Here we are, eons later with a part two for Blood from a Stone, so please have a look at that first if this is the first you glimpse of me and my small delulu world.
I love every single person who lays eyes on this with kindness and takes time to read. Blessings be upon you and all you hold dear <3
Warnings for canon typical violence, description of a panic attack, angst, gore, suggestive material and anything vaguely associated with horror themes. 18+ only!
The wind is strong and erratic, your skirt whips around your knees, billows out and then claps tight to your legs again. It's exciting. Your hair is tousled and as you breathe in and your chest expands you imagine wings growing out of your spine. It is glorious. The lake laps anxiously at the shore, small violent squalls stirring up the waves, short and quick to break. The sinker bobs in and out of view and as you follow the line back to where it's attached to your fishing rod. You spy a crayfish scurrying on the lake floor, struggling to find purchase in the short unpredictable currents kicked up by the vengeful weather.
You close your eyes and speak a silent prayer to the Old Gods, just as mother taught you. May they preserve you from lightning, may they preserve you from this lake's anger and any spite the creature you're about to hunt might feel. May they steel your heart so that it leads in fears stead.
It is somewhat like a soldier's prayer, you sometimes hear the men riding South whisper such words under their breath. You love the stories of knights valiantly going off to war, you wish yourself on a warhorse with a claymore resting on your shoulder. Stories such as these keep evergreen here, feeding their roots on plentiful blood soaked battlegrounds.
Carefully you wedge the fishing rod in a crack of a tree stump and approach the lake's edge. The water feels oddly warm, underneath it the wind can't lash at you and it feels almost peaceful if it wasn't for the constant movement of entirely another nature. You stalk the creature slowly, it's movement is so hindered you feel a pang of pity for it. You have half a mind to leave it be.
But your brother said that small girls are not hunters and you just have to prove him wrong. A double edged slight, sharpened to cut at your skill and your sex. Your brother forgets, you too are a Blackwood and the forest and the lake will provide for you. Sight will guide you and the Old Gods will protect you as long as you follow the rites.
The fact that it was a Targaryen feast you escaped thank to this familial scrap is a different matter altogether. You know that the royal visit has little to do with you and everything to do with Raventree Hall. The King casting his gaze directly through his heirs in search of a suitable residence. It was eerie seeing prince Maekar look over your ancestral home with detached, assessing eyes. The King must be a warg your imagination supplies, but he possesses his kin and not wild beasts like in the tales. The King, you think, is a creature of its own kind, ever hungry, as if the circle of gold around his temples compelled him to take and take and yet again take more.
Nevertheless mother was furious and father- dissapointed as you ran out barefoot wild and cackling outside the keep walls and into the wilderness.
These woods are your home. Not even the Dragon Scourge has reached here yet. And in the North the land remembers, it knows who you are and it is ever watchful.
Blackfyre is a mystery and a constant fear. In your mind it is like to a huge monster slowly devouring the continent, waiting for someone to ride in a glorious charge and fell it. As it stands it is more of a sprawling desease twisting and gnawing at people and nature alike, slowly scouring the realm of anything good and green.
As it started taking root on the Westerosi shores people were convinced that it was a show of strength from the Free Cities, a pestilence brought as a threat with a timely and suitably expensive antidote ready to be shipped over after a succesful negotiation. Trade has been at a standstill at that point, the few ships that made it over to King's Landing were kept in quarantine. Still, crows were sent, a single messenger Clipper followed a fortnight after none of the birds returned. Weeks later they found a wreck near Blackwater Bay, planks covered in ichor that's bitten into the wood so hard that even the sea's fury couldn't lap them clean. None of the crew or their bodies returned.
That started the panic. The bards dubbed it the Exodus of King's Landing. People say that sea water curdled and turned black as the last of King's Daeron's retinue left.
That Gold Cloaks abandoned post shortly after, is only spoken about quietly when the night is heavy and what became of Flea Bottom your father calls "repulsive business" but only when he's well into his cups.
With one swift movement you reach into the water and grasp the creature by the thick chitin coat on it's back, careful not to allow it space to grab you in kind with one of its pincers. It's beautiful, you think, murky green and reddish and well grown, a sign of a healthy lake.
A small gasp comes from the shore behind you, you whip around but forget to adjust to the density of water and tangle in your skirts. You fall backwards into the churling waters, for a moment fully submerged.
For one confused second you are unsure which way is up, atavistic fear seizing your heart as your instincs grapple with the possibility of dying. Then the years of practice kick in as you kick your feet out and feel for the sandy lake floor. When you do, you come up for air, spitting water pushing your hair out of the way. As you fell you dropped your prize and can only imagine it is counting its blessing thanking whatever gods a crayfish might follow for the cover of mud you just kicked up. A hiss escapes your lips as your teeth begin to chatter, winds now batting at your wet skin and dress making the outside world feel all the more colder.
You drag your gaze up expecting to find your brother in a fit of laughter, instead your gaze falls on a small boy with a shock of silver gold hair donning the Targaryen red and black. He isn't laughing, his violet eyes wide, expression stuck somewhere between shock and awe with a lick of curiosity. Suddenly his gaze falls to the water and he runs up to where you're struggling to collect yourself.
"You dropped it!" The he exclaims. He's small, sickly looking. You balk for a full minute and watch him mill his hands through the murky water, searching. You take a step towards the boy, lips trembling equal parts due to humiliation and the cold, fully intent on smacking him over the head.
Just as you reach him he exclaims triumphantly, hand flying out of the water small wispy fingers clamped around one of the crayfish's pincers.
It takes a second, maybe less and you see a flash of blood where the creature managed to get at it's hunters limb. The boy hisses but to your surprise he doesn't start crying or screaming, he just goes very, very still as if fascinated by the situation he found himself in. It must hurt like hells.
He lets go of the pincer and allows the crayfish to hang off of his skin, tearing through it more with its weight now suspended.
You seize his wrist, and he still doesn't move, doesn't react to your touch which is probably for the better cause the situation is entirely inappropriate, even your ten years of experience in life speak to that.
You pry the pincers open let the animal fall into water then catch it by its back and cast it far into the middle of the lake with a growl more than a cry.
"What in the world are you doing!?" You aim your words like one would a club, angled for a fight no matter what response will follow.
To his credit the boy doesn't flinch away or even back down.
He stares listlessly at the water, at the spot where it splashed with impact.
Then something seems to return to him, a sense or maybe the pain finally catches in is body. He turns his hand slowly looking at the mark bleeding bright red.
"I've never seen one of those before." He nods to where you aimed your throw.
He turns his head to you, eyes closed in a bashful smile, as his hand moves behind his back.
You gape.
Then decide not to bother as you start getting out of the water muttering about Targaryen madness under your breath.
"You made quite a spectacle earlier in the Hall." The words themselves are not surprising, what you didn't expect is the matter of fact-ness with which they are uttered. It isn't a preface to mockery, just an observation.
You scoff anyway and continue walking, pointedly not looking back. You let out a low whistle and wait.
There are footsteps trailing behind you.
A dark shape detaches itself from a a tree crown high above and makes directly for your shoulder. Suddenly there is a hand on your arm, you flinch and are pushed behind the small boys frame as he puts himself between you and the crow. His back is rigid and though the act itself is valiant you can tell it cost him a fair bit of courage.
Sunshine won't have any of it, he doesn't flap his wings at the boy, seemingly knowing better than to attack a princeling but sits on top of his hand on your shoulder.
"It's okay he's mine. Or is it the first time you see a crow as well as a crayfish?" You mutter, cheeks growing red because you are now joined together in this strange blessing from a bird of carrion.
Sunshine's claw catches on the boy's wound and he finally hisses and snaps his hand away. It spurs the bird up and you get a wing flap on the side of your face as the world rights itself and there is now some distance between you two.
There is a humming on the air, something heavy and watchful settling in the forest clearing, you smell ozone and feel deep in your bones a shift, somewhere a sword has fallen over someone's neck. Somewhere a piece of land has spoiled beyond rescue and here a crab walks away with its life and you must return to your father's halls defeated and with trouble in tow. There is a world in which you read this omen for what it is- for now, you're distracted and you can't tell if it is fear that fills up your chest or nervousness.
You're shaking. It's spoken soft, with a bashfulness again that you begin to associate with this odd boy. He then steels himself, stands an inch taller and you really should make fun of him again or just cut it short but there is all of the sudden something keeping you oddly meek in his presence. Like some pact has been made and you're not quite sure what kind.
"My name is Aerion, I'll escort you back. "
You scoff again and start walking away. He follows closely, like a guard would, which you find strange because you can't imagine he guards people often. It might be nature over nurture, you suppose.
"I'm"
You go to say your name and choke, can't catch your breath and your heart is racing and it lasts hours. You cry and writhe and eventually fall to the ground digging your hands into the soil, but they don't sink in like they should, there is no smell of decay and foliage. Sunshine isn't fussing at your hair like he would normally.
It is only when the dawn breaks and you finally manage to regain some calm that you realize that you are in your monastic chambers, shivering on the stone icy floor, haunted and wringed out by a dream of a memory of a time long lost. A dream about a hope that started that day and took everything with it when it was scorched away.
Idk team, I've been having these thoughts of how it would be potentially interesting to put some cosmic horror into Westeros, like Blackfyre being this eldritch corruption slowly eating at the lands, rites to Old Gods being performed, the royal court on the run, people being turned and twisted etc and here we are with a tentative beginning. Obvs mix it in with Aerion x f!Reader cause who will tell us no. Not me.
I'm not a writer and I never posted anything like this in my life so please be gentle (hides behind a pillar Tony Tony Chopper style).
Warnings for canon typical violence, angst, gore, suggestive material and anything vaguely associated with horror themes. 18+ only!
***
You walk, third in line in a slow, methodical procession. Solemn, quiet and devoid of air of livelihood that would normally follow a group of ten women.
Banners whip around in the wind that already carries the smell of rain. A looming threat of thunder and lightning sits high in the darkness of the clouds, in the temperature that dropped by degrees in a matter of an hour.
A tourney foiled by the thick veil of mourning. A future lost. An idea of a kingdom left behind a door firmly shut.
A young girl's name day never to be her own again, written into the histories with the heroics and folly of men.
A chill that starts on your skin runs directly into your bones. It's familiar in a way that speaks to a home. The ever changing slope of the road a constant in your life. Alongside a sadness that clings to the very heels of your boots, drags behind you and your sisters. You hear a Raven's croak. You don't look up to see where it circles.
People don't look at you.
You are wives to the God of Passing. Sisters to Death. Towing with you a cold comfort of knowing what to do when the dust falls and the unimaginable has happened.
You ponder often how even in your expulsion from society you still must find yourself useful to it.
You come to a halt at the edge of the tourney grounds, a hush ripples through the people gathered there, though if it is a product of reverence or simply of loss for words, you couldn't tell. It must be a relief all the same, for the few lords currently stumbling their ways through flat, awkward condolences.
A Sisters arrival marks the falling of silence. Your order's reality is that of doing, it has long lost the need for words.
You allow yourself a look ahead from the safety of the veil and superstition.
Bad luck to face death in life, most men would not dare risk it.
And yet, the man that greets your cortege is a prince and he does not do you the disservice of pretending you are not there.
The royal title shines through the steel in his spine, the tautness of his face pulled into a careful and neutral expression, though his eyes betray the true depth of grief, violent and all encompassing. It tugs at a string in your ribcage still attached to who you are, once were. Someone who had a future not yet dissolved into countless acts of service.
He is a prince of the realm, a dragon ever roaring on his chest.
You cast you eyes down, leaving the man to whisper prayers and instructions privately to Sister Elder.
Grief though familiar is not a luxury you are invited to partake in or indulge. You facilitate it and let it fall however it must in your wake. You know to look away when people unravel.
In the privacy of your own head though, not yet fully muted with duty, you think; this is not a man in mourning. It's a boy, trembling like a leaf under the weight of reality cast upon him.
It's in the way he clutches the fabric of his lady wife's dress, in how white his knuckles are. And how steadfast she is, as if instinctively knowing to become an anchor to to the bellowing despair in his sails.
The rites are slow because respect demands them to be. You soften death's swiftness by slowing its aftermath down, measuring it and parceling it out. Mapping careful steps through the bitter and treacherous peregrination from death to the funeral fire. Movements methodical and precise, you and your sisters carry prince Baelor's body to the Sept. His skin ice cold, the touch of it still shocking under you fingers. A man who would be king, brought low by ill fate.
They say a beast fell upon prince Baelor. They say a monster birthed from Blackfyre took a chunk of his brain out with one clasp of its terrible maw.
The truth is more terrible still. It sits in the tremble to a second son's hand.
You saw the crown prince once, when you were still just a little girl and remember feeling hopeful at the sight.The bitterness that swells at the notion is sickening and abrupt. That version of you no longer exists yet no one commissioned a rite for her.
You fold the memory tightly, banish it as best you can. Cite a litany of the Seven even as it fills your throat with bile. It burns bright and angry, eats at all it took for you to be here, to survive. To fulfill a promise. The specter of your youth won't disappear no matter how frantically you will it to.
The preparations take three days and by the end of it you are exhausted. Time stretches like treacle, slow and sickly sweet with incense.
You take your leave from the chamber to bathe, eat and rest. Simple and unadorned. A life which moves but doesn't ebb or flow. A meditation more than existence, which comforts as much as it grates on your very nature.
You are assigned vigils by the royal body, sworn to accompany it through its last nights of repose on this earth.
There is something in the storm that has hung itself over Ashford that scratches at a scab in your mind you almost learned how to leave alone. It was part of your Sister training, a memory turned physical pain until you learned to say you had no name, until you eventually learned to say nothing at all.
Alone in the Sept's corridor you feel the air change, a shadow passes in an odd way, flames flicker and some candles go out. You've pulled your cowl off earlier in an attempt to give the beads of sweat on your temples a chance to dry. The air gone heavy and humid inside to spite the wind raging outside. You hear steps, odd and irregular, carrying a weight of formidable stature. It would be easy to mistake them for a loose piece of roofing knocking about in the storm but there is a haze following whoever is approaching. A denseness that you could whet a knife on.
A beast is creeping along the wall. Hunched and terrifying. Covered in multiple robes and throws. Leaning on the wall for support, a slow trickle of blood trailing behind it.
You slow your breathing and go very still, quiet, prey whose only hope is that there is a more ample target in immediate vicinity.
The creatures slow procession leads it towards where Prince Baelor's body is.
It is your duty to the Stranger to keep the bodies safe in their repose.
It is your duty to the uncomplicated animal part of your brain to preserve your hide from harm.
There is a thrumming in the air and a low pitched constant whine. The very foundations seem to vibrate with it beneath your feet, you're unsure if you'd gone mad or if there is something in the walls trying to wriggle out. It is like the beasts very presence is offensive to the Sept and gods that hold it. As the Seven are trying to will the creature away you touch the shape of your own falsehood here, how you wear their garb like a shield though it is little more than a lie. The holy magic however bloated in the stories it is not without effect. The beast's bones keep moving strangely and erratically at impossible angles as if it was being dragged through leagues of water, a pressure no human would withstand. It is hard for it to move here, every second a horrific wound inflicted to its gargantuan body. From time to time the air stills with a sickening crunch as a bone somewhere in its body gives way.
And you know, or maybe it was never truly an unknown, who it is that the beastly flesh grew around.
The memory comes and you are a girl, chasing a small sickly boy at the edge of a lake. Your pet crow fluttering about aiding you. Grief, sudden and wrathful, rips itself from your chest as you lean on the wall. Whatever your body has become, feelings had no home in it in the past years.
You decide to interpose not out of duty anymore but because you are overcome with a terrible fury, a heartbreak for Him as he is attacked with the full smite that the Seven can muster. A creature who was a boy once and who you doubt ever had a rite performed for him too.
That and maybe a touch because you don't truly think yourself alive anymore, this version of you a shadow yanked back into reality by the strangest circumstance.
Inevitable. He'd call it.
You calm your breathing again, smooth over the heckles of survival and move, oh so slowly but deliberately until you stand firmly in its, his way.
A cough wracks through his chest then and he sways, crimson droplets smattering on the wall and flooring.
You reach out because you guess sense has finally taken leave of you.
Big bloodshot eyes with slits for pupils snap up as if the flinch of pain was his plan exactly. A predator of opportunity.
"Aerion" you mouth, throat dry with feeling and misuse, vocal cords unable to make sound so suddenly after you kept the silent vow for years.
He pushes you against the wall, nose at your neck and a knee between your legs, not obscene but the fastest way to to gain purchase on solid rock. He's barley holding himself up and you feel a wet warmth of blood seeping through his tousled dressing and into your robe. It's intimate and terrifying. You inhale sharply and stay very still. The skin of your throat bare inches from his teeth. You feel his exhale there and it sends a tremble down your spine. It's a lot, too much. You have not touched or have been touched by a person since you were anointed as a sister. His teeth snap but do not close on your skin. He shudders with something old and broken rattling inside.
You sag on the wall and your head lolls forward. You don't humour the part of you that chases the contact, the skin. That tiny crippled instinct that should have curled up and died a long time ago. That you should have smothered and didn't out of some old childish obstinacy. The one thing you keep, the one thing they didn't take.
The voice that comes out is twisted and barely intelligible, it rasps as if the very skin of the beasts throat is as torn apart inside as it is on the outside. His breath is hot and smells of blood and pus.
