word:
Fuck.
[1] This is Arawyn sort of pretending. He's doing this so the others find out the news. He obviously already knew.