#Remembered yet unmourned

[nanenna]

Let's Wrap this Up, Folks

Sleepy King Masterpost

No editing, we die like Vlad (slowly, painfully, and unmourned). I'm so happy to say this is done!

---

Danny held Cujo close as he scritched him behind the ears, nothing like stinky puppy kisses to help him feel better. And right now he felt pretty awful! Dark Dan had been Ghost King too, it’s just that no one ever told him so he didn’t know. Well, judging from how Johnny and Kitty reacted no one else knew either, and he guesses that was a good thing. Except now everyone does know, between Johnny and Kitty, and the whole of the Far Frozen he’s pretty sure gossip is already getting around.

“Alright, everyone ready to sit down and explain some shit?” Stinky trenchcoat man said. Danny had been introduced, he just didn’t care to remember Blondie’s name.

“Language!” Mom scolded.

“Yeah, yeah.” Stinky plopped himself onto one of the chairs. Wonder Woman sat elegantly in another while Batman loomed over her chair’s back. The not-a-ghost guy, Deadman, was hovering near Stinky.

Danny decided the safest thing to do was to squeeze himself between Mom and Jazz on the couch. Cujo laid himself out across their laps on his back, begging for belly rubs. Vlad seemed to take the Batman approach, standing off to the side and looking rather annoyed.

Stinky pointed at Danny, “Let’s start with the obvious, you somehow, and I’ve yet to figure it out but I will, are Phantom.”

Danny looked over at his parents. Mom smiled brightly as she patted his arm, “Why don’t you show them what you can do?”

“Yeah, Danno! Show them the Fenton gumption!”

Danny sighed as he transferred Cujo over to Jazz’s lap. Thankfully so long as he was getting attention he’d probably be okay. He stood up and moved into the middle of the room. “It’s kinda bright,” he warned before letting his transformation wash over him. “Tada,” he said lamely, arms held out as he stood in the middle of the room.

“Christ on a cracker!” Stinky yelled as he flopped back dramatically.

“You should see what Vlad looks like,” Danny said wryly.

“Daniel!” Vlad yelled angrily.

“Constantine already told us you two are the same form of being,” Batman said gravely.

“I would also point out that young Danny here has already accused you of some very suspicious activities,” Wonder Woman added.

“Vladdie was going through some things!” Jack stood and shook a fist at the Justice League.

“He’s working on reforming,” Maddie added with a smile.

“The biggest thing he was holding over my head was my secret identity,” Danny gestured as he spoke, then stopped and stared down at his hand. “Am I wearing armor? What? Where did…?” He looked down. He was covered in black armor with a white like loincloth, or whatever those are called, and some kind of white fur cape at his shoulders. He found the cape behind him and held it up: yup. White fluffy fur, kinda reminded him of the yeties. “Wait, I don’t have horns, do I?” He felt over his head, thankfully just finding his regular hair.

“No, Danny, you don’t have horns,” Jazz said with a giggle.

“Well excuse me, Pariah has horns! And so does Frostbite, this cape reminds me of him.” He patted himself, getting a feel for his new armor, it felt weird. “Where did this even come from?”

“Congrats, it comes with the title,” Stinky said with a hand wave.

“I don’t get it, the other ghosts said it wasn’t like a magical title or something, that Pariah just declared himself king and did everything himself. Why am I getting the magical girl outfit upgrade?”

“Pariah stole the crown, much like your weird uncle here tried to do.”

Danny snorted at Constantine calling Vlad his weird uncle.

“But the crown is much older than Pariah Dark, it decides who it belongs to.”

Well that was just great, he’s pretty sure Clockwork had something to do with this. “Ugh, this sucks! How do I get rid of it?” Danny asked.

“You don’t.”

Everyone just stared at Constantine.

“What?”

“Congrats, you’re the new Ghost King. Comes with a castle, an army of thralls, and a pretty significant power boost. Probably doubled since apparently you’re the king twice over.”

“No, I have school on Monday! I can’t go to school looking like this!” Danny waved at himself.

“Danny,” Jazz said while trying to hide a grin, “the armor wasn’t on your human form.”

“Oh… right.” Danny de-transformed and looked down at his hands, the rings were still there. “Um!”

“Sorry, kid, no such thing as a part time king, the crowns and rings are permanent now.”

“Noooooooo!” Danny wailed! His normal life! That he was finally getting back since his parents put better protections on the portal after finally telling them the truth! “I just wanted to graduate high school, was that too much to ask?”

Batman grunted, apparently in agreement.

Danny pointed at Stinky, “This is all your fault! If it weren’t for that spell you hit me with they wouldn’t be stuck.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Danny! Here you guys are!” Ellie came flying into the room, her backpack dragging on the ground. She stopped when she spotted the Justice League members all staring at her. “Uh….”

Cujo barked and scrambled out of Jazz’s lap, leaping for Ellie.

“Cujo! Who’s a good boy?!” The two began happily and loudly rolling around on the ground.

Sam and Tucker followed shortly after, both pausing in the doorway. “Uh… Danny?” Tucker asked slowly, “Why are Batman and Wonder Woman in Vlad’s living room?”

“More importantly,” Sam cut in, “why do you have the Crown of Fire over your head? Twice?”

“Turns out I’m the Ghost King, and so was you-know-who.”

“Which you-know-who?” Tucker asked.

“Nasty Burger explosion.”

Tucker still looked a little confused.

“Since Constantine said the second crown was from an alternate timeline, I’m guessing it belonged to an alternate version of yourself, one you also had to beat in combat.”

Danny sighed and deflated, “You really are the world’s greatest detective.”

Batman’s only response was a twitch of his lips. Danny never wanted to play poker with him.

“Danny, why haven’t you told us about this?” Mom asked in that very special tone of voice that meant she was Not Mad Just Disappointed.

“Well… he was evil,” Danny blurted out as his shoulders hiked up to his ears. “I don’t wanna be evil.”

Jazz came over and pulled him into a hug, “And we’re taking steps to make sure that doesn’t happen, part of that is getting you a proper support network. And look! Now we can ask the Justice League for help.”

“If you don’t mind, why hasn’t anyone called us before now?” Wonder Woman asked.

“What? So an overshadowed Superman can run amok and then there’s a photo of me punching Superman in the face on the front of the newspaper? No thanks.” That was the last thing Danny needed.

“What do you think the magic user branch of the Justice League is bloody for?” Stinky asked loudly.

“I didn’t know there was a magic user branch!” Danny defended.

“None of us did,” Tucker added. He moved to go sit on the floor and lean against the couch, Sam joined him.

“In all fairness, we do not advertise Justice League Dark,” Wonder Woman said with a gentle smile. “But now that we know our assistance is needed we are happy to help.”

“I’m not sure what you can do at this point, we’ve locked down the main way ghosts have been getting into Amity. Mostly it’s the natural portals now, and there’s not much anyone can do about those.”

“Can you get the GIW to back off?” Sam asked.

“Oh! I hadn’t thought about that,” Danny said eagerly.

Batman frowned, “What’s the GIW?”

“Hey!” Ellie came up to the side of Wonder Woman’s chair, “Can you teach me how to sword fight? That sounds so cool!”

“Why ask her?” Danny wandered over, leaving his friends to explain the Gits in White to Batman. “You can just ask Pandora.”

“I don’t have four arms like Pandora,” Ellie whined.

“So just duplicate, it’s easy!” Danny stuck his tongue out and furrowed his brow in concentration, sweat beading on his forehead before his arms split into a second pair. Then, just like Frostbite taught him, he made four ice swords, one in each hand. “See?”

Ellie rolled her eyes, “Oh, it’s so easy! Says the guy who can’t even make one whole duplicate.”

“It’s hard!” Danny defended. “And I can, I could do it with the exo-skeleton, just… not since.” He’d been trying, but duplication was hard, he didn’t seem to have quite enough power. “Wait a minute, I have a power boost with the crowns.” Danny took a step to the left, Danny also took a step to the right. Now there were two Dannies with a perfectly normal number of arms, each holding an ice sword. Each also had a pair of crowns over their head. “Huh, so that’s what it looks like,” both Dannies said in unison.

“Ew, stop it, that’s so weird,” Ellie said in disgust.

“Hey guys! Look what I can do!” Dannies both said with a grin as he popped out several more duplicates. This was going to be fun!

---

Omake:

Danny trudged into school on Monday, chatting with Sam and Tucker, still wearing the crowns and rings along with his normal clothes. He went straight to his locker, getting ready for the day. On time for once!

“Hey Fenturd!” Dash jeered from down the hall, “Why’d you miss school on… uh… what’s that?”

Danny closed his locker and looked up at Dash, “What’s what?”

“What do you mean what’s what? What’s that above your head?”

Danny looked up, then back at Dash, “What’re you talking about?”

“Don’t play coy, there’s a crown above your head! It’s on fire?????”

“Dash, I think I would notice a floating, flaming crown above my head.”

Dash looked completely confused, he looked over at Kwan, who was also frowning. “Kwan!”

“I can see it too, it’s there.”

“Right! Hear that, Fentina?”

Danny just looked at Dash like he’d lost his mind, “This is a really weird prank.”

“I’ll prove it!” Dash whipped out his phone and took a picture, then held the screen out. “There, see?”

Danny looked at the phone, “I just see me and Sam and Tucker.” His friends also leaned in and looked at the screen.

Dash pulled his phone back and looked at it, sure enough the crown wasn’t in the photo. But it was also still floating above Danny’s head, and Kwan had also seen it. What was going on?

“Anyway, I’m gonna go turn in my homework, I don’t want to get stuck in summer school.” Danny turned and wandered off to first period, his friends in tow.

Dash was… very confused. He knows what he saw, he knows the other students saw it too!

“Isn’t that the crown the Ghost King had?” Paulina asked as Danny left.

“I… think so?” Dash said uncertainly.

“I think there were two of them,” Kwan added.

They all followed Danny to first period, they had it together after all. They arrived just after Danny, just in time to hear Mr. Lancer shout, “Sword in the Stone! Mr. Fenton, what is that over your head?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Danny answered calmly while Sam and Tucker, standing just a step behind him, were wildly shaking their heads and making various “Do not” gestures.

“I… You… that is…” Mr. Lancer glanced back and forth, clearly conflicted.

“I managed to finish that essay,” Danny said cheerfully handing it over. “Sorry about Friday, but it should be excused.”

“Yes, I was told about that… something about the Justice League?” Mr. Lancer stared at the crown.

“Yeah, I got to meet them! It was wild.” Danny smiled charmingly.

“Alright, yes, well… please take your seats, class will be starting soon.” Mr. Lancer looked at the crown one last time, then seemed to decide it wasn’t his business and to carry on like usual.

“Oh my god,” Danny whispered to Tucker and Sam as they went to their seats, “I can’t believe that worked!”

“Just your usual day in Amity Park,” Tucker said with a snicker.

Val came walking over once they were seated. She stared at the crowns over Danny’s head, then down to the rings on his fingers no one had noticed yet. Her eyes turned to narrow slits. Danny put a finger to his lips and winked.

[inbarfink]

Okay, so here is my Thought…

It’s already being established that the majority of worlds in the AT Multiverse are born from wishes granted by Prismo. I mean, we know there are other types of alternative universes (Like Flapjack’s universe) - but Prismo’s exposition implies they are the exceptions and not the rule. And we already know the Wish that birthed Farmworld, and we even got a Word of God about Babyworld (a Wish made by BMO) but… 

Was Winterworld also born from someone’s wish?

While first watching the episode, I was wondering if that was a universe born from Ice King’s wish to, like, make Princess Bubblegum madly in love with him or something. But after all of the reveals at the end of the episode and thinking about it a bit more - I feel like this is unlikely. 

I mean for once, there is the question of how the ‘One Wish Per Person' rule works with the existence of a multiverse. Because we know our Simon also tried using his Prismo Wish

(And from their interactions in Episode 4 it seems like Prismo considers Ice King and Simon to be the same person, So a Wish made by Ice King would also count as the one Wish for Simon)

So like… if Ice King made a Wish with Prismo and then got teleported into Winterworld where his wish was granted and then like… a duplicate of him keeps going in Mainworld Ooo and that one’s actually the Simon we follow… would that Simon get his own Wish from Prismo? Or would the Winter King count as the separate Simon who didn’t waste his Wish yet? Finn has already used up his own Wish but his situation is kinda unique cause he, like, came back from being Farmworld Finn. I’m not sure about the rules here but I’m feeling like it shouldn’t work, Simon used up his one Wish failing to bring Betty back so that means he probably didn’t wish up Winterworld.

I don’t feel super-confident about that, but I feel a bit more sure of this next observation; Prismo says that the Wishes he grants, whatever he wants them to or not, always have some sort of a Monkey’s Paw or ironic twist thing going on. They never go quite right for the Wisher. And the Winter King was doing extremely well until our Free Radicals came along.

I mean… maybe the fact that Pre-Curse Simon would’ve been disgusted with the Winter King’s actions counts. Or maybe the implication is that with the Candy Queen’s recent ‘escalation’ he would’ve been killed sooner or later even without the Multiverse Trio’s intervention.

But… compared to how throughly and how quickly Farmworld went badly for Finn specifically- that honestly feels like a stretch. I think that if Winterworld was born from the Wish of any character - it was most likely Marceline.

She has all the motivation to Wish for Simon to have his memories and/or sanity back - and had it for the longest time out of all of his acquaintances. And if it was her Wish - then it sure as hell has gone extremely wrong for her. 

The woman that she loves has been doomed to the same torturous existence Simon has been trapped in alongside her entire kingdom. And Simon might have his sanity and identity again, but this vile man who willingly and knowingly condemned PB to a life of suffering in his stead is so much farther away from the kindly father figure Marceline remembers than Ice King the crazy old Wizard ever was.

And then he also stole Marceline's most beloved personal possessions and like… probably killed her and definitely replaced her with an icy duplicate who is forever the child he wants her to be. If this Wish is some sort of Ironic Monkey's Paw to anyone, I think Marceline makes the most sense. 

(I will give an honorable mention to Betty, because she also very much has the motivation and it is kinda weird we haven’t seen her try and save Simon with a Prismo wish. But I think that while, like, dying in the Mushroom War unmourned and unremembered by the man you did all of this for is a pretty miserable fate.... I still think that Marceline’s narrative fits the idea of cruel irony a lot better)

[k-l-ng]

Non-existent SVSSS Fanfic's summary N°1

Title : "Finding home"

(Any possible future addition to this AU will be found under the "finding home" tag)

Relationship : Ming Fan & Shen Jiu,

Shen Jiu & Shang Qinghua,

Shang Qinghua & Ming Fan,

Shen Jiu & Yue Qingyuan

Reincarnation, Hurt/Comfort, HE

In the modern world, some teachers and students of the Cang Qiong Middle School wake up with vague memories of a past life practicing cultivation. They recognize each other and start living in harmony, painting a heartwarming reunion.

Those who remain miserable are the same.

Ming Fan is glad to have his Shizun back. He knows that, this time too, Shizun will save him from a lifetime of abuse at the hands of his own parents. Shizun is busy now, but he’ll come very soon; he just has to endure a little bit. 

Shizun loves Luo Binghe, so of course, he’ll help his future husband first. He understands that Ning Yingying is also in a precarious situation, so it's natural that Shizun wants to help his other favorite disciple. 

So he waits, and waits. And waits.

Most of the staff seem to like each other better overnight. Only teacher Feng is still cold towards everyone, but it just seems like his default state, and he doesn’t share a past with his colleague. Besides teacher Yue and very tentatively, teacher Shang, no one tries to strike a friendship with him. Yet Ming Fan can’t help feeling drawn to him, and ultimately manages to find a savior in the man.

---

Feng Jiu, unlike his ex-fellow cultivators, has been reincarnated with another surname. He remembers his previous life as a Peak Lord ending abruptly because of a Qi deviation, remembers the impostor taking his body to make a fool of himself, remembers all the love he never got being poured on his replacement; remembers being forgotten, unmourned. Except, surprisingly, by the little rat-shidi, and, maybe unsurprisingly, by his head disciple.

A disciple who, while not knowing he’d died, mourned the side of "Shen Qingqiu" that had disappeared in the blink of an eye. A foolish disciple who'd seemed to partially understand his bitterness at the world -he probably did, considering-, and who, despite Shen Jiu's obvious distaste towards male disciples, still tried so desperately to gain his approval, his affection.

The foolish boy is now crouched on the sidewalk crying, pathetically trying to keep silent. Crying for a Shizun who's gone back home to his family with Luo Binghe for the holidays.

As his teacher, Feng Jiu thinks, he is much obligated to help anyway.

[lord-squiggletits]

What draws you so hard to pharma? I'm so interested in your takes and I'm curious what makes him ur number one cane of worms out of the cast. :O

I think all of the meta posts I've made about Pharma explain enough about why I like him from an analytical/meta perspective (wasted potential, hidden tragic hero, exposing Autobot hypocrisy, etc), so I'll go ahead and share a weirder/less apparent reason.

I wouldn't say that I'm so emotionally attached to Pharma out of resemblance/kinship with him. I don't really have anything in common with him beside some very broad strokes, and I liked him before an event happened in my life that sorta resembled something that happened to Pharma.

The only other IDW character that I've liked to the same extent, not just storywise but personal attachment, is Optimus. Both of them I've had actual real-life feelings over, gotten myself to cry IRL writing or thinking about, etc. What they both have in common are tragic, flawed hero elements, and (where my "weird" reason comes in) both of them have a near-death experience(s) and ultimately die at the end of their storylines with a murky/complicated finality of "did he die redeemed/remembered fondly by others/with people seeing his humanity." I'm a sucker for tragic stories, but it literally is the dying part, I think, that draws me to Pharma.

(Personal stuff under the cut)

A friend of mine died when I was a teenager, and after that happened my perspective on death completely changed. There was the grieving process of course, but their death also just made me ponder death in general... how it could happen, how it feels, what one might think in their final moments, what would make a death meaningful with resolution versus useless and unfulfilled? The particular way my friend died and the conversations we had before then meant that, for me personally, my friend's death left me with a permanent lack of closure on how/why it happened. I mean, I knew the literal cause of death, but I never found out (and probably never will) WHY it happened. If it was on accident or on purpose.

So, on top of all the other narrative juiciness Pharma brings, the fact that he dies three times (two if you think he only almost died on Messatine) makes me feel this indescribable way, more or less an intense empathy. I wonder how it felt for him, what he thought about while he was dying. If he wanted to die (and signs heavily indicate that him goading First Aid was a sort of 'suicide by cop') and if there could've been a way for him to not want to die. It makes me miserable to think of all the goodness he had and yet all of his deaths went basically unmourned and un-remarked upon by all except maybe two people. I look at his deaths not from a writing perspective but from an emotional perspective. His deaths were pointless, unresolved, had no closure. Arguably, both his suffering and his means of escaping that suffering were never healed or paid tribute to. So he makes me feel this sense of tragedy that no other character except Optimus did, whose death also invokes implications of suicidal ideation, questions on what the meaning of his life/death was, and whether he was mourned or not upon his passing.

So, reaching the end of this reflection, I guess the simplest way of putting it is that, without me even realizing it until now, I became attached to Pharma because he reminds me of my old friend.

[ramshead-shackles]

Curled up in the bed she had rented for the night, Sekhet thought she’d be able to sleep pretty easily. With all that had happened in the last month, surely she’d have every right to a good nights sleep. Between the Mage’s Guild and Caius sending her here and there and everywhere after informants, she’d never been so busy in her life. And adjusting to a new country all the while? It was a lot.

And yet, as she laid there, curled up under the blankets with her spotted tail covering her nose, she couldn’t help but feel..uneasy. Like she was being watched.

But, of course she wasn’t. She thought about the small amount of moon sugar tucked away in a side pocket of her adventuring pack, but she didn’t get up to retrieve it. It might help her sleep, or it might keep her up all night; who knew? She certainly didn’t, it all depended on how it was consumed, and she didn’t feel like messing around with it tonight.

But, the thought of the sugary sweet taste was enough to lure her off into comforting dreams, dreams of warm sands and home.

But it changed suddenly, after a while. It was hot now, not just warm, but blisteringly hot. A Khajiit’s fur was made to keep them comfortable despite the temperature, but even it could not compete with this heat.

Her eyes flashed open, she’s being led by the hand by an unfamiliar man in a golden mask. Or..was he unfamiliar? Something about the way he held her hand, the way he walked with such confidence that seemed to remind her of someone from her deepest memories; like a long lost friend from childhood you had long since forgotten.

There were rows of seats before them, all filled with various dead corpses, each in their own stage of decay, but set up like the wedding procession she had seen when she’d first arrived in Balmora. A lead weight dropped in her stomach, and she tried to pull away, to scream, but she had no breath to scream with.

The man stopped at every seat, talking gleefully and introducing his bride to be to each “guest”.

“Nerevar has finally returned to us, the House Unmourned, and shall return us to our former glory!”

With a gasp she shot out of bed, huffing and puffing, fur on end.

What had that been about? She couldn’t really remember. She..did recall a bright, golden mask, and dead corpses..but nothing else seemed to come back.

Just one more thing to worry about.

[brooklynislandgirl]

@nightmarefuele may have had a certain Agent Chaos who may or may not have asked: What’s your favourite part of foreplay?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ Puberty only came knocking on Beth's door, hat in apologetic hand, the year everything else changed, and maybe she didn't notice it right away. Where she was concerned about the mainland, what Gotham and college would be like, and the like, her brother was already twenty and anxious to leave behind a series of hearts that would invariably break. She'd come home early to surprise him but hadn't realised he'd already gotten himself company. Beth knew the girl to be a senior in her glass, more by sight than by name, and for the long blonde hair she sported. She remembers hearing the noises and being curious had made her way to her brother's door. She pushed it open and then stood there and stared. Until that moment, Beth had never seen two people engaged in physical intimacy. Moreover, she'd never really felt any interest beyond the occasional kiss in a story. So why did she watch until he noticed her? She doesn't know. Why did it fill her with a sort of rage she'd never known before? She doesn't know. She walked away as Andy pushed the girl off him and chased her out into the back yard after pulling on a pair of basketball shorts. He tried to explain himself by saying what he had done was sinful. That the reason the girl was making those noises is because sex was something terrible for girls and painful, too. Something that should only happen between husband and wife. At some point, she could only cover her ears and refuse to listen to him but more or less the damage was already done. The anger never really went away. It only became worse when Andy subsequently got married to that goblin of a woman. Beth was only eighteen then and maybe could be forgiven for the meltdown that followed his announcement. She hasn't yet addressed this fully in therapy. ~*~ But more than a dozen years later, that feeling lives in her belly, and she recognises it the moment he steps into the room. He doesn't need the shot-gun blast to garner her attention, but oh how he has a certain flare. She can practically choke on the smell of fear and adrenaline at the mere sight of him. Of course her own breath catches in her lungs for entirely different reasons, which go unnoticed and unmourned in the sigh she exhales slowly. He makes his rounds with small talk in flashes of charisma, nibbling on the hors-d'œuvres and passing judgement on the sparkling wine ~she feels quite the same but she's spoiled by the cellar her family has always kept~ but she feels bile rise when Rachel Dawes has to steal any chance or garnering his attention. Beth watches as she grandstands and hears the way he calls Rachel beautiful. If he watched her swim out in a pool of her own blood, would he find Rachel so pretty then? Beth almost gets to have an answer, a thing that hardly ever happens in day to day life although there is another surge of smouldering envy when she sees light dance off the edge of his knife, and how close he comes to kissing her. She doesn't understand why she feels that ache. Why her eyes prickle and her vision blurs, why she wants to tear Rachel apart because Beth has never really been a jealous creature. But that is the right word. Wanting something... some one ...that doesn't belong to you. Maybe never could. Beth isn't important. Certainly not enough to have a score of men blindly fighting over her. She's only even here because she's Bruce's neighbour, and they are expected to extend invitations to one another. She doubts he or anyone else even know her name. She tries to ignore that rush of heat deep in her belly. The way her knees turn to ocean-eroded sand. Doesn't know what to do with the urge to bite and lick and leave a scar on him all her own. Beth wouldn't flinch from him. She watches until the Bat comes and ruins everything, until the window shatters. When night comes rushing in with a whistling scream. ~*~ There's nothing a hot bath and Eddie Vedder can do for her.

[interact-if]

Hi, do you know any IFs where you can play an MC that is trans? I'm a trans dude and tbh I just want to find love as my authentic self haha

We do, here’s what we found! Some of these IFs recommended here will be implementing the option to choose whether your MC is trans in a later update!

If you have suggestions for any IF where you can play as a trans MC (or if this option will be present in a future chapter/update) , please feel free to let us know and we’ll add it to the list!

A Comedy of Manors by @sviyaginthegreat

Abyss by @abyss-if

All Paths Lead to the Underground by @pol-writes

Blood Moon by @barbwritesstuff

Body Count (18+, will be implemented in a later update) by @bodycountgame

Cantarella by @cantarella-if

Dear Diary, We Created a Plot Hole by @ddwcaph-game

Event Horizon by @if-eventhorizon

Fallen Lights by @fallenlightsif

Fields of Asphodel by @asphodelgame

Greenwarden by @fiddles-ifs

Hollowed Minds by @shai-manahan

Lost Birds (Will be implemented in a later update) by @if-lostbirds

Lure of the Gallows by @lureofthegallowsgame

Magician's Voyage by @magiciansvoyage

Ninelives by @springsaladgaming

Our Life (VN) by @gb-patch

Perseids, or, All This Will Go On Forever (Trans woman) by Communist Sister

Project Hadea by @nyehilismwriting

Remember, You Will Die by @vapolis

Seasons of the Moon by @cereuscross

Sinners and Saints by @sinnersandsaints-linwrites

Snakeroot by @cerberus-writes

Speaker (Will be implemented in a later update) by @speakergame

The Eight Years Revolution (Will be implemented in a later update) by @eight-years-revolution

The Hunt: Demon Eyes by @thehunt-if

The Northern Passage by @northern-passage

The Numbers Game by @thenumbersgameif

The One Chosen by @parrotwatcher

The Passenger by @the-passenger-if

These Reluctant Years by @specterwrites

This Too Shall Pass (Tans only MC) by @ttspinteractive

Thrill Seeker by @thrill-seeker-if

Underbelly by @underbelly-if

Venatici House by @prettyboyhowl

Vardir by @vardir (not yet in demo, will be in next update)

Virtue’s End by @crimsiswrites

When It Hungers by @roast-ifs

You Live and Fern by @beetlebethwrites

Zorlok by @zorlok-if

Up & Coming (no demo yet!)

Legend of a Savior by @legend-of-a-savior-if

Partially Stars by @partiallystarsif

Shores At Dusk by @shoresatdusk (Discontinued)

The Chosen One by @the-upperworld-if (discontinued)

The Everheart Thief by @everheart-if (Discontinued)

The Mystic Pawn by @exn0bisstudios

The Starless Throne by @illonius-if

The Twilight Order by @exn0bisstudios

Unmourned by @unmourned

[a-study-in-darkness]

The "boy in the box" AKA "America's unnamed child" has officially been found and given back his name: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. This is a monumental step. No child deserves to be unnamed, unknown, and unmourned. Even if his case is never solved, at least people will know his name. At least his family will get closure.

On that note, I've noticed a lot of people upset with the press conference above and their unwillingness to share the parents' names at this time. While I don't trust law enforcement not to be a part of a cover up, please remember that this is a case that has garnered a lot of attention over the years. Should the parents be named, it could damage any legal charges, including murder charges. It could cause the guilty party to flee. It could give others the ability to take the law into their own hands and harm the family, guilty and innocent alike. There would almost certainly be innocent family members that would be targeted in any sort of crossfire. We already know he has living siblings that would have been young children or not even born yet at the time. A cover up is not the only reason they may be unwilling to give out this information.

"Joseph has a number of siblings of both the mother and father's side who are living, and it is out of respect for them that their parents' information remain confidential," Smith said (See newsweek source below). This seems to imply that he may or may not have had full-siblings but that Joseph definitely has half-siblings, making the metaphorical water even more muddied.

A Twitter user claims to have found the parents (a link I will not be sharing out of respect for the family) and posted a photo of what he believes to be their grave. If both parents are in fact deceased as well as being the perpatrators, this only complicates legal matters further as neither suspect would be able to create legal defense for themselves.

In my very unprofessional opinion, it seems odd that the parents didn't report their child missing. On the other hand, we are only seeing a small amount of the information. There are other possibilities besides being guilty of murder that may have lead the family to stay quiet. It is dangerous to make assumptions of guilt without having all of the pieces to the puzzle. We should not do even further damage to innocent and grieving family members. We should not create even more victims of this crime.

Sources:

https://www.newsweek.com/boy-box-joseph-augustus-zarelli-has-living-siblings-60-years-later-1765716

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR4Koj9j/

[sonxofxansel]

hybrid-royalty​:

continued from X for @sonxofxansel

Clever. Oh he liked that answer very much. Perhaps this brother wasn’t a complete waste of space after all. Final judgement would be reserved for now, only time would tell if this was yet another family member to be culled from the herd.

The bastard brother wasn’t about to have a weepy little bonding session where they cried about what monsters they were. No he wanted to understand Cary to the core without having to reveal any dangerous insights of himself. Control was safety and the unknown was dangerous. Let the games begin.

“…A god.”

this was the shittiest game of charades he’d ever had the misfortune of being dragged into. all the power he had accumulated over the centuries, the fear he had instilled in people, the lives he had taken and blood that had spilled ... for that posturing, cary still remembered the little boy with sandy-brown hair who’d somehow always managed to earn the ire of his father.

a little kid who’d done nothing wrong. and a kid his own father had failed to protect - so where did the blame for all the blood truly lie? niklaus’ hands? mikael’s? esther’s? or even ansel’s?

fucked if he knew. a thousand years and cary was still none the wiser. canting his head to the side, he considered klaus’ prideful answer for a moment, before he countered.

“gods die. and when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. their ideas outlast them - they become their legacy. what’s yours? ’

continued from X for @sonxofxansel

Clever. Oh he liked that answer very much. Perhaps this brother wasn't a complete waste of space after all. Final judgement would be reserved for now, only time would tell if this was yet another family member to be culled from the herd.

The bastard brother wasn't about to have a weepy little bonding session where they cried about what monsters they were. No he wanted to understand Cary to the core without having to reveal any dangerous insights of himself. Control was safety and the unknown was dangerous. Let the games begin.

"...A god."

[princesssarisa]

Character ask: The Ghost of Christmas Past (A Christmas Carol)

Tagged by anonymous

Favorite thing about them: The gentle wisdom with which it guides Scrooge through his past, subtly coaxing him toward important realizations about his current life.

Also, the fact that it's so deliciously strange, eerie, and ethereal – seeming young and old at the same time, with muscular arms yet "most delicate" legs, its costume featuring both winter holly and summer flowers, and constantly changing shape as its light flickers, so that it's sometimes a disembodied head, sometimes a headless body, sometimes has no legs, sometimes has twenty, etc. It's a very effective symbol of memory, and how it encompasses so many things and constantly shifts and flickers in the mind. And since it's virtually impossible to adapt, this means we get an interesting wide array of different portrayals of the Ghost in different screen and stage adaptations – some male, some female, some young, some old, some human, some not-so-human – which adds freshness to each new retelling.

Least favorite thing about them: The fact that Dickens's surreal, otherwordly description of this Ghost is so impossible to capture in screen adaptations. Only one version – Richard Williams's 1971 animated short – has even come close to depicting it accurately. While I do enjoy seeing all the different creative approaches to the character, none are as fascinating as the original.

Three things I have in common with them:

*I believe it's important to remember the past to create a good present and future.

*I tend to be gentle, or at least I try to be.

*I love revisiting happy memories of past holidays.

Three things I don't have in common with them:

*I'm not a weird, insubstantial ghost.

*I can't time-travel.

*I very rarely wear white (it stains too easily).

Favorite line:

When Scrooge is afraid of falling as they're about to exit his room through the window:

"Bear but a touch of my hand there [on his heart], and you shall be upheld in more than this."

When it notices Scrooge crying at the sight of the countryside where he grew up:

"Your lip is trembling. And what is that upon your cheek?"

When the arrive at Scrooge's old school:

"The school is not quite deserted. A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."

About Scrooge's sister Fan:

"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered. But she had a large heart!"

About Fezziwig, using reverse psychology to provoke Scrooge into admitting the value of his old employer's kindness:

"A small matter to make these silly folk so full of gratitude... Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money; three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves such praise?"

brOTP: Its fellow Ghosts of Christmas, if they were to interact.

OTP: None.

nOTP: Probably any human.

Random headcanon: It was the first of the three ghosts to agree to Jacob Marley's request that they visit Scrooge. The other two were reluctant at first, because the Ghost of Christmas Present only knew the current nasty Scrooge, while the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come only knew his destiny (as it was before he changed it) to die alone and unmourned. But the Ghost of Christmas Past knew the goodhearted, lonely child and idealistic young man he once was and felt sympathy for him, so it agreed to pay the visit right away and helped to persuade the others too.

Unpopular opinion: I think Dickens meant this ghost to be masculine-presenting, not androgynous or genderless. Yes, he calls it "it," but he uses the same pronoun for all the ghosts, including the clearly masculine Marley and Ghost of Christmas Present. He describes it as like a cross between a child and an old man, and Scrooge addresses it as "sir" when they first meet. That said, its status as the strangest and most ethereal of the ghosts does make it come across as the least gendered, and its touch is described as being "as gentle as a woman's hand," so I don't mind when adaptations cast a woman or a young girl in the role.

Song I associate with them: "The Lights of Long Ago" from A Christmas Carol: The Musical.

Favorite pictures of them:

This illustration by Sol Eytinge Jr.

Ann Rutherford in the 1938 film.

Michael Dolan in the 1951 film.

From Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, 1962.

Edith Evans in the 1970 musical Scrooge.

From Richard Williams's 1971 animated version.

Angela Pleasance in the 1984 TV film.

From The Muppet Christmas Carol, 1992.

Joel Grey in the 1999 TV film.

Motion-captured Jim Carrey in Disney's 2009 CGI film.

[fullbattleregalia]

You ever get jumped by an old plot bunny that you’d totally forgotten you’d ever had and been like, ‘Oh, yeah - that was weird’?

Well I was walking across the parking lot today when out of nowhere my brain was like, “Hey, remember that time you were going to Christmas Carol the shit out of Sasuke with the ghosts of teamwork past?” 

So, yeah, that was a thing way back when set at some nebulous later date in Shippuden (the manga was still in progress at the time), and Haku showed up to Sasuke as our Marley stand-in going, “Where are your precious people? I didn’t spare your life for this betrayal bullshit.”  And Sasuke was all, “Why should I care?” which you should never say to a ghost quite frankly (but no one has ever claimed that Sasuke was genre savvy).  And Haku was all, “Oh, you’re GOING to care” (but more, you know, Haku-ish than that).  And then Sasuke gets hella haunted.

Since this was conceived before the Tobito reveal in canon, Obito was the ghost of teamwork past and providing lots of color commentary about Sasuke’s questionable life choices. Sasuke was very weirded out to meet a very exuberant, not-at-all-stoic Uchiha.

The ghost of teamwork present... I think was somehow going to be Naruto?  Maybe?  I think I was trying to think of someone else to use but hadn’t decided who yet. (Thinking about it now, maybe I could have used Neji? I can’t remember if he was dead yet by that point in canon, but he definitely would been an interesting one to throw in there.)

And when we got to the end of the time with the ghost of teamwork future (with a naturally horrifying glimpse of a super depressing future and Sasuke’s pretty-much-unmarked and definitely-unmourned grave), the ghost of teamwork future removes their mask to reveal themself to be Itachi (yeah, this was post his death).  And he was possibly going to say something dramatic (he’s very disappointed in Sasuke’s let’s-destroy-Konoha plans) or maybe just... stare meaningfully before disappearing.  I dunno.  It was gonna be Dramatic.

And then Sasuke decided he should maybe look into this mending-his-ways-and-being-a-better-person thing.

Anyway, that’s the story of that one time I almost self-indulgently traumatized Shippuden!Sasuke into being a better person.

That was weird.

[archivistbot]

Statement of Thomas Mortimer Regarding the plans for a ritual in the Henhouse.

Original statement given March 31st. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT):  Sacrifice. How we think of it, the word has such import. Any god worth worshipping is one who eats his own children. Who reaps as well as sows. Who lays waste and thrives in the same terms.

And the word sacrifice carries with it that abiding dread; the infinite wretchedness of that which is forgotten. The heavy, bubbling fear of a thing unmourned, unsanctified, eaten. A thing undreamed, unthought of, so that the word is eternally lost.

Yet sacrifice to my god— my own god, who smouldered and smoked above the sea all those years, a never-ending chain between my redemption and damnation, a lamp and a mirror, the fount of all that I know—that is what I have prepared for tonight. A sacrifice to my god is to be known seen, understood. Remembered. And never forgotten.

I have dreamed of this for a long time, and now I see it all lead out before me.

[the-golden-ghost]

54 for Jigen and Fujiko?

Okay just to preface - I don’t know if you intended this as a shipping thing but I didn’t write it as one, mostly cause I don’t know how these two would work as anything other than platonic frenemies at this point. So that’s how I wrote them. I hope that’s okay and that you still like it!

~

54. “They’re gone.”

Fujiko awoke at 1:36 am with a sharp gasp. Mercifully, whatever nightmare she’d been having that pulled her from sleep vanished instantly, leaving her shaking and unnerved, but free from haunting thoughts. She looked around the room. She wasn’t in danger, she knew. This was their safe house, and her pistol was loaded on her nightstand, and the quiet static of the radio in the next room told her that Jigen was awake, on guard.

Which wasn’t surprising, since Lupin and Goemon had apparently vanished two days ago without any word on where they were headed. And Jigen, for all his skills in battle and robbery, wasn’t all that good at tracking. Especially not a master thief and a highly trained samurai. So he’d been staying put, waiting for them to call him in for backup.

“They’re gone,” he’d said when Fujiko showed up on the doorstep. “So don’t bother.”

She’d come in anyway, and stayed. She didn’t want to be alone right now. She would have preferred if Lupin were there, and Goemon. But even Jigen’s company would do in a pinch, even if he spent his time mostly ignoring her. She could tell he was concerned about Lupin and Goemon, even if he acted nonchalant. His constant hovering by the radio as he went about his day was evident enough.

And now it was late at night, and he was still hovering. She went into his room, which she ordinarily wouldn’t have done, but tonight... she just wanted company, and her boys weren’t here. Jigen was wholly Lupin’s man, not hers. But he was familiar, and steady if nothing else.

“Why are you still up?” he asked when she came in. He was lying on the bed, fully dressed, smoking and listening to the radio play nothing but static. No transmission. It was raining outside, and the drops were hitting the pane, mixing with the white noise from the speaker.

“Bad dreams. How about you?” She came to sit down next to him on the bed, which, surprisingly, he allowed.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“You really have no idea where they are?”

“None,” he replied. “Doesn’t matter, though. They’re assholes for ditching me here but they’ll turn up. They always do.”

“I’m worried about them,” Fujiko admitted.

“Yeah, well, don’t be. Like I said, they’ll turn up. Probably in a heap of trouble, and I’ll have to go bail them out, but it’ll happen.” He was quiet for a while. “You’re not having nightmares about them, though, huh.”

Fujiko didn’t answer. She hadn’t decided yet who to tell, if anyone. If she’d had a choice in the matter she probably would have picked Goemon. He wasn’t exactly the compassionate sort, but he was a good listener. Lupin had a hard time listening and taking things seriously, and Jigen... Jigen could be harsh. But Jigen was also here, and the other two weren’t.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked at last, deciding to test the waters.

“I have a feeling you’re going to no matter what,” Jigen replied. “Fire away.”

“Have you ever killed a child?”

There was another pause, longer this time. Fujiko could tell she’d caught him off guard, and was beginning to wonder if he’d answer at all when he finally spoke. “That’s... one hell of a question, huh. We’re really getting into it tonight.” When he continued, his voice sounded weary. “I don’t hurt kids. Back in my old job, even then, if someone offered me payment for something like that... no.” He shook his head. “You have to be one hell of a sick bastard to go there. Call me soft, or stupid, but I couldn’t. But the thing is... even if I’ve never done anything like that knowingly, it’s not like I can check ID on everybody I’ve ever traded shots with. I know sometimes kids get into this kind of life. I wish they wouldn’t, but it’s the way it is, and if a sixteen year old steps into my line of fire I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between him and a young man.”

“So... maybe.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I dunno. I try not to think about it.”

Fujiko didn’t answer. She just drew her legs up closer to her chest and stared hard out the window, like it would reveal something more than raindrops.

“What happened, Fujiko?”

She shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”

“You’re probably right. But I don’t think you’d have stuck around all day and come in here at this time of night unless you had something to say. Look... if you hurt someone... if it’s a kid or some shit like that, then...” he sighed. “I’m not going to throw you out, okay? I won’t even tell you what you should have done because I don’t know the answer. Hell, I wasn’t there.”

“No, it’s not that,” Fujiko said. “I met a girl... just a little thing.” Now that she was started, she had to continue. “She said she was twenty but I think she was only sixteen or seventeen. She was trying to rob me,” she smiled, remembering. “It was... cute. I mean she really had no idea who I was, but her technique was so bad, she wouldn’t have gotten a cent from a blind old lady.”

Jigen snorted, amused.

“So... I took her home with me. Gave her a hot meal and a place to sleep, and taught her a few things about basic pickpocketing. She didn’t have any home which is what I expected.”

“A runaway?”

“Yeah, the usual story. Her home life was bad, so she thought she could make it better on the streets. She was sleeping out until I found her. She was tough, and smart, just... confused and inexperienced. I gave her some money and some help to get her started and told her she could come to me if she ever needed anything else.” Fujiko went silent, and Jigen glanced over at her.

“So... what happened, then? You didn’t keep your promise?”

“Sometimes I keep my promises, Jigen,” Fujiko replied quietly. “But I never got a chance with her. She was shot dead two days later. The police found her in an alley, and whoever did it...” her voice cut off. “They wanted to kill her. It wasn’t just a robbery. I could have understood a robbery. They broke her arm first so she couldn’t fight back before they -” she broke off, unable to say more over the painful tightness of her throat. The rain and lights on the window blurred into a haze of yellow as tears began to slide down her face. “Why would they do that? I don’t understand how people can...”

Jigen took a deep breath and turned towards her. “It happens all the time, every day. You can’t... you can’t let yourself break over every random street kid you come across, you know? It’ll kill you.” His words were blunt, but his expression was one of genuine sorrow. Sympathy, even.

“Not all of them. Just one.”

“One’s all it takes,” Jigen said.

Fujiko ignored him, not caring in that moment if it shattered her - if there was no one else in the world to grieve for that dead child she’d known for less than six hours... dammit, she’d do it. Someone had to. The world could be cruel enough to kill children, it couldn’t be cruel enough to let them die unmourned. She sobbed for that girl until she had no more tears left to give, and then she was quiet, breathing shakily.

Jigen gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. “You’re okay?” he asked.

She nodded. She wasn’t, really, but she was better than she was before.

“All right. I’m sorry about her...” he broke off, uncomfortable. “I’ve known people who do things like that. But I’ll never understand it either.”

“Maybe there’s nothing to understand.”

Jigen nodded, reached over and switched the radio off. “Hell, let the two of ‘em figure it out on their own. I’m going to sleep. You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I am.” Fujiko got up off the bed. She thought maybe she’d take a walk. The rain might feel good.

“Okay. You know where to find me if you need me.”

“Goodnight, Jigen.” Outside, the rain still fell.

[aboveallarescuer]

Dany and Viserys’s relationship

This is a list of all the passages from the books featuring key moments in Dany and Viserys’s relationship.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

She wondered how the ants had managed to climb over it and find her. To them these tumbledown stones must loom as huge as the Wall of Westeros. The biggest wall in all the world, her brother Viserys used to say, as proud as if he’d built it himself.

Viserys told her tales of knights so poor that they had to sleep beneath the ancient hedges that grew along the byways of the Seven Kingdoms. Dany would have given much and more for a nice thick hedge. Preferably one without an anthill.

~

She dreamt of her dead brother.

Viserys looked just as he had the last time she’d seen him. His mouth was twisted in anguish, his hair was burnt, and his face was black and smoking where the molten gold had run down across his brow and cheeks and into his eyes.

“You are dead,” Dany said.

Murdered. Though his lips never moved, somehow she could hear his voice, whispering in her ear. You never mourned me, sister. It is hard to die unmourned.

“I loved you once.”

Once, he said, so bitterly it made her shudder. You were supposed to be my wife, to bear me children with silver hair and purple eyes, to keep the blood of the dragon pure. I took care of you. I taught you who you were. I fed you. I sold our mother’s crown to keep you fed.

“You hurt me. You frightened me.”

Only when you woke the dragon. I loved you. “You sold me. You betrayed me.”

No. You were the betrayer. You turned against me, against your own blood. They cheated me. Your horsey husband and his stinking savages. They were cheats and liars. They promised me a golden crown and gave me this. He touched the molten gold that was creeping down his face, and smoke rose from his finger.

“You could have had your crown,” Dany told him. “My sun-and-stars would have won it for you if only you had waited.”

I waited long enough. I waited my whole life. I was their king, their rightful king. They laughed at me.

“You should have stayed in Pentos with Magister Illyrio. Khal Drogo had to present me to the dosh khaleen, but you did not have to ride with us. That was your choice. Your mistake.”

Do you want to wake the dragon, you stupid little whore? Drogo’s khalasar was mine. I bought them from him, a hundred thousand screamers. I paid for them with your maidenhead.

“You never understood. Dothraki do not buy and sell. They give gifts and receive them. If you had waited ...”

I did wait. For my crown, for my throne, for you. All those years, and all I ever got was a pot of molten gold. Why did they give the dragon’s eggs to you? They should have been mine. If I’d had a dragon, I would have taught the world the meaning of our words.

Viserys began to laugh, until his jaw fell away from his face, smoking, and blood and molten gold ran from his mouth.

ADWD Daenerys VIII

“You … you mean to ride them?”

“One of them. All I know of dragons is what my brother told me when I was a girl, and some I read in books, but it is said that even Aegon the Conqueror never dared mount Vhagar or Meraxes, nor did his sisters ride Balerion the Black Dread. Dragons live longer than men, some for hundreds of years, so Balerion had other riders after Aegon died … but no rider ever flew two dragons.”

~

“Tell me of this other Daenerys. I know less than I should of the history of my father’s kingdom. I never had a maester growing up.” Only a brother.

ADWD Daenerys VII

The parchment was written in the Common Tongue. The queen unrolled it slowly, studying the seals and signatures. When she saw the name Ser Willem Darry, her heart beat a little faster. She read it over once, and then again.

“May we know what it says, Your Grace?” asked Ser Barristan.

“It is a secret pact,” Dany said, “made in Braavos when I was just a little girl. Ser Willem Darry signed for us, the man who spirited my brother and myself away from Dragonstone before the Usurper’s men could take us. Prince Oberyn Martell signed for Dorne, with the Sealord of Braavos as witness.” She handed the parchment to Ser Barristan, so he might read it for himself. “The alliance is to be sealed by a marriage, it says. In return for Dorne’s help overthrowing the Usurper, my brother Viserys is to take Prince Doran’s daughter Arianne for his queen.”

The old knight read the pact slowly. “If Robert had known of this, he would have smashed Sunspear as he once smashed Pyke, and claimed the heads of Prince Doran and the Red Viper … and like as not, the head of this Dornish princess too.”

“No doubt that was why Prince Doran chose to keep the pact a secret,” suggested Daenerys. “If my brother Viserys had known that he had a Dornish princess waiting for him, he would have crossed to Sunspear as soon as he was old enough to wed.”

“And thereby brought Robert’s warhammer down upon himself, and Dorne as well,” said Frog. “My father was content to wait for the day that Prince Viserys found his army.”

“Your father?”

“Prince Doran.” He sank back onto one knee. “Your Grace, I have the honor to be Quentyn Martell, a prince of Dorne and your most leal subject.”

Dany laughed.

The Dornish prince flushed red, whilst her own court and counselors gave her puzzled looks. “Radiance?” said Skahaz Shavepate, in the Ghiscari tongue. “Why do you laugh?”

“They call him frog,” she said, “and we have just learned why. In the Seven Kingdoms there are children’s tales of frogs who turn into enchanted princes when kissed by their true love.” Smiling at the Dornish knights, she switched back to the Common Tongue. “Tell me, Prince Quentyn, are you enchanted?”

“No, Your Grace.”

“I feared as much.” Neither enchanted nor enchanting, alas. A pity he’s the prince, and not the one with the wide shoulders and the sandy hair. “You have come for a kiss, however. You mean to marry me. Is that the way of it? The gift you bring me is your own sweet self. Instead of Viserys and your sister, you and I must seal this pact if I want Dorne.”

ADWD Daenerys VI

“Your Grace should not be here, breathing these black humors.”

“I am the blood of the dragon,” Dany reminded him. “Have you ever seen a dragon with the flux?” Viserys had oft claimed that Targaryens were untroubled by the pestilences that afflicted common men, and so far as she could tell, it was true. She could remember being cold and hungry and afraid, but never sick.

ADWD Daenerys V

“Will they joust for me? I should like that.” Viserys had told her stories of the tourneys he had witnessed in the Seven Kingdoms, but Dany had never seen a joust herself.

ADWD Daenerys IV

“Have you forgotten who I am?”

“No. Have you?”

Viserys would have his head off for that insolence. “I am the blood of the dragon. Do not presume to teach me lessons.” When Dany stood, the lion pelt slipped from her shoulders and tumbled to the ground. “Leave me.”

ADWD Daenerys III

Her brother Viserys had once feasted the captains of the Golden Company, in hopes they might take up his cause. They ate his food and heard his pleas and laughed at him. Dany had only been a little girl, but she remembered.

~

She turned her back upon the night, to where Barristan Selmy stood silent in the shadows. “My brother once told me a Westerosi riddle. Who listens to everything yet hears nothing?”

“A knight of the Kingsguard.” Selmy’s voice was solemn.

ADWD Daenerys II

Safe. The word made Dany’s eyes fill up with tears. “I want to keep you safe.” Missandei was only a child. With her, she felt as if she could be a child too. “No one ever kept me safe when I was little. Well, Ser Willem did, but then he died, and Viserys … I want to protect you but … it is so hard. To be strong. I don’t always know what I should do. I must know, though. I am all they have. I am the queen … the … the …”

“… mother,” whispered Missandei.

“Mother to dragons.” Dany shivered.

“No. Mother to us all.” Missandei hugged her tighter. “Your Grace should sleep. Dawn will be here soon, and court.”

“We’ll both sleep, and dream of sweeter days. Close your eyes.” When she did, Dany kissed her eyelids and made her giggle.

Kisses came easier than sleep, however. Dany shut her eyes and tried to think of home, of Dragonstone and King’s Landing and all the other places that Viserys had told her of, in a kinder land than this … but her thoughts kept turning back to Slaver’s Bay, like ships caught in some bitter wind.

~

“...He was a good knight but a bad king, for he had no right to the throne he sat. That was when I knew that to redeem myself I must find the true king, and serve him loyally with all the strength that still remained me.”

“My brother Viserys.”

~

“Have you forgotten Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon?”

“Never. That was Lannister work, Your Grace.”

“Lannister or Stark, what difference? Viserys used to call them the Usurper’s dogs. If a child is set upon by a pack of hounds, does it matter which one tears out his throat? All the dogs are just as guilty. The guilt …” The word caught in her throat. Hazzea, she thought, and suddenly she heard herself say, “I have to see the pit,” in a voice as small as a child’s whisper.

~

Viserys had told her all the tales when she was little. He loved to talk of dragons. She knew how Harrenhal had fallen. She knew about the Field of Fire and the Dance of the Dragons. One of her forebears, the third Aegon, had seen his own mother devoured by his uncle’s dragon. And there were songs beyond count of villages and kingdoms that lived in dread of dragons till some brave dragonslayer rescued them.

ADWD Daenerys I

Five Aegons had ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. There would have been a sixth, but the Usurper’s dogs had murdered her brother’s son when he was still a babe at the breast. If he had lived, I might have married him. Aegon would have been closer to my age than Viserys. Dany had only been conceived when Aegon and his sister were murdered. Their father, her brother Rhaegar, perished even earlier, slain by the Usurper on the Trident. Her brother Viserys had died screaming in Vaes Dothrak with a crown of molten gold upon his head. They will kill me too if I allow it. The knives that slew my Stalwart Shield were meant for me.

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

Westeros had seven gods at least, though Viserys had told her that some septons said the seven were only aspects of a single god, seven facets of a single crystal. That was just confusing. The red priests believed in two gods, she had heard, but two who were eternally at war. Dany liked that even less. She would not want to be eternally at war.

~

“When I sent you down into the sewers, part of me hoped I’d seen the last of you. It seemed a fitting end for liars, to drown in slavers’ filth. I thought the gods would deal with you, but instead you returned to me. My gallant knights of Westeros, an informer and a turncloak. My brother would have hanged you both.” Viserys, would have, anyway. She did not know what Rhaegar would have done.

~

“You protected my father for many years, fought beside my brother on the Trident, but you abandoned Viserys in his exile and bent your knee to the Usurper instead. Why? And tell it true.”

“Some truths are hard to hear. Robert was a ... a good knight ... chivalrous,
brave ... he spared my life, and the lives of many others ... Prince Viserys was only a boy, it would have been years before he was fit to rule, and ... forgive me, my queen, but you asked for truth ... even as a child, your brother Viserys oft seemed to be his father’s son, in ways that Rhaegar never did.”

“His father’s son?” Dany frowned. “What does that mean?”

The old knight did not blink. “Your father is called ‘the Mad King’ in Westeros. Has no one ever told you?”

“Viserys did.” The Mad King. “The Usurper called him that, the Usurper and his dogs.” The Mad King. “It was a lie.”

“Why ask for truth,” Ser Barristan said softly, “if you close your ears to it?”

~

When her handmaid brought the book, Dany had no trouble finding the page where she had left off, but it was no good. She found herself reading the same passage half a dozen times. Ser Jorah gave me this book as a bride’s gift, the day I wed Khal Drogo. But Daario is right, I shouldn’t have banished him. I should have kept him, or I should have killed him. She played at being a queen, yet sometimes she still felt like a scared little girl. Viserys always said what a dolt I was. Was he truly mad? She closed the book. She could still recall Ser Jorah, if she wished. Or send Daario to kill him.

~

“Was my father truly mad?” she blurted out. Why do I ask that? “Viserys said this talk of madness was a ploy of the Usurper’s ...”

“Viserys was a child, and the queen sheltered him as much as she could. Your father always had a little madness in him, I now believe. Yet he was charming and generous as well, so his lapses were forgiven. His reign began with such promise ... but as the years passed, the lapses grew more frequent, until ...”

Dany stopped him. “Do I want to hear this now?”

Ser Barristan considered a moment. “Perhaps not. Not now.”

“Not now,” she agreed. “One day. One day you must tell me all. The good and the bad. There is some good to be said of my father, surely?”

“There is, Your Grace. Of him, and those who came before him. Your grandfather Jaehaerys and his brother, their father Aegon, your mother ... and Rhaegar. Him most of all.”

ASOS Daenerys V

“What if we were to build siege towers? My brother Viserys told tales of such, I know they can be made.”

~

“Why are you here?” Dany demanded of him. “If Robert sent you to kill me, why did you save my life?” He served the Usurper. He betrayed Rhaegar’s memory, and abandoned Viserys to live and die in exile. Yet if he wanted me dead, he need only have stood
aside ...

~

“Your Grace, I am sorry I misled you. It was the only way to keep the Lannisters from learning that I had joined you. You are watched, as your brother was. Lord Varys reported every move Viserys made, for years. Whilst I sat on the small council, I heard a hundred such reports. And since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises.”

ASOS Daenerys IV

She bulled over him. “You have been a better friend to me than any I have known, a better brother than Viserys ever was. You are the first of my Queensguard, the commander of my army, my most valued counselor, my good right hand. I honor and respect and cherish you—but I do not desire you, Jorah Mormont, and I am weary of your trying to push every other man in the world away from me, so I must needs rely on you and you alone. It will not serve, and it will not make me love you any better.”

~

“Tell me more of my brother Rhaegar, if you would. I liked the tale you told me on the ship, of how he decided that he must be a warrior.”

“Your Grace is kind to say so.”


“Viserys said that our brother won many tourneys.”

~

Dany pulled the lion pelt tighter about her shoulders. “Viserys said once that it was my fault, for being born too late.” She had denied it hotly, she remembered, going so far as to tell Viserys that it was his fault for not being born a girl. He beat her cruelly for that insolence. “If I had been born more timely, he said, Rhaegar would have married me instead of Elia, and it would all have come out different. If Rhaegar had been happy in his wife, he would not have needed the Stark girl.”

“Perhaps so, Your Grace.” Whitebeard paused a moment. “But I am not certain it was in Rhaegar to be happy.”

“You make him sound so sour,” Dany protested.

“Not sour, no, but ... there was a melancholy to Prince Rhaegar, a sense ...” The old man hesitated again.

“Say it,” she urged. “A sense ...?”

“... of doom. He was born in grief, my queen, and that shadow hung over him all his days.”

Viserys had spoken of Rhaegar’s birth only once. Perhaps the tale saddened him too much.

ASOS Daenerys III

“Your pretty crown might buy another century,” said the fat one in Valyrian. “Your crown of the three dragons.”

Dany waited for his words to be translated. “My crown is not for sale.” When Viserys sold their mother’s crown, the last joy had gone from him, leaving only rage.

~

“I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.”


“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice ... that’s what kings are for.”

ASOS Daenerys II

“My brother visited Pentos, Myr, Braavos, near all the Free Cities. The magisters and archons fed him wine and promises, but his soul was starved to death. A man cannot sup from the beggar’s bowl all his life and stay a man. I had my taste in Qarth, that was enough. I will not come to Pentos bowl in hand.”

“Better to come a beggar than a slaver,” Arstan said.

“There speaks one who has been neither.” Dany’s nostrils flared. “Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and
I ... my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?”

~

Dany shrugged him off. “Viserys would have bought as many Unsullied as he had the coin for. But you once said I was like Rhaegar ...”

“I remember, Daenerys.”

“Your Grace,” she corrected. “Prince Rhaegar led free men into battle, not slaves. Whitebeard said he dubbed his squires himself, and made many other knights as well.”

“There was no higher honor than to receive your knighthood from the Prince of Dragonstone.”

“Tell me, then—when he touched a man on the shoulder with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the weak’? Or ‘Go forth and defend them’? At the Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our dragon banners—did they give their lives because they believed in Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid for?”

ASOS Daenerys I

Once on a voyage to Braavos, as she’d watched the crew wrestle down a great green sail in a rising gale, she had even thought how fine it would be to be a sailor. But when she told her brother, Viserys had twisted her hair until she cried. “You are blood of the dragon,” he had screamed at her. “A dragon, not some smelly fish.”

He was a fool about that, and so much else, Dany thought. If he had been wiser and more patient, it would be him sailing west to take the throne that was his by rights. Viserys had been stupid and vicious, she had come to realize, yet sometimes she missed him all the same. Not the cruel weak man he had become by the end, but the brother who had sometimes let her creep into his bed, the boy who told her tales of the Seven Kingdoms, and talked of how much better their lives would be once he claimed his crown.

~

“Viserys talked of those skulls,” said Dany. “The Usurper took them down and hid them away. He could not bear them looking down on him upon his stolen throne.”

~

“...Next you’ll claim you squired for him.”

“I make no such claim, ser. Myles Mooton was Prince Rhaegar’s squire, and Richard Lonmouth after him. When they won their spurs, he knighted them himself, and they remained his close companions. Young Lord Connington was dear to the prince as well, but his oldest friend was Arthur Dayne.”

“The Sword of the Morning!” said Dany, delighted. “Viserys used to talk about his wondrous white blade. He said Ser Arthur was the only knight in the realm who was our brother’s peer.”

Whitebeard bowed his head. “It is not my place to question the words of Prince Viserys.”

“King,” Dany corrected. “He was a king, though he never reigned. Viserys, the Third of His Name. But what do you mean?” His answer had not been one that she’d expected. “Ser Jorah named Rhaegar the last dragon once. He had to have been a peerless warrior to be called that, surely?”

~

Dany turned back to the squire. “I know little of Rhaegar. Only the tales Viserys told, and he was a little boy when our brother died. What was he truly like?”

 A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys V

It was not by choice that she sought the waterfront. She was fleeing again. Her whole life had been one long flight, it seemed. She had begun running in her mother’s womb, and never once stopped. How often had she and Viserys stolen away in the black of night, a bare step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives? But it was run or die. Xaro had learned that Pyat Pree was gathering the surviving warlocks together to work ill on her.

ACOK Daenerys IV

Viserys, was her first thought the next time she paused, but a second glance told her otherwise. The man had her brother’s hair, but he was taller, and his eyes were a dark indigo rather than lilac.

~

Then phantoms shivered through the murk, images in indigo. Viserys screamed as the molten gold ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth.

ACOK Daenerys III

The crown was the only offering she’d kept. The rest she sold, to gather the wealth she had wasted on the Pureborn. Xaro would have sold the crown too—the Thirteen would see that she had a much finer one, he swore—but Dany forbade it. “Viserys sold my mother’s crown, and men called him a beggar. I shall keep this one, so men will call me a queen.” And so she did, though the weight of it made her neck ache.

Yet even crowned, I am a beggar still, Dany thought. I have become the most splendid beggar in the world, but a beggar all the same. She hated it, as her brother must have. All those years of running from city to city one step ahead of the Usurper’s knives, pleading for help from archons and princes and magisters, buying our food with flattery. He must have known how they mocked him. Small wonder he turned so angry and bitter. In the end it had driven him mad. It will do the same to me if I let it. Part of her would have liked nothing more than to lead her people back to Vaes Tolorro, and make the dead city bloom. No, that is defeat. I have something Viserys never had. I have the dragons. The dragons are all the difference.

ACOK Daenerys II

She wondered whether Aegon’s Red Keep had a pool like this, and fragrant gardens full of lavender and mint. It must, surely. Viserys always said the Seven Kingdoms were more beautiful than any other place in the world.

~

The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them. Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

But before she could do that she must conquer.

The Usurper will kill you, sure as sunrise, Mormont had said. Robert had slain her gallant brother Rhaegar, and one of his creatures had crossed the Dothraki sea to poison her and her unborn son. They said Robert Baratheon was strong as a bull and fearless in battle, a man who loved nothing better than war. And with him stood the great lords her brother had named the Usurper’s dogs, cold-eyed Eddard Stark with his frozen heart, and the golden Lannisters, father and son, so rich, so powerful, so treacherous.

How could she hope to overthrow such men? When Khal Drogo had lived, men trembled and made him gifts to stay his wrath. If they did not, he took their cities, wealth and wives and all. But his khalasar had been vast, while hers was meager. Her people had followed her across the red waste as she chased her comet, and would follow her across the poison water too, but they would not be enough. Even her dragons might not be enough. Viserys had believed that the realm would rise for its rightful king ... but Viserys had been a fool, and fools believe in foolish things.

~

It pleased her to hear that the Usurper’s dogs were fighting amongst themselves, though she was unsurprised. The same thing happened when her Drogo died, and his great khalasar tore itself to pieces. “My brother is dead as well, Viserys who was the true king,” she told the Summer Islander. “Khal Drogo my lord husband killed him with a crown of molten gold.” Would her brother have been any wiser, had he known that the vengeance he had prayed for was so close at hand?

~

“I am not the frightened girl you met in Pentos. I have counted only fifteen name days, true ... but I am as old as the crones in the dosh khaleen and as young as my dragons, Jorah. I have borne a child, burned a khal, and crossed the red waste and the Dothraki sea. Mine is the blood of the dragon.”

“As was your brother’s,” he said stubbornly.

“I am not Viserys.”

ACOK Daenerys I

Her father had been slain before she was born, and her splendid brother Rhaegar as well. Her mother had died bringing her into the world while the storm screamed outside. Gentle Ser Willem Darry, who must have loved her after a fashion, had been taken by a wasting sickness when she was very young. Her brother Viserys, Khal Drogo who was her sun-and-stars, even her unborn son, the gods had claimed them all. They will not have my dragons, Dany vowed. They will not.

~

Such little things, she thought as she fed them by hand, or rather, tried to feed them, for the dragons would not eat. They would hiss and spit at each bloody morsel of horsemeat, steam rising from their nostrils, yet they would not take the food ... until Dany recalled something Viserys had told her when they were children.

Only dragons and men eat cooked meat, he had said.

When she had her handmaids char the horsemeat black, the dragons ripped at it eagerly, their heads striking like snakes.

~

“...Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not.”

~

“My handmaids say there are ghosts here.”

“There are ghosts everywhere,” Ser Jorah said softly. “We carry them with us wherever we go.”

Yes, she thought. Viserys, Khal Drogo, my son Rhaego, they are with me always.

~

“...The Hightowers are an ancient family, very rich and very proud.”

“And loyal,” Dany said. “I remember, Viserys said the Hightowers were among those who stayed true to my father.”

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys X

“Princess ...” he began.

“Why do you call me that?” Dany challenged him. “My brother Viserys was your king, was he not?”

“He was, my lady.”

“Viserys is dead. I am his heir, the last blood of House Targaryen. Whatever was his is mine now.”

“My ... queen,” Ser Jorah said, going to one knee.

AGOT Daenerys IX

Viserys stood before her, screaming. “The dragon does not beg, slut. You do not command the dragon. I am the dragon, and I will be crowned.” The molten gold trickled down his face like wax, burning deep channels in his flesh. “I am the dragon and I will be crowned!” he shrieked, and his fingers snapped like snakes, biting at her nipples, pinching, twisting, even as his eyes burst and ran like jelly down seared and blackened cheeks.

AGOT Daenerys VIII

The child kicked inside her, as if he had heard. Dany remembered the story Viserys had told her, of what the Usurper’s dogs had done to Rhaegar’s children. His son had been a babe as well, yet they had ripped him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against a wall. That was the way of men. “They must not hurt my son!” she cried. “I will order my khas to keep him safe, and Drogo’s bloodriders will—”

AGOT Daenerys VII

Ogo and his son had shared the high bench with her lord husband at the naming feast where Viserys had been crowned, but that was in Vaes Dothrak, beneath the Mother of Mountains, where every rider was a brother and all quarrels were put aside. It was different out in the grass. Ogo’s khalasar had been attacking the town when Khal Drogo caught him.

~

“You are your brother’s sister, in truth.”

“Viserys?” She did not understand.

“No,” he answered. “Rhaegar.”

~

“This is the way of war. These women are our slaves now, to do with as we please.”

“It pleases me to hold them safe,” Dany said, wondering if she had dared too much. “If your warriors would mount these women, let them take them gently and keep them for wives. Give them places in the khalasar and let them bear you sons.”

Qotho was ever the cruelest of the bloodriders. It was he who laughed. “Does the horse breed with the sheep?”

Something in his tone reminded her of Viserys. Dany turned on him angrily. “The dragon feeds on horse and sheep alike.”

AGOT Daenerys VI

She had never seen the Seven Kingdoms either, no more than Drogo, yet she felt as though she knew them from all the tales her brother had told her. Viserys had promised her a thousand times that he would take her back one day, but he was dead now and his promises had died with him.

~

If I were not the blood of the dragon, she thought wistfully, this could be my home. She was khaleesi, she had a strong man and a swift horse, handmaids to serve her, warriors to keep her safe, an honored place in the dosh khaleen awaiting her when she grew old ... and in her womb grew a son who would one day bestride the world. That should be enough for any woman ... but not for the dragon. With Viserys gone, Daenerys was the last, the very last. She was the seed of kings and conquerors, and so too the child inside her. She must not forget.

~

“You have not laughed since your brother the Khal Rhaggat was crowned by Drogo,” said Irri. “It is good to see, Khaleesi.”

Dany smiled shyly. It was sweet to laugh. She felt half a girl again.

~

Dany was near tears as they carried her back. The taste in her mouth was one she had known before: fear. For years she had lived in terror of Viserys, afraid of waking the dragon. This was even worse. It was not just for herself that she feared now, but for her baby. He must have sensed her fright, for he moved restlessly inside her. Dany stroked the swell of her belly gently, wishing she could reach him, touch him, soothe him. “You are the blood of the dragon, little one,” she whispered as her litter swayed along, curtains drawn tight. “You are the blood of the dragon, and the dragon does not fear.”

AGOT Daenerys V

As Doreah and Irri arranged her cushions, she searched for her brother. Even across the length of the crowded hall, Viserys should have been conspicuous with his pale skin, silvery hair, and beggar’s rags, but she did not see him anywhere.

~

“Where is my brother?” Dany asked. “He ought to have come by now, for the feast.”

“I saw His Grace this morning,” he told her. “He told me he was going to the Western Market, in search of wine.”

“Wine?” Dany said doubtfully. Viserys could not abide the taste of the fermented mare’s milk the Dothraki drank, she knew that, and he was oft at the bazaars these days, drinking with the traders who came in the great caravans from east and west. He seemed to find their company more congenial than hers.

“Wine,” Ser Jorah confirmed, “and he has some thought to recruit men for his army from the sellswords who guard the caravans.” A serving girl laid a blood pie in front of him, and he attacked it with both hands.

“Is that wise?” she asked. “He has no gold to pay soldiers. What if he’s betrayed?” Caravan guards were seldom troubled much by thoughts of honor, and the Usurper in King’s Landing would pay well for her brother’s head. “You ought to have gone with him, to keep him safe. You are his sworn sword.”

“We are in Vaes Dothrak,” he reminded her. “No one may carry a blade here or shed a man’s blood.” “Yet men die,” she said. “Jhogo told me. Some of the traders have eunuchs with them, huge men who strangle thieves with wisps of silk. That way no blood is shed and the gods are not angered.” “Then let us hope your brother will be wise enough not to steal anything.” Ser Jorah wiped the grease off his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned close over the table. “He had planned to take your dragon’s eggs, until I warned him that I’d cut off his hand if he so much as touched them.”

For a moment Dany was so shocked she had no words. “My eggs ... but they’re mine, Magister Illyrio gave them to me, a bride gift, why would Viserys want ... they’re only stones ...”

“The same could be said of rubies and diamonds and fire opals, Princess ... and dragon’s eggs are rarer by far. Those traders he’s been drinking with would sell their own manhoods for even one of those stones, and with all three Viserys could buy as many sellswords as he might need.”

Dany had not known, had not even suspected. “Then ... he should have them. He does not need to steal them. He had only to ask. He is my brother ... and my true king.”

“He is your brother,” Ser Jorah acknowledged.

“You do not understand, ser,” she said. “My mother died giving me birth, and my father and my brother Rhaegar even before that. I would never have known so much as their names if Viserys had not been there to tell me. He was the only one left. The only one. He is all I have.” “Once,” said Ser Jorah. “No longer, Khaleesi. You belong to the Dothraki now. In your womb rides the stallion who mounts the world.”

~

A sense of dread closed around her heart. “Go to him,” she commanded Ser Jorah. “Stop him. Bring him here. Tell him he can have the dragon’s eggs if that is what he wants.” The knight rose swiftly to his feet.

“Where is my sister?” Viserys shouted, his voice thick with wine. “I’ve come for her feast. How dare you presume to eat without me? No one eats before the king. Where is she? The whore can’t hide from the dragon.”

~

Dany gave a wordless cry of terror. She knew what a drawn sword meant here, even if her brother did not.

Her voice made Viserys turn his head, and he saw her for the first time. “There she is,” he said, smiling. He stalked toward her, slashing at the air as if to cut a path through a wall of enemies, though no one tried to bar his way.

“The blade ... you must not,” she begged him. “Please, Viserys. It is forbidden. Put down the sword and come share my cushions. There’s drink, food ... is it the dragon’s eggs you want? You can have them, only throw away the sword.”

“Do as she tells you, fool,” Ser Jorah shouted, “before you get us all killed.”

Viserys laughed. “They can’t kill us. They can’t shed blood here in the sacred city ... but I can.” He laid the point of his sword between Daenerys’s breasts and slid it downward, over the curve of her belly. “I want what I came for,” he told her. “I want the crown he promised me. He bought you, but he never paid for you. Tell him I want what I bargained for, or I’m taking you back. You and the eggs both. He can keep his bloody foal. I’ll cut the bastard out and leave it for him.” The sword point pushed through her silks and pricked at her navel. Viserys was weeping, she saw; weeping and laughing, both at the same time, this man who had once been her brother.

Distantly, as from far away, Dany heard her handmaid Jhiqui sobbing in fear, pleading that she dared not translate, that the khal would bind her and drag her behind his horse all the way up the Mother of Mountains. She put her arm around the girl. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I shall tell him.”

She did not know if she had enough words, yet when she was done Khal Drogo spoke a few brusque sentences in Dothraki, and she knew he understood. The sun of her life stepped down from the high bench. “What did he say?” the man who had been her brother asked her, flinching. It had grown so silent in the hall that she could hear the bells in Khal Drogo’s hair, chiming softly with each step he took. His bloodriders followed him, like three copper shadows. Daenerys had gone cold all over. “He says you shall have a splendid golden crown that men shall tremble to behold.”

Viserys smiled and lowered his sword. That was the saddest thing, the thing that tore at her afterward ... the way he smiled. “That was all I wanted,” he said. “What was promised.”

When the sun of her life reached her, Dany slid an arm around his waist. The khal said a word, and his bloodriders leapt forward. Qotho seized the man who had been her brother by the arms. Haggo shattered his wrist with a single, sharp twist of his huge hands. Cohollo pulled the sword from his limp fingers. Even now Viserys did not understand. “No,” he shouted, “you cannot touch me, I am the dragon, the dragon, and I will be crowned!”

Khal Drogo unfastened his belt. The medallions were pure gold, massive and ornate, each one as large as a man’s hand. He shouted a command. Cook slaves pulled a heavy iron stew pot from the firepit, dumped the stew onto the ground, and returned the pot to the flames. Drogo tossed in the belt and watched without expression as the medallions turned red and began to lose their shape. She could see fires dancing in the onyx of his eyes. A slave handed him a pair of thick horsehair mittens, and he pulled them on, never so much as looking at the man.

Viserys began to scream the high, wordless scream of the coward facing death. He kicked and twisted, whimpered like a dog and wept like a child, but the Dothraki held him tight between them. Ser Jorah had made his way to Dany’s side. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Turn away, my princess, I beg you.”

“No.” She folded her arms across the swell of her belly, protectively.

At the last, Viserys looked at her. “Sister, please ... Dany, tell them ... make them ... sweet sister ...”

When the gold was half-melted and starting to run, Drogo reached into the flames, snatched out the pot. “Crown!” he roared. “Here. A crown for Cart King!” And upended the pot over the head of the man who had been her brother.

The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk to smoldering ... yet no drop of blood was spilled.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.

AGOT Daenerys IV

Dany followed on her silver, escorted by Ser Jorah Mormont and her brother Viserys, mounted once more. After the day in the grass when she had left him to walk back to the khalasar, the Dothraki had laughingly called him Khal Rhae Mhar, the Sorefoot King. Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not even known he was being mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the very young and the very old. That won him yet another name: Khal Rhaggat, the Cart King. Her brother had thought it was the khal’s way of apologizing for the wrong Dany had done him. She had begged Ser Jorah not to tell him the truth, lest he be shamed. The knight had replied that the king could well do with a bit of shame ... yet he had done as she bid. It had taken much pleading, and all the pillow tricks Doreah had taught her, before Dany had been able to make Drogo relent and allow Viserys to rejoin them at the head of the column.

~

Beyond the horse gate, plundered gods and stolen heroes loomed to either side of them. The forgotten deities of dead cities brandished their broken thunderbolts at the sky as Dany rode her silver past their feet. Stone kings looked down on her from their thrones, their faces chipped and stained, even their names lost in the mists of time. Lithe young maidens danced on marble plinths, draped only in flowers, or poured air from shattered jars. Monsters stood in the grass beside the road; black iron dragons with jewels for eyes, roaring griffins, manticores with their barbed tails poised to strike, and other beasts she could not name. Some of the statues were so lovely they took her breath away, others so misshapen and terrible that Dany could scarcely bear to look at them. Those, Ser Jorah said, had likely come from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai.

“So many,” she said as her silver stepped slowly onward, “and from so many lands.”

Viserys was less impressed. “The trash of dead cities,” he sneered. He was careful to speak in the Common Tongue, which few Dothraki could understand, yet even so Dany found herself glancing back at the men of her khas, to make certain he had not been overheard. He went on blithely. “All these savages know how to do is steal the things better men have built ... and kill.” He laughed. “They do know how to kill. Otherwise I’d have no use for them at all.”

“They are my people now,” Dany said. “You should not call them savages, brother.”

“The dragon speaks as he likes,” Viserys said ... in the Common Tongue. He glanced over his shoulder at Aggo and Rakharo, riding behind them, and favored them with a mocking smile. “See, the savages lack the wit to understand the speech of civilized men.” A moss-eaten stone monolith loomed over the road, fifty feet tall. Viserys gazed at it with boredom in his eyes. “How long must we linger amidst these ruins before Drogo gives me my army? I grow tired of waiting.”

“The princess must be presented to the dosh khaleen ...”

“The crones, yes,” her brother interrupted, “and there’s to be some mummer’s show of a prophecy for the whelp in her belly, you told me. What is that to me? I’m tired of eating horsemeat and I’m sick of the stink of these savages.” He sniffed at the wide, floppy sleeve of his tunic, where it was his custom to keep a sachet. It could not have helped much. The tunic was filthy. All the silk and heavy wools that Viserys had worn out of Pentos were stained by hard travel and rotted from sweat.

Ser Jorah Mormont said, “The Western Market will have food more to your taste, Your Grace. The traders from the Free Cities come there to sell their wares. The khal will honor his promise in his own time.”

“He had better,” Viserys said grimly. “I was promised a crown, and I mean to have it. The dragon is not mocked.” Spying an obscene likeness of a woman with six breasts and a ferret’s head, he rode off to inspect it more closely.

~

“I will give my brother his gifts tonight,” she decided as Jhiqui was washing her hair. “He should look a king in the sacred city. Doreah, run and find him and invite him to sup with me.” Viserys was nicer to the Lysene girl than to her Dothraki handmaids, perhaps because Magister Illyrio had let him bed her back in Pentos. “Irri, go to the bazaar and buy fruit and meat. Anything but horseflesh.”

“Horse is best,” Irri said. “Horse makes a man strong.”

“Viserys hates horsemeat.”

[...] While her handmaids prepared the meal, Dany laid out the clothing she’d had made to her brother’s measure: a tunic and leggings of crisp white linen, leather sandals that laced up to the knee, a bronze medallion belt, a leather vest painted with fire-breathing dragons. The Dothraki would respect him more if he looked less a beggar, she hoped, and perhaps he would forgive her for shaming him that day in the grass. He was still her king, after all, and her brother. They were both blood of the dragon.

She was arranging the last of his gifts—a sandsilk cloak, green as grass, with a pale grey border that would bring out the silver in his hair—when Viserys arrived, dragging Doreah by the arm. Her eye was red where he’d hit her. “How dare you send this whore to give me commands,” he said. He shoved the handmaid roughly to the carpet.

The anger took Dany utterly by surprise. “I only wanted ... Doreah, what did you say?”

“Khaleesi, pardons, forgive me. I went to him, as you bid, and told him you commanded him to join you for supper.”

“No one commands the dragon,” Viserys snarled. “I am your king! I should have sent you back her head!”

The Lysene girl quailed, but Dany calmed her with a touch. “Don’t be afraid, he won’t hurt you. Sweet brother, please, forgive her, the girl misspoke herself, I told her to ask you to sup with me, if it pleases Your Grace.” She took him by the hand and drew him across the room. “Look. These are for you.”

Viserys frowned suspiciously. “What is all this?”

“New raiment. I had it made for you.” Dany smiled shyly.

He looked at her and sneered. “Dothraki rags. Do you presume to dress me now?”

“Please ... you’ll be cooler and more comfortable, and I thought ... maybe if you dressed like them, the Dothraki ... ” Dany did not know how to say it without waking his dragon.

“Next you’ll want to braid my hair.”

“I’d never ... ” Why was he always so cruel? She had only wanted to help. “You have no right to a braid, you have won no victories yet.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Fury shone from his lilac eyes, yet he dared not strike her, not with her handmaids watching and the warriors of her khas outside. Viserys picked up the cloak and sniffed at it. “This stinks of manure. Perhaps I shall use it as a horse blanket.”

“I had Doreah sew it specially for you,” she told him, wounded. “These are garments fit for a khal.” “I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells in his hair,” Viserys spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. “You forget yourself, slut. Do you think that big belly will protect you if you wake the dragon?”

His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she’d hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.

It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. “You are the one who forgets himself,” Dany said to him. “Didn’t you learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails.”

Viserys scrambled back to his feet. “When I come into my kingdom, you will rue this day, slut.” He walked off, holding his torn face, leaving her gifts behind him.

Drops of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak. Dany clutched the soft cloth to her cheek and sat cross-legged on her sleeping mats.

“Your supper is ready, Khaleesi,” Jhiqui announced.

“I’m not hungry,” Dany said sadly. She was suddenly very tired.

AGOT Daenerys III

Her handmaid Irri and the young archers of her khas were fluid as centaurs, but Viserys still struggled with the short stirrups and the flat saddle. Her brother was miserable out here. He ought never have come. Magister Illyrio had urged him to wait in Pentos, had offered him the hospitality of his manse, but Viserys would have none of it. He would stay with Drogo until the debt had been paid, until he had the crown he had been promised. “And if he tries to cheat me, he will learn to his sorrow what it means to wake the dragon,” Viserys had vowed, laying a hand on his borrowed sword. Illyrio had blinked at that and wished him good fortune.

Dany realized that she did not want to listen to any of her brother’s complaints right now. The day was too perfect. The sky was a deep blue, and high above them a hunting hawk circled. The grass sea swayed and sighed with each breath of wind, the air was warm on her face, and Dany felt at peace. She would not let Viserys spoil it.

~

Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged here. Viserys was soiled and stained in city silks and ringmail.

He was still screaming. “You do not command the dragon. Do you understand? I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, I will not hear orders from some horselord’s slut, do you hear me?” His hand went under her vest, his fingers digging painfully into her breast. “Do you hear me?”

Dany shoved him away, hard.

Viserys stared at her, his lilac eyes incredulous. She had never defied him. Never fought back. Rage twisted his features. He would hurt her now, and badly, she knew that.

Crack.

The whip made a sound like thunder. The coil took Viserys around the throat and yanked him backward. He went sprawling in the grass, stunned and choking. The Dothraki riders hooted at him as he struggled to free himself. The one with the whip, young Jhogo, rasped a question. Dany did not understand his words, but by then Irri was there, and Ser Jorah, and the rest of her khas. “Jhogo asks if you would have him dead, Khaleesi,” Irri said.

“No,” Dany replied. “No.”

Jhogo understood that. One of the others barked out a comment, and the Dothraki laughed.

Irri told her, “Quaro thinks you should take an ear to teach him respect.”

Her brother was on his knees, his fingers digging under the leather coils, crying incoherently, struggling for breath. The whip was tight around his windpipe.

“Tell them I do not wish him harmed,” Dany said.

Irri repeated her words in Dothraki. Jhogo gave a pull on the whip, yanking Viserys around like a puppet on a string. He went sprawling again, freed from the leather embrace, a thin line of blood under his chin where the whip had cut deep.

“I warned him what would happen, my lady,” Ser Jorah Mormont said. “I told him to stay on the ridge, as you commanded.”

“I know you did,” Dany replied, watching Viserys. He lay on the ground, sucking in air noisily, red-faced and sobbing. He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been.

“Take his horse,” Dany commanded Ser Jorah. Viserys gaped at her. He could not believe what he was hearing; nor could Dany quite believe what she was saying. Yet the words came. “Let my brother walk behind us back to the khalasar.” Among the Dothraki, the man who does not ride was no man at all, the lowest of the low, without honor or pride. “Let everyone see him as he is.”

“No!” Viserys screamed. He turned to Ser Jorah, pleading in the Common Tongue with words the horsemen would not understand. “Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Your king commands it. Kill these Dothraki dogs and teach her.”

The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt between her toes and oil in her hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could see the decision on his face. “He shall walk, Khaleesi,” he said. He took her brother’s horse in hand while Dany remounted her silver. Viserys gaped at him, and sat down in the dirt. He kept his silence, but he would not move, and his eyes were full of poison as they rode away. Soon he was lost in the tall grass. When they could not see him anymore, Dany grew afraid. “Will he find his way back?” she asked Ser Jorah as they rode.

“Even a man as blind as your brother should be able to follow our trail,” he replied.

“He is proud. He may be too shamed to come back.”

Jorah laughed. “Where else should he go? If he cannot find the khalasar, the khalasar will most surely find him. It is hard to drown in the Dothraki sea, child.”

Dany saw the truth of that. The khalasar was like a city on the march, but it did not march blindly. Always scouts ranged far ahead of the main column, alert for any sign of game or prey or enemies, while outriders guarded their flanks. They missed nothing, not here, in this land, the place where they had come from. These plains were a part of them ... and of her, now.

“I hit him,” she said, wonder in her voice. Now that it was over, it seemed like some strange dream that she had dreamed. “Ser Jorah, do you think ... he’ll be so angry when he gets back ... She shivered. “I woke the dragon, didn’t I?”

Ser Jorah snorted. “Can you wake the dead, girl? Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, and he died on the Trident. Viserys is less than the shadow of a snake.”

His blunt words startled her. It seemed as though all the things she had always believed were suddenly called into question. “You ... you swore him your sword ...”

“That I did, girl,” Ser Jorah said. “And if your brother is the shadow of a snake, what does that make his servants?” His voice was bitter.

“He is still the true king. He is ...”

Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. “Truth now. Would you want to see Viserys sit a throne?”

Dany thought about that. “He would not be a very good king, would he?”

“There have been worse ... but not many.” The knight gave his heels to his mount and started off again.

Dany rode close beside him. “Still,” she said, “the common people are waiting for him. Magister Illyrio says they are sewing dragon banners and praying for Viserys to return from across the narrow sea to free them.”

“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.”

Dany rode along quietly for a time, working his words like a puzzle box. It went against everything that Viserys had ever told her to think that the people could care so little whether a true king or a usurper reigned over them. Yet the more she thought on Jorah’s words, the more they rang of truth.

“What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?” she asked him.

“Home,” he said. His voice was thick with longing.

“I pray for home too,” she told him, believing it.

Ser Jorah laughed. “Look around you then, Khaleesi.”

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King’s Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind’s eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind’s eye, all the doors were red.

“My brother will never take back the Seven Kingdoms,” Dany said. She had known that for a long time, she realized. She had known it all her life. Only she had never let herself say the words, even in a whisper, but now she said them for Jorah Mormont and all the world to hear.

Ser Jorah gave her a measuring look. “You think not.”

“He could not lead an army even if my lord husband gave him one,” Dany said. “He has no coin and the only knight who follows him reviles him as less than a snake. The Dothraki make mock of his weakness. He will never take us home.”

AGOT Daenerys II

“Best we get Princess Daenerys wedded quickly before they hand half the wealth of Pentos away to sellswords and bravos,” Ser Jorah Mormont jested. The exile had offered her brother his sword the night Dany had been sold to Khal Drogo; Viserys had accepted eagerly. Mormont had been their constant companion ever since.

Magister Illyrio laughed lightly through his forked beard, but Viserys did not so much as smile. “He can have her tomorrow, if he likes,” her brother said. He glanced over at Dany, and she lowered her eyes. “So long as he pays the price.”

Illyrio waved a languid hand in the air, rings glittering on his fat fingers. “I have told you, all is settled. Trust me. The khal has promised you a crown, and you shall have it.”

“Yes, but when?”

“When the khal chooses,” Illyrio said. “He will have the girl first, and after they are wed he must make his procession across the plains and present her to the dosh khaleen at Vaes Dothrak. After that, perhaps. If the omens favor war.”

Viserys seethed with impatience. “I piss on Dothraki omens. The Usurper sits on my father’s throne. How long must I wait?”

Illyrio gave a massive shrug. “You have waited most of your life, great king. What is another few months, another few years?”

Ser Jorah, who had traveled as far east as Vaes Dothrak, nodded in agreement. “I counsel you to be patient, Your Grace. The Dothraki are true to their word, but they do things in their own time. A lesser man may beg a favor from the khal, but must never presume to berate him.”

Viserys bristled. “Guard your tongue, Mormont, or I’ll have it out. I am no lesser man, I am the rightful Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. The dragon does not beg.”

Ser Jorah lowered his eyes respectfully. Illyrio smiled enigmatically and tore a wing from the duck. Honey and grease ran over his fingers and dripped down into his beard as he nibbled at the tender meat. There are no more dragons, Dany thought, staring at her brother, though she did not dare say it aloud.

~

Viserys was seated just below her, splendid in a new black wool tunic with a scarlet dragon on the chest. Illyrio and Ser Jorah sat beside him. Theirs was a place of high honor, just below the khal’s own bloodriders, but Dany could see the anger in her brother’s lilac eyes. He did not like sitting beneath her, and he fumed when the slaves offered each dish first to the khal and his bride, and served him from the portions they refused. He could do nothing but nurse his resentment, so nurse it he did, his mood growing blacker by the hour at each insult to his person.

Dany had never felt so alone as she did seated in the midst of that vast horde. Her brother had told her to smile, and so she smiled until her face ached and the tears came unbidden to her eyes. She did her best to hide them, knowing how angry Viserys would be if he saw her crying, terrified of how Khal Drogo might react. Food was brought to her, steaming joints of meat and thick black sausages and Dothraki blood pies, and later fruits and sweetgrass stews and delicate pastries from the kitchens of Pentos, but she waved it all away. Her stomach was a roil, and she knew she could keep none of it down.

~

Her brother Viserys gifted her with three handmaids. Dany knew they had cost him nothing; Illyrio no doubt had provided the girls. Irri and Jhiqui were copper-skinned Dothraki with black hair and almond-shaped eyes, Doreah a fair-haired, blue-eyed Lysene girl. “These are no common servants, sweet sister,” her brother told her as they were brought forward one by one. “Illyrio and I selected them personally for you. Irri will teach you riding, Jhiqui the Dothraki tongue, and Doreah will instruct you in the womanly arts of love.” He smiled thinly. “She’s very good, Illyrio and I can both swear to that.”

~

Khal Drogo commanded his bloodriders to bring forth his own horse, a lean red stallion. As the khal was saddling the horse, Viserys slid close to Dany on her silver, dug his fingers into her leg, and said, “Please him, sweet sister, or I swear, you will see the dragon wake as it has never woken before.”

The fear came back to her then, with her brother’s words. She felt like a child once more, only thirteen and all alone, not ready for what was about to happen to her.

AGOT Daenerys I

Her brother held the gown up for her inspection. “This is beauty. Touch it. Go on. Caress the fabric.”

Dany touched it. The cloth was so smooth that it seemed to run through her fingers like water. She could not remember ever wearing anything so soft. It frightened her. She pulled her hand away. “Is it really mine?”

“A gift from the Magister Illyrio,” Viserys said, smiling. Her brother was in a high mood tonight. “The color will bring out the violet in your eyes. And you shall have gold as well, and jewels of all sorts. Illyrio has promised. Tonight you must look like a princess.”

A princess, Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never really known. “Why does he give us so much?” she asked. “What does he want from us?” For nigh on half a year, they had lived in the magister’s house, eating his food, pampered by his servants. Dany was thirteen, old enough to know that such gifts seldom come without their price, here in the free city of Pentos.

“Illyrio is no fool,” Viserys said. He was a gaunt young man with nervous hands and a feverish look in his pale lilac eyes. “The magister knows that I will not forget my friends when I come into my throne.”

Dany said nothing. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and other, less savory things. He had friends in all of the Nine Free Cities, it was said, and even beyond, in Vaes Dothrak and the fabled lands beside the Jade Sea. It was also said that he’d never had a friend he wouldn’t cheerfully sell for the right price. Dany listened to the talk in the streets, and she heard these things, but she knew better than to question her brother when he wove his webs of dream. His anger was a terrible thing when roused. Viserys called it “waking the dragon.”

Her brother hung the gown beside the door. “Illyrio will send the slaves to bathe you. Be sure you wash off the stink of the stables. Khal Drogo has a thousand horses, tonight he looks for a different sort of mount.” He studied her critically. “You still slouch. Straighten yourself” He pushed back her shoulders with his hands. “Let them see that you have a woman’s shape now.” His fingers brushed lightly over her budding breasts and tightened on a nipple. “You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you.

You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” His fingers twisted her, the pinch cruelly hard through the rough fabric of her tunic. “Do you?” he repeated.

“No,” Dany said meekly.

Her brother smiled. “Good.” He touched her hair, almost with affection. “When they write the history of my reign, sweet sister, they will say that it began tonight.”

When he was gone, Dany went to her window and looked out wistfully on the waters of the bay. The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the setting sun. Dany could hear the singing of the red priests as they lit their night fires and the shouts of ragged children playing games beyond the walls of the estate. For a moment she wished she could be out there with them, barefoot and breathless and dressed in tatters, with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo’s manse.

Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills and flowered plains and great rushing rivers, where towers of dark stone rose amidst magnificent blue-grey mountains, and armored knights rode to battle beneath the banners of their lords. The Dothraki called that land Rhaesh Andahli, the land of the Andals. In the Free Cities, they talked of Westeros and the Sunset Kingdoms. Her brother had a simpler name. “Our land,” he called it. The words were like a prayer with him. If he said them enough, the gods were sure to hear. “Ours by blood right, taken from us by treachery, but ours still, ours forever. You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers.”

And perhaps the dragon did remember, but Dany could not. She had never seen this land her brother said was theirs, this realm beyond the narrow sea. These places he talked of, Casterly Rock and the Eyrie, Highgarden and the Vale of Arryn, Dorne and the Isle of Faces, they were just words to her. Viserys had been a boy of eight when they fled King’s Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper, but Daenerys had been only a quickening in their mother’s womb.

Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother told her the stories. The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship’s black sails. Her brother Rhaegar battling the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of King’s Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper’s dogs, the lords Lannister and Stark. Princess Elia of Dorne pleading for mercy as Rhaegar’s heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her eyes. The polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room while the Kingslayer opened Father’s throat with a golden sword.

She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the narrow sea. Her mother had died birthing her, and for that her brother Viserys had never forgiven her.

She did not remember Dragonstone either. They had run again, just before the Usurper’s brother set sail with his new-built fleet. By then only Dragonstone itself, the ancient seat of their House, had remained of the Seven Kingdoms that had once been theirs. It would not remain for long. The garrison had been prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the Braavosian coast.

She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, half-blind, roaring and bellowing orders from his sickbed. The servants had lived in terror of him, but he had always been kind to Dany. He called her “Little Princess” and sometimes “My Lady,” and his hands were soft as old leather. He never left his bed, though, and the smell of sickness clung to him day and night, a hot, moist, sickly sweet odor. That was when they lived in Braavos, in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with a lemon tree outside her window. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever.

They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not allow it. The Usurper’s hired knives were close behind them, he insisted, though Dany had never seen one.

At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to welcome the last Targaryens to their homes and tables, but as the years passed and the Usurper continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, doors closed and their lives grew meaner. Years past they had been forced to sell their last few treasures, and now even the coin they had gotten from Mother’s crown had gone. In the alleys and wine sinks of Pentos, they called her brother “the beggar king.” Dany did not want to know what they called her.

“We will have it all back someday, sweet sister,” he would promise her. Sometimes his hands shook when he talked about it. “The jewels and the silks, Dragonstone and King’s Landing, the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, all they have taken from us, we will have it back.” Viserys lived for that day. All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.

~

The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany’s head and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother had often told her that it was never too hot for a Targaryen. “Ours is the house of the dragon,” he would say. “The fire is in our blood.”

~

“Drogo is so rich that even his slaves wear golden collars. A hundred thousand men ride in his khalasar, and his palace in Vaes Dothrak has two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver.” There was more like that, so much more, what a handsome man the khal was, so tall and fierce, fearless in battle, the best rider ever to mount a horse, a demon archer. Daenerys said nothing. She had always assumed that she would wed Viserys when she came of age. For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the Conqueror had taken his sisters to bride. The line must be kept pure, Viserys had told her a thousand times; theirs was the kingsblood, the golden blood of old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. Dragons did not mate with the beasts of the field, and Targaryens did not mingle their blood with that of lesser men. Yet now Viserys schemed to sell her to a stranger, a barbarian.

~

He rested his hand on the hilt of the sword that Illyrio had lent him, and said, “Are you sure that Khal Drogo likes his women this young?”

“She has had her blood. She is old enough for the khal,” Illyrio told him, not for the first time. “Look at her. That silver-gold hair, those purple eyes ... she is the blood of old Valyria, no doubt, no doubt ... and highborn, daughter of the old king, sister to the new, she cannot fail to entrance our Drogo.” When he released her hand, Daenerys found herself trembling.

“I suppose,” her brother said doubtfully. “The savages have queer tastes. Boys, horses, sheep ...”

“Best not suggest this to Khal Drogo,” Illyrio said.

Anger flashed in her brother’s lilac eyes. “Do you take me for a fool?”

The magister bowed slightly. “I take you for a king. Kings lack the caution of common men. My apologies if I have given offense.” He turned away and clapped his hands for his bearers.

~

Dany could smell the stench of Illyrio’s pallid flesh through his heavy perfumes.

Her brother, sprawled out on his pillows beside her, never noticed. His mind was away across the narrow sea. “We won’t need his whole khalasar,” Viserys said. His fingers toyed with the hilt of his borrowed blade, though Dany knew he had never used a sword in earnest. “Ten thousand, that would be enough, I could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten thousand Dothraki screamers. The realm will rise for its rightful king. Tyrell, Redwyne, Darry, Greyjoy, they have no more love for the Usurper than I do. The Dornishmen burn to avenge Elia and her children. And the smallfolk will be with us. They cry out for their king.” He looked at Illyrio anxiously. “They do, don’t they?”

“They are your people, and they love you well,” Magister Illyrio said amiably. “In holdfasts all across the realm, men lift secret toasts to your health while women sew dragon banners and hide them against the day of your return from across the water.” He gave a massive shrug. “Or so my agents tell me.”

Dany had no agents, no way of knowing what anyone was doing or thinking across the narrow sea, but she mistrusted Illyrio’s sweet words as she mistrusted everything about Illyrio. Her brother was nodding eagerly, however. “I shall kill the Usurper myself,” he promised, who had never killed anyone, “as he killed my brother Rhaegar. And Lannister too, the Kingslayer, for what he did to my father.”

“That would be most fitting,” Magister Illyrio said. Dany saw the smallest hint of a smile playing around his full lips, but her brother did not notice. Nodding, he pushed back a curtain and stared off into the night, and Dany knew he was fighting the Battle of the Trident once again.

~

Dany noticed that her brother’s hand was clenched tightly around the hilt of his borrowed sword. He looked almost as frightened as she felt.

~

Magister Illyrio’s words were honey. “Many important men will be at the feast tonight. Such men have enemies. The khal must protect his guests, yourself chief among them, Your Grace. No doubt the Usurper would pay well for your head.”

“Oh, yes,” Viserys said darkly. “He has tried, Illyrio, I promise you that. His hired knives follow us everywhere. I am the last dragon, and he will not sleep easy while I live.”

The palanquin slowed and stopped. The curtains were thrown back, and a slave offered a hand to help Daenerys out. His collar, she noted, was ordinary bronze. Her brother followed, one hand still clenched hard around his sword hilt.

~

Her brother took her by the arm as Illyrio waddled over to the khal, his fingers squeezing so hard that they hurt. “Do you see his braid, sweet sister?”

Drogo’s braid was black as midnight and heavy with scented oil, hung with tiny bells that rang softly as he moved. It swung well past his belt, below even his buttocks, the end of it brushing against the back of his thighs.

“You see how long it is?” Viserys said. “When Dothraki are defeated in combat, they cut off their braids in disgrace, so the world will know their shame. Khal Drogo has never lost a fight. He is Aegon the Dragonlord come again, and you will be his queen.”

Dany looked at Khal Drogo. His face was hard and cruel, his eyes as cold and dark as onyx. Her brother hurt her sometimes, when she woke the dragon, but he did not frighten her the way this man frightened her. “I don’t want to be his queen,” she heard herself say in a small, thin voice. “Please, please, Viserys, I don’t want to, I want to go home.”

“Home?” He kept his voice low, but she could hear the fury in his tone. “How are we to go home, sweet sister? They took our home from us!” He drew her into the shadows, out of sight, his fingers digging into her skin. “How are we to go home?” he repeated, meaning King’s Landing, and Dragonstone, and all the realm they had lost.

Dany had only meant their rooms in Illyrio’s estate, no true home surely, though all they had, but her brother did not want to hear that. There was no home there for him. Even the big house with the red door had not been home for him. His fingers dug hard into her arm, demanding an answer. “I don’t know ...” she said at last, her voice breaking. Tears welled in her eyes.

“I do,” he said sharply. “We go home with an army, sweet sister. With Khal Drogo’s army, that is how we go home. And if you must wed him and bed him for that, you will.” He smiled at her. “I’d let his whole fuck you if need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men, and their horses too if that was what it took to get my army. Be grateful it is only Drogo. In time you may even learn to like him. Now dry your eyes. Illyrio is bringing him over, and he will not see you crying.”

Dany turned and saw that it was true. Magister Illyrio, all smiles and bows, was escorting Khal Drogo over to where they stood. She brushed away unfallen tears with the back of her hand.

“Smile,” Viserys whispered nervously, his hand failing to the hilt of his sword. “And stand up straight. Let him see that you have breasts. Gods know, you have little enough as is.”

Daenerys smiled, and stood up straight. 

[rpmemesbyarat]

RP Meme from "Chapter One: Shoots and Canes" in the Children of Gaia Tribebook from "Werewolf: The Apocalypse" Part Two of Two

As corrupt as it was, it was still a civilization with laws and with that came at least a measure of stability.

For better or for worse, we had gotten what we wanted.

Sure I know who Jesus is. I watch TV, don’t I?

But who was Jesus? I mean, really.

I mean, do you get all crazy-weepy and stuff over religion? I’m not making fun of you, I just want to know.

He was a great man, the greatest.

He told us the most important things ever-- love each other, care for each other, do right.

I know he was, he is, the most important teacher of righteousness who ever lived.

Whether he was God, or a god, I don’t know.

No one knows. We can only believe.

He stays with us always.

Thanks a lot. I needed that.

Is this serious enough?

Okay, women had it rough in Athens, but they had more rights in Sparta than anywhere else in the ancient world.

We’re here to talk about our successes, our biggest battles, the things that give us hope in this age.

Wild unicorns were still around back then.

Would that more were like him today.

I’ve got a great story for you!

People began standing up for themselves and a little hope returned to the beaten down multitudes.

Everyone drank.

It was a house of the dead, y’all, not a place to party.

That place sounds pretty weird.

So we are reminded — though we may desire peace, we must still be ready to fight.

It is our duty to make war when needed so that others will not have to.

No bringer of war dies content.

Rape exists outside the human species; it has for a long time.

Is it possible to kill with love in one’s heart?

Who is it you must kill?

Great for the throat, don’t you think?

It wasn’t just that they tricked us, it’s that we kept trying and trying to mend fences that were long since scattered ash.

We’re not saints.

As much as we want to be of one heart and one mind, we’re still individuals at heart.

Some of our ancestors — let’s be honest, some of our contemporaries have done stuff we’re all ashamed of.

How did humans get to messing with nature, instead of the other way round?

Maybe it’s the humans’ fault — they’ve managed to do a lot of stuff without any help.

That’s the toolmaker puzzle; you make things, and you eventually make something that can destroy the world.

No one can say when a legend is legend, when a myth is a myth, or when a piece of knowledge becomes so shabby and unreal as to be a ‘fairy tale’; myths are not lies but stories about what is true.

They had something we did not, something we still have not.

What to do about the human population?

Get something between his teeth to prop his mouth open

To tell of a thing for the first time is to make it, to make it real.

We can make, you know, necklaces or something out of this?

I guess we have to choose what we want to believe.

My teacher in school said something funny one day, said religion is choosing the forms of worship from poetic tales.

Hey, let’s go back to the real world.

I am honored that you have come all this way.

My tongue is harsh and my teeth are still sharp.

There are things that must be heard, even by our youngest and most innocent.

There are things that must be done.

He believes that his intellect can overcome his instincts — and perhaps in his case it can.

We fight, though none have yet died for one side or another.

Each of these cities has seen an outbreak of some new disease, some epidemic that is — so far — limiting itself to a small but unmourned portion of the human population.

It is as if these cities are petri dishes where some person, or thing, or group is cultivating and experimenting with new sicknesses.

Whoever bred them is now waiting to see how much damage they can do — perhaps before the next batch is released.

Many of us are already in the cities, working among the infected to heal and to prevent.

It is an effort that you may wish to join, I think.

Some of you are not old enough to remember the fear of nuclear fire.

The threat is ended.

Did these bombs simply vanish? Did the circuitry evaporate, the plutonium turn to lead, the arming systems transform into home appliances? They did not. Of course many still sit in their wasp-tunnels, still connected to the same buttons that did not go away, just in case a petty man in power needs to kill a continent. Others, though. . .Others have been taken apart, and sold.

Some are now in the hands of evil men. Some are in the hands of organized criminals who look for the most profitable buyer. And some are surely in the hands of the Enemy.

No greater nightmare exists.

These bombs, this fire — it is out there, waiting to be used.

Someone has committed a grave atrocity against the world, and for what purpose?

Who could even harness such power?

We have no time left. We must act.

[undyingsunshine]

Thanks to @jockvillagersonly AND @alwaysaslutforshakespeare for tagging!!! ^^

The tag goes as follows: Share 7 sentences of a Wip and tag 7 people!

I don't have 7 people to tag, so I'll post a bigger snippet to make up for it xD

Sadly I also don't have anything DMBJ related that I feel is good enough to share, but I do have this Roleplay starter that I began writing yesterday!!

For context, my character is called Mars, a kitsune! In this world, kitsunes live more human-like lifespans, with their tails coming in for every 10 years they live. However, Mars is different in that she was cursed in her first 100 years of life, and because of that, she's doomed to live for much longer - a whole 1000 years, with her tails only appearing every 100 years. And every 100 years that passes/every tail she gets, she loses all her memories. At this point, she's a whole 500 years old, but doesn't actually know! Despite the angstyness of this, she's a super upbeat and friendly girl, and is incredibly willing to help anyone! XD

HERE IS THE WIP! First two paras are a snippet that I love from my favourite book House of Leaves.

"What can I say, I'm a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unmourned, well, you get the drift.

As a counselor once told me -a counselor for Disaffected Yought, I might add: "You like that crap because it reminds you of you." Couldn't of said it better or put it more bluntly. Don't even disagree with it either." House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

You are you.

But who are you?

Nothing more than an echo with no origin and no true destination. Fated to simply fade out in the empty expanses of time and space. Forgotten, even by yourself.

Five tails, fifty years of life, and yet you can't remember a thing. You don't look a day over twenty. There's something wrong with you, and you know it from the way you draw back on a bow with ease and grace, but can't recall any time you've spent practicing it. You know it in the way that you're constantly feeling fractured - a glass puzzle whose pieces have been lost or crushed too fine to even bother with. There's something missing. Many things. You don't have family. You don't have friends. You don't have anything that could even begin to explain why.

It's frustrating.

You feel alone.

You feel trapped. But you also feel unbound. Boxed, but unrestrained and overwhelmed by the expanse of freedom that's just out of reach. The smog of confusion chokes you, but you're just as discomforted by the chill of fresh air in your lungs. Hypersensitive. Disconnected.

As for who I'm tagging!! @traineecryptid and @strandedchesspiece !! As usual, don't feel pressured!! And also tagging anyone else who wants to do this!!