Pre-Chapter A/N:Another chapter on time? Guess my lock-in is going pretty well. If you haven't already, I recommend turning on notifications for my stuff so you can see when new stuff drops right as it drops. Next five chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
"I write this now two moons after what we have begun to call the Doom of Valyria— our doom. The day where the flames that our nation has prided itself on betrayed us. The day where House Targaryen, one of our own, signed off on all our deaths. A betrayal years in the making, but one we were too blind to see in its infancy until it was too late. Until the die were cast and all we could do was hope to manage the fallout.
The last two moons have shown that we could not manage it. Now I sit here in the fortress I had once been charged with holding on behalf of the freehold. The gates to Valyria. No greater honour has a member of my House received. No greater tomb is there than this one. I will die doing my duty. The creatures our Doom has created. Those fell things that overrun the city must be stopped.
Now they fear entering. My magic keeps them at bay, but even that fear will disappear with time. No, we must be undisturbed in our slumber. A ritual must be devised to keep us safe. To bind them to these shores and see to it that the rest of the world does not know our pain. I wish I could send them for the Targaryens, but without blood to bind such a ritual, there is no chance.
Instead, I shall die with the knowledge that a thousand Valyrian souls have cursed them with their dying breaths. There is no curse more dangerous than that. I do not have the time to contemplate their fate. I must turn my hands to the matter of our deaths.
The children must be the first to go. Dragon saliva in their water will give them a peaceful passing. We haven't enough of the poison for us all, but for the children alone, it will suffice. The women will be next. We must kill them with our own hands. Quick and painless. Blades across the throat will do the job. Every man shall kill his wife, brother shall kill sister, and father shall kill daughter. I will make the proclamation when we the men meet at the end of day. And when all is done, we shall kill ourselves. Blades across the stomach to create weeping wounds.
A threefold ritual, the most powerful one I have ever contemplated. With three goals; to seal this place from those foul creatures, to bind them to this land, and to preserve what remains of our legacy for those who will come after. If any are to come after. Those who remained at sea at the time of the Doom should have survived. Aurion lives still, abroad as he might be.
This will be my final act. My final sacrifice."
I read out the last page of the journal to a silent room.
"So House Targaryen caused the Doom?" Ben asked, looking confused. I could not blame him.
"So he says. He never says how though. He just references a betrayal over and over again," I said.
"Perhaps he did not know. Perhaps this is all merely an opinion of his shared because of Denys," Vaemond said, speaking after spending a few minutes in thought.
"You think he thinks the Targaryens caused the Doom because one of their own predicted it and they left the peninsula?" I asked.
"It is possible. Just because he says something does not make it true. We must not forget that while he is our only source of information for what happened— he is not a particularly reliable one. He was not there. While the road to Valyria is not a long one for a dragon rider, it is clear to see that he did not attempt the journey. If he did, then he did not get far before he turned around," Vaemond said.
"I agree. But we also should not disregard his testimony. We have found the bodies after all. It was a powerful ritual that they conducted here. Someone with that much skill in magic had surely been able to light and see through a glass candle," I said, pointing at the candle that lay on one of the shelves. There were quite a few to be found in the fortress. Them, Valyrian steel, and gold were the wages of our journey. The manses plus the fortress's own vaults probably came together as millions of dragons' worth of gold.
We couldn't carry all the gold on the two ships we had and I would not be repeating this journey by any means so we focused on the important bits first. First was the Valyrian steel. Besides what I rewarded both Vaemond and Ben with, all the other pieces had been kept in my cabin. Not just swords and spears, but daggers, shields, and then even full suits of armour made of the stuff had been recovered from the fortress.
I would have to tempt a Qohorik blacksmith learned in the spells for reforging Valyrian steel into my service, but something told me that the prospect of working on the first Valyrian steel suit of armour the world would ever see since the Doom of Valyria would be enough to sway even the most committed. That should give me the freedom of choice to not just be stuck with the dregs of the trade. I would get a true master of their craft, and when their work in amending the armour for my size, and reforging a few of the weapons as I wished, was done, I would look into tempting them into staying— there would always be a home for skilled blacksmiths in my Kingdom after all.
"It matters little, what happened in the Doom. What matters now is how we proceed from here," Vaemond said in the end.
"We take what we can and we leave," I said.
"And what happens after that?" he pushed.
"We deal with it when it comes. But for now, our focus must be on leaving Valyria. To that end, we must decide what exactly we can afford to take and what we must leave behind," I posed.
"The Valyrian steel for sure," Ben said like that was even up for consideration. I nodded.
"The gold. As much of it as we can carry. The men will mutiny if you even consider leaving it behind," Vaemond said. I nodded as well.
"I want the glass candles," I said.
"No one has been able to light one since the Doom. The Targaryens have a few. They are naught but baubles now," Vaemond said.
"Regardless, I want them and I will have them," I said.
"Capacity will be a factor. Not just with the ship, with the wagons as we move things. The men will not be pleased to lose some for baubles with no value," he said next.
"They will do as they are told. I brought them here. Not a single thing would they get without me. I want the candles, I will have the candles," I said, fully aware of how I sounded but I knew I had to make the request sound slightly inane. How could I explain to Vaemond that I had lit one already? I hadn't managed to see shit through it but being able to light it was already more than what the world agreed was possible right now.
"Is there anything else you want, my Lord?" he asked.
"The tomes," I said, referencing the collection of journals that sat within this room. The Fortress of Tyria was not a hereditary seat. It was the gate to Valyria overland and so it was granted to a scion of one of the forty for life, and then after their death to another. Each one had left a journal behind. These things were invaluable pieces of history. And then there was the chance that they contained snippets of knowledge of magic.
The rest of the keep had proven to be a dead end in that regard. This was a military base for all that it was worth. There was gold aplenty in its vault from taxes on the limited trade it enjoyed, but most of the keep was dedicated to a single purpose. There were large dragon stables. There was a massive armoury where we had found our largest stockpile of Valyrian steel and there were several barracks for troops to live in. It had one purpose and seemed to spurn most others in its pursuit of that.
Probably by design. Make the keep a less attractive seat than it would otherwise be to prevent Houses from fighting too intensely for it. All it came with was an observer seat on the council for important events and a position high up in the military. Good boons, but nothing the most powerful houses would fight over.
"Good luck with that," Vaemond said, looking over at them. I shrugged.
I would find a way to get them back to the ships. Or we just wouldn't leave. They were important enough that I would not leave without them.
"And a schedule? How long do we expect to spend here?" Ben asked, looking around.
"A week at the very most. The creatures we can kill as we make our way to the ships. We do two drop-offs a day. Start at noon when the sun is directly overhead and finish not too long after. We return to the fortress after the second drop-off and then remain here until the next day when we take the next shipments," I said, laying out my bait.
"Only two a day? We can surely do three or four," Vaemond said.
"Oh, if you think so then you should lead the shipments, Uncle," I said.
He pursed his lips but he nodded. He probably would have done it if I had just asked instead of playing games but what was the fun of that? I thought about the reaction we would receive on returning. We'd have done the impossible. Valyria and back. And I knew we would make it back. Those creatures were dangerous but their condition made it so they were not undefeatable foes. Valyria wasn't all that dangerous, it seemed.
— —
We decided to pass the night instead of attempting a trip back to the ship to get the wagons ahead of tomorrow. The sun was still overhead but it had begun to lower and then there was no guarantee that they would be back by the time it set. And something told me that once the night began, things would not be so easy to deal with. Those creatures would no longer be actively being burned by the sun while they fought and would then have even more possibilities opened to them from our lack of sight in the night.
It would be a deathtrap for my people and so I did the reasonable thing and did not risk it.
The bedrooms in the fortress were still well preserved. Sleeping in the same vault where the bodies of the Valyrians were was not an option. The entire throne room we abandoned for good measure. So we ended up choosing one of the barracks. There were about twenty-seven of us all things considered and the barrack looked to have been built with double our number in mind. Beds were plenty and I chose the one at the end of the room. Ben slept in the one next to mine, and Vaemond slept to my other side.
And I lay awake for most of the night, thinking. Valyria. We'd done it. I'd fucking done it. Well, not really. This was Tyria, not Valyria. Valyria was not all that far though. We could make the journey on foot and avoid the rocks that surrounded the remnants of the city and would surely have wrecked many a ship in the past. We could do it. If I ordered, they would follow. But should we? That question kept me up for hours as I debated over and over against myself in voices that sounded increasingly like Mother's and Laena's.
I drifted to sleep with those thoughts on my mind hours after everyone had fallen asleep so it made sense that the initial uproar had been unable to wake me up. It took Ben shaking me awake for me to finally open my eyes. And it was to much of the crew staring at me.
"What happened?" I asked, limping to wakefulness. Staying up so long had been unwise.
"Something terrible," Ben said, gesturing to the wider room. I followed his hand to find him pointing at a single bed. I rose from my own bed and walked forwards. My feet against the cold stone brought more alertness to my mind. The silence, the way the men stepped out of my way, that did the rest.
I reached the bed and found the man within it obviously dead. The blood that dripped onto the floor and had pooled around it told that story. I stepped closer, internally cringing as I stepped into his blood. He had been stabbed through the neck. It was a single deliberate stab. Whoever had done it was someone much used to killing. The dagger was perfectly upright. It had gone through the neck and then into the bed.
And there was the one final clue. The blade that had been used. It caught the light and its ripples made me gasp and take a step backwards. I checked the holster that had been at my waist when I slept. It was empty. The blade. It was mine. It was the Valyrian steel dagger I'd taken from the armoury earlier. That explained the looks.
"I said it. He did it," I heard a voice say.
"Okay men, get moving. Out now," Vaemond stepped in, ordering them away. The sailors left the room grumbling. Not one of them failed to give me a suspicious look.
"Did you do it?" Vaemond asked. He did not need to say what 'it' was.
"Why would I kill one of my own men, Uncle?" I asked. My brain was still trying to figure out what happened. That dagger had been in its sheath when I slept, I knew it. And none could have made it to steal it from me with both Uncle and Ben sleeping on either side.
"Fewer men means fewer hands to split the gold between. We can then take less gold and have more space for your books," he said.
"Uncle, listen to yourself. You think I am the kind of monster who would kill a man for some books? You know me better than that," I snarled my denial.
"I don't know you at all, nephew," he said, and then turned to leave.
I wanted to say something, but for perhaps the first time in my life, I was dumbstruck.
I heard a squelch and turned in alarm. It was just Ben, it turned out. He had pulled the blade from the man's neck and wiped it off against his clothes— the parts not soaked with blood— and then handed me the blade hilt first.
I looked down at it before looking back at him.
"Do you think I did it as well— killed that man?" I asked.
"I slept next to you, my lord. I would have heard you stir," he said, and then he pressed the hilt of the blade into my hand.
"Sailors are the greedy sort. One of them must have killed this man to increase his share of the loot," he said, before beginning to do the work of wrapping up the body. If he intended to calm me with that, then he had failed.
Ben was a good guard. A great sworn shield who I would replace with no one. But there was one flaw he had. He slept like the dead.
If I'd done it, Ben would have had no idea. Much the same way he would never have noticed if someone had snuck over and taken the dagger from my sleeping form. But unlike Ben, I could scarcely be touched without at least feeling it in my sleep. I might not have stirred fully, but I would have noticed a disturbance. And in my memories, there was nothing.
Could I have done it? Sleepwalked into killing a man. I remembered from my first life that people could do pretty insane things while sleepwalking. Of course, that entire train of thought was just to keep me from considering the obvious. This was Valyria, after all. Could something have taken control of my body while I slept? Surely not.
I watched as Ben dealt with the body efficiently, wrapping it up in the bedding and then hefting it over his shoulder. I waited on my bed while he was gone and thought. There were a million things I didn't know about magic. Perhaps I should never have lit the glass candle. When you look into the void, the void looks back. Could something have looked into me while I tried to look into the candle? And if that was the case, why had they just killed a random sailor? And if they had, were they gone? That was perhaps the more urgent inquiry.
By the time Ben returned and suggested breakfast, my appetite was dead already. I ate the jerky he fished out from our packs with a scowl on my face. It tasted like ash all the while. And when I finished, I went straight to the solar and began to read through the journals. I didn't know much about magic, but the men who had held this fortress had definitely known more than most.
Their journals gave knowledge in drops and I lapped each one eagerly like a man who thirsted in a desert. All the while, Ben stood guard and watched. Vaemond led the sailors on several trips out to the ships and back.
A/N: A mystery. Don't you love mysteries? Next five chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.