#a brave and even noble one in context of protecting others and standing up to bad guys

[rosuuu]

the sun, the stars and the moon

Mash Kyrielight - A Tribute

  Meeting [Name] was like seeing colour for the first time. When Mash met [Name] it was like 2 entirely different worlds collided and for once Mash was able to forget.

  For Mash Kyrielight thought of herself as a star. A small simple star in our universe;insignificant. and she was OK with that fact. Mash Kyrielight knew full well who she was, how she was conceived to what her purpose was. Mash was an experiment one the supposedly failed but she was OK with that. For [Fullname] though of themselves as a star. Ordinary and one of the many nothing special.[ Fullname] always dreamed of meeting the moon a weird aspiration but everything becomes clear with context. To  [Fullname] the moon was beautiful They didn't mean the literal moon in that. 

When Mash First met  [Name] Her world became brighter, “cliche.” was what Mash would think. Like those romance novels Roman would bring her to keep her entertained. Unlike  [Name], Mash had no strong wish that was until she met [Name]. For Mash [Name] was the sun ; someone she didn't even know existed, Happy and Comforting , This time Mash was willing to try to love [Name]; a task a measly star was incapable off however, The sun was also a star after all.

  When Mash and [Name] were ray shifted to “Singularity F” dispute their doubts they were both able to stand and fight because they were together. Now here they stand; against the heat that would pierce the planet. Mash thought of [Name] as she held up they shield that held all the memories dear to her, the shield that held the memories of her and [Name]. It was no secret that the snowflake shield would not melt nor break. It was known by Goetia as well, that if there was no impurity or hesitation within that the castles radiant walls would protect [Name] to the end. Mash held out her hand and [Name] took it together they held on to each other to the very bitter end.

  At last, Mash Kyrielight was gone, Mash died not in the way that was anticipated due to her limited lifespan, but in the way that could only be explained as protecting her love. Mash Kyrielight’s body may have evaporated by the rays of Goetia’s third noble phantasm but her heart remained untouched and her shield unscathed.

  Mash Kyrielight was not the protagonist of this story, now was she a brave warrior that could not be defeated. Mash Kyrielight was a ordinary girl; a ordinary girl who’s greatest weapon was the love she had for her master. Mash Kyrielight thought she was a star but to [Fullname] She was the Moon. And to  [Fullname] they were a star as well and to Mash Kyrielight they were the Sun

  But, Mash Kyrielight was now gone forever. Her heart remained and so did that shield; a shield that would forever hold that ever present feeling that their harts held for each other. Perhaps being the sun and the moon was a cruel fate but maybe just maybe they would meet again. No they would surely meet again just not here just not now this is the end of a journey of the sun, the stars and the moon; a journey of  [Fullname] and Mash Kyrielight`s radiant love

the sun, the stars and the moon

Mash Kyrielight - A Tribute

[precious-whumps]

a rokka no yuusha/braves of the six flowers whump summary

hey all, i didn’t know there was such a thing as whumplr until recently. my excitement is immeasurable and my day is made, and i thought it’d be fun to join the community with this offering~

i see that y’all know about rokka and gif the boy a lot, but it seems like most don’t even know about anything that came after the anime. i was so obsessed with the characters and the story that i purchased the light novels and was not disappointed — at least on the whump front. the books are kinda pricey since barnes and noble was the only retailer i found that had it and the author never continued after volume 6, so if you happened to want to know the whumpy details, i’ve got them for you right c’here.

be warned though! there’s major spoilers from this, not limited to the identity of the seventh and the climax to the first (lol only...) main conflict since context, at least for me, adds everything to the moment. i also don’t have the books with me, so the descriptions here are just off the top of my head. small plot details might be wrong. once i get my books out of storage, i’m happy to post excerpts if anyone’s interested in that :)

alrighty so vol 2 picks up right after the end of the anime. the braves make it into the howling vilelands (book translation, i can’t remember what they called it in the anime), but they’re soon accosted by tgurneu. adlet has this spike thing with crystallized saint blood on the tip. after some desperate fighting and help from hans and mora, he manages to get close enough to stab tgurneu with it. the beautiful dumbass just stands there though, watching, waiting for that sweet sweet vengeance. tgurneu looks up at him and says, “are you seriously trying to kill me?” then, lightning fast and with inhuman strength, he punches adlet square in the face. the hit fractures his skull, knocking him out instantly, and sends him flying into the woods. he rolls and hits a tree i think. fremy screams for him :’c

mora gets to him first. i definitely remember that she feels his neck for breaks. it might have been my imaginings, but i’m pretty sure she pulls his arm across her shoulder and carries him in a semicircle around tgurneu who hasn’t died yet. hans comes up and takes adlet from her, saying he’ll get everyone to the next checkpoint which is a cave that has a special protective barrier the saint of the single flower made however long ago it was. he runs with both adlet and chamo (who’s been poisoned) on his shoulders all the way there. tough kitty. the others catch up eventually ‘cause they were dealing with more fiends attacking them and having trust arguments with each other, fremy and mora specifically with fremy ending it by outright saying that she’s worried about adlet. at the cave, they’ve laid him down by the spring, and mora heals him with the power of the mountain since bones aren’t rolonia’s forte. he’s still unconscious for a few more hours, until evening i think. she notes his resilience when he wakes up.

this volume also introduced me to the joys of hans whump..he gets my absolute favorite kind here. it’s revealed that tgurneu got to mora some years before, threatening to murder her young daughter if she doesn’t kill “at least one brave.” but she’s smart and dedicated, so she recruited rolonia, trained her to be both a strong enough fighter to be chosen as a brave, but also to be an insanely powerful healer too, because mora’s plan is to kill a brave to free the daughter but then immediately have rolonia resurrect them. she’d decided to use adlet since he was both healthy (had the best chances of being revived) and the easiest for her to deal with (lol), but there’s a hiccup in her attempt to separate him from the group. she ends up with hans instead because he sensed something was fishy, wanted to scope the situation out himself. it’s too late to fix it, so she fights her little heart out with him, finally managing to get a solid, heavy punch to his chest, stopping his own heart. she collapses from the licks he got on her and has to drag herself to his body. she pricks his jugular, all the while rolonia’s freaking out cause she wasn’t in on the plan, and the rest of the team swarms them. mora just yells at rolonia to pump hans’ spilled blood until his heart starts up again even as the others are yelling at her, believing she’s the seventh. i think adlet gathers the situation a bit and kneels by hans’ side across from rolonia, asks her if she needs him to do anything. i don’t remember the dialogue exchange, i just know that he’s holding hans as he comes back to life, and the poor guy, this hardened, i-ain’t-scare-of-no-things assassin, touches his neck where he was pricked, then starts screaming from the realization that he was dead. i love it. i’m so unbelievably salty we didn’t at least get the second season for this scene alone.

oh i also remember a flashback scene from when adlet met rolonia on atro’s mountain, it might’ve been in this book. it was one night, after a long day of struggling just to get nowhere with his training, he lamented that he was born a man, meaning he could never be a saint and have the power he needed to get revenge for his village. rolonia had her own issues at the time too, mainly that she didn’t want to be a saint, so the two ended up sobbing together all night.

~

vol 3 didn’t have a whole lot of…anything really. it was mostly goldov’s backstory (he takes a beating, i think, with nashe by his side for a little bit while he’s recovering) and the braves running around in circles like idiots trying to find nashetania. she loses her arm *shrug*. i guess i can say this one was important since it was showing the first signs of adlet’s strong man veneer cracking. boy’s getting stressed out by this whole leadership thing.

~

vol 4 also didn’t have much physical whump, but the emotional is pretty nice. it’s actually my fave in the series because it made me cry ;-;

the braves push deeper into the vilelands and come across the ruins of human villages. now, there’s a fiend with the special ability to implant parasites into the brain stem of humans and control them. they can still be ‘alive’ even after they should be dead, like this small army of zombies have long since starved to death, but their minds are sort of still there. and one of them just so happens to be adlet’s childhood friend rainer, the kid that he thought died with his sister. rainer heard information from the fiends that he knows the braves need, so most of the book is him trying find a way to tell them. he’s not able to until the very end as he’s lying in the woods, dying for real and singing a song from their village because it’s the last thing he can think of. he sort of recognizes adlet, saying, “you look like someone i know,” just before he’s gone. hans tells adlet it’s okay to cry if he needs to, and he’s all, ‘no i’m fine, we need to go.’ he takes a few steps away then stops and says, “actually, hold on,” then “presses his face to a tree trunk and weeps.”

~

vol 5…i gotta admit, i honestly don’t remember this one very well. adlet gets “beat to a bloody pulp,” but i can’t visualize it since some of the plot was hard to follow, and he’s honestly had worse already so i was barely registering it. the braves suspect him again of being the seventh, and real evidence comes forth showing that he likely is, and fremy tries to kill herself to protect the braves? like it’s just a big dramatic thing. so it’s kinda half revealed that tgurneu, who ~somehow~ still isn’t dead, has some kind of control over adlet involving ~the power of looove~, and it’s starting to be more clear that he has an unnatural compulsion to protect fremy. so like, yeah, he’s having to do a bunch of shit to stop her from killing herself, stop the braves from trying to help her with that, and stop them from suspecting him. i think fremy shoots him in the leg? i legitimately cannot recall. i do remember that he finally manages to craft a lie that convinces them that hans is the seventh and that fremy doesn’t have to kill herself, that her death might actually hurt them. she’s kneeling on the ground for some reason, he runs over to her, just stands there again looking at her, asks if she’s okay. she feels bad about him being injured and gently places her hands on his torso to keep him steady. it’s a super sweet image to me, yeet. he drinks some potion thing goldov uses to keep pain at bay with the warning that he’ll “be in hell once it wears off.” that’s all i got for this one, sorry >.<

~

and finally vol 6. it’s fully revealed that yeah, tgurneu is mind controlling him to love fremy so that she can fulfill her engineered purpose (she wasn’t aware of it. she’s such a brilliant, sweet girl, i love her so much), which is to drain the magic from the braves’ crests while they’re in the vilelands. of course, this will kill them as soon as the protection from the land’s poison is gone. so adlet’s for sure the seventh but he never knew it until now (or he didn’t accept it, i think he did realize it back in 5). his entire life was manipulated for this scenario. most of his POV in the book is his mental breakdown dealing with all of this. like he tries to force himself to stop loving fremy and being willing to betray his friends and destroy the world for her, but he just can’t shake the control, making him cry again from the stress.

at some point, he and hans are cornered by tgurneu’s special forces. they’d reverted to enemies after the previous book’s shenanigans but when hans realizes what’s going on in adlet’s head, he feels bad for him. adlet doesn’t do much fighting, leaving hans to deal with it. “not an inch of his skin is clean of blood” as this fight goes on. later, to keep adlet from causing any problems, tgurneu has one of the big fiends swallow him. he’s stuck in there a good while with its weird prehensile organ cinched around his throat and the potion wearing off.

finally towards the end with the rest of the braves coming to the rescue, he finds the will to escape and attack tgurneu, thanks to some clever situation-manipulation by mora once again.

a good slash to hans’ gut takes him out. adlet holds him again for a minute before chamo has one of her swamp fiends also swallow him for safe keeping lol.

oh i should probably mention that the prologue for this one showed a younger adlet still in training with atro. he’s told to ‘surprise me or gtfo’ because up to this point, he’s shown zero promise or skill, relying only on his need for vengeance. this is when he’s first given the saint blood spike, and it’s also shown that this was when the love spell took effect - a dream about a girl he doesn’t know but wants to protect at all costs. he has to figure out how to use the weapon in a way that no fiend would see coming. so he holds it up and stabs his own chest.

now back to his final battle with tgurneu. he conveniently had two spikes only, used one already that didn’t work because tgurneu is actually a fig-tree thing that controls any fiend that like..vores him, so the saint blood only killed his meatsuit before (he’s now in a large bird-like one). adlet knows he won’t get another lucky stab in, so he lets tgurneu rip his stomach open. he slips the crystal from the second spike into the wound, then grabs tgurneu by the face. his now toxic non-saint blood bubbles up into his throat. tgurneu, ridiculous fool that he is, can only watch dumbfounded as adlet pries his beak open and spits a mouthful of that blood into him. it reaches the fig portion of his body, killing the new meatsuit and forcing him to retreat. he’s helpless like this. adlet only has to go pick him up, tear the fruit-body apart to reach the fiend’s core. adlet stands there, holding the core in his palm. it’s occurring to him that everything he’s become is about to be gone because the love spell was the only reason he became the strongest man in the world. then he crushes the core and collapses, half dead.

fremy goes to him and tries to treat his wounds, but his blood burns her hands. the fiend army is still bearing down on them, so she wraps him in her cloak and carries him on her back herself to the next safe zone. at some point, he wakes up a little bit while they’re still running. his mind is so scrambled, and he feels an indescribable terror that knocks him back out. five hours pass, and when he wakes up to the others arguing about what they should do with him, he finds that he doesn’t feel anything for fremy anymore. he looks at her sitting next to him, says her name like three times, but he can’t summon back that love he felt so strongly.

hans is just in the background sleeping off the second healing session he must’ve had with rolonia. everyone’s pretty worn to the bone.

and that’s basically it. there’s cliffhanger plot stuff that i’m sad i’ll probably never see developed further. oof not to mention the destruction of adlet’s character and his romance with fremy. i can only assume yamagata-sensei intended to rebuild it in the next arc considering tgurneu truly believed that adlet’s capable of achieving the impossible. but yeah, i’ll compile some excerpts for y’all when i can xx

[aboveallarescuer]

Dany's empathy, compassion, compromises and sacrifices for other people

As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile ALL* the book passages showcasing either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and smart) or aspects of hers that are usually overstated (e.g. that she's ambitious and prophecy-driven).  Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take. (and that's not even considering the double standards and the contradictions with what had been shown from show!Dany up until then, but that's obviously out of the scope of these lists)

Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend (or even simply explore different facets of) Dany's character in metas or conversations.

 *Well, at least all the passages that I could find in her chapters, which is of course no guarantee that it is perfect, but I did my best.

Also, people can interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages if they ever attempted to make one, so I'm not saying that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).

Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books and use asearchoficeandfire!). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully referenced, sometimes not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To justify the existence of this list, let's see examples of widespread opinions that I feel misrepresent Daenerys Targaryen:

Along her way Daenerys has convinced herself that she wants to rule for the people and created a utopian ideology around herself as a benevolent freedom fighter -- while on a repressed, involuntary emotional level, the Iron Throne is actually a symbol to her of pain and trauma. So even though she doesn’t understand this herself, all this time her inner dragon wasn’t really driven by hope or the promise of change, but by rage and the will to avenge the abuse she endured at the hands of her enemies. (x)

~

Dany makes big, risky offensive plays, while Cersei -- surrounded by treacherous snakes and haunted by a prophecy that’s outlined how much she will lose - plays defensively. In light of all this, it makes sense why Dany views everything as positive opportunity and Cersei sees the negative angle. Daenerys wins hearts along her way not just because she’s a humanitarian, but also because she has to. (x)

~

[Dany] is a great and terrible leader who is spreading bloodshed and pain in their path. Entire civilizations have been burned at their whim. And her all-consuming desire to rule Westeros? She’s not particularly fussed about the rights of the smallfolk or worried about the impending frozen hell creeping its way from the North. She wants that Iron Throne because it’s her birthright. It’s hers, gosh darn it! Woe to the men and women who stand in her path. (x)

~

It’s likely the idea of Dany as queen would feel more applause-worthy if she stopped burning people alive and avoiding tough chats in favor of actually meeting the people of Westeros. Think about the end of season 3 finale “Mhysa,” when the dragon queen allowed herself to be enveloped by the freed slaves of Yunkai. Although the scene had a distinct and uncomfortable white savior feel, at least we saw Daenerys actually interact with the people she claims to care about so much. None of that behavior has been seen since Dany stepped foot on Westeros, only giving credence to some lords’ claim she is a “foreign” royal, despite her birth on Dragonstone. Instead of getting out and meeting her prospective subjects for a minute, Dany has spent season 7 either holed up in her castle with her advisors or riding her favorite dragon into battle. These are not the actions of someone determined to lift up the common folk. (x)

~

Daenerys isn't bothered by the idea of taking lives to achieve her goal[.] (x)

Dany isn't driven by hope or promise of change? Dany wins hearts because she "has to"? Dany isn't "fussed about the rights of the smallfolk"? Dany doesn't get out and meet her people? Dany isn't bothered by the idea of taking lives to achieve her goal?

I would argue these claims certainly cannot be made after reading the books (some can't even after watching the show's first 71 episodes, but it can be all over the place and .... I digress), so take a look at these passages.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

A girl might spend her life at play, but she was a woman grown, a queen, a wife, a mother to thousands. Her children had need of her. Drogon had bent before the whip, and so must she. She had to don her crown again and return to her ebon bench and the arms of her noble husband.

Hizdahr, of the tepid kisses.

~

No, Dany told herself. If I look back I am lost. She might live for years amongst the sunbaked rocks of Dragonstone, riding Drogon by day and gnawing at his leavings every evenfall as the great grass sea turned from gold to orange, but that was not the life she had been born to. So once again she turned her back upon the distant hill and closed her ears to the song of flight and freedom that the wind sang as it played amongst the hill’s stony ridges. The stream was trickling south by southeast, as near as she could tell. She followed it. Take me to the river, that is all I ask of you. Take me to the river, and I will do the rest.

The hours passed slowly. The stream bent this way and that, and Dany followed, beating time upon her leg with the whip, trying not to think about how far she had to go, or the pounding in her head, or her empty belly. Take one step. Take the next. Another step. Another. What else could she do?

~

Dragonstone was still visible above the grasslands. It looks so close. I must be leagues away by now, but it looks as if I could be back in an hour. She wanted to lie back down, close her eyes, and give herself up to sleep. No. I must keep going. The stream. Just follow the stream.

Dany took a moment to make certain of her directions. It would not do to walk the wrong way and lose her stream. “My friend,” she said aloud. “If I stay close to my friend I won’t get lost.” 

~

“Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was ... her name ...” Dany could not recall the child’s name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. “I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons.”

~

I gave you good counsel. Save your spears and swords for the Seven Kingdoms, I told you. Leave Meereen to the Meereenese and go west, I said. You would not listen.

“I had to take Meereen or see my children starve along the march.” Dany could still see the trail of corpses she had left behind her crossing the Red Waste. It was not a sight she wished to see again. “I had to take Meereen to feed my people.”

You took Meereen, he told her, yet still you lingered. 

“To be a queen.”

You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros. 

“It is such a long way,” she complained. “I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.”

ADWD Daenerys IX

She pushed herself to her feet, splashing softly. Water ran down her legs and beaded on her breasts. The sun was climbing up the sky, and her people would soon be gathering. She would rather have drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door, but a queen belongs to her people, not to herself.

~

“How should Meereen ever come to trust the Brazen Beasts if I do not? There are good brave men beneath those masks. I put my life into their hands.” Dany smiled for him. “You fret too much, ser. I will have you beside me, what other protection do I need?”

~

“He would be willing to wait, the woman Meris suggested. Until we march for Westeros.”

And if I never march for Westeros?

~

“Have you ever seen such an auspicious day, my love?” Hizdahr zo Loraq commented when she rejoined him. [...]

“Auspicious for you, perhaps. Less so for those who must die before the sun goes down.”

~

A palanquin lay overturned athwart their way. One of its bearers had collapsed to the bricks, overcome by heat. “Help that man,” Dany commanded. “Get him off the street before he’s stepped on and give him food and water. He looks as though he has not eaten in a fortnight.”

~

“Those bearers were slaves before I came. I made them free. Yet that palanquin is no lighter.”

“True,” said Hizdahr, “but those men are paid to bear its weight now. Before you came, that man who fell would have an overseer standing over him, stripping the skin off his back with a whip. Instead he is being given aid.”

It was true. A Brazen Beast in a boar mask had offered the litter bearer a skin of water. “I suppose I must be thankful for small victories,” the queen said.

“One step, then the next, and soon we shall be running. Together we shall make a new Meereen.” The street ahead had finally cleared. “Shall we continue on?”

What could she do but nod? One step, then the next, but where is it I’m going?

~

Her lord husband stood and raised his hands. “Great Masters! My queen has come this day, to show her love for you, her people. By her grace and with her leave, I give you now your mortal art. Meereen! Let Queen Daenerys hear your love!”

Ten thousand throats roared out their thanks; then twenty thousand; then all. They did not call her name, which few of them could pronounce. “Mother!” they cried instead; in the old dead tongue of Ghis, the word was Mhysa! They stamped their feet and slapped their bellies and shouted, “Mhysa, Mhysa, Mhysa,” until the whole pit seemed to tremble. Dany let the sound wash over her. I am not your mother, she might have shouted, back, I am the mother of your slaves, of every boy who ever died upon these sands whilst you gorged on honeyed locusts.

~

“A boy,” said Dany. “He was only a boy.”

“Six-and-ten,” Hizdahr insisted. “A man grown, who freely chose to risk his life for gold and glory. No children die today in Daznak’s, as my gentle queen in her wisdom has decreed.”

Another small victory. Perhaps I cannot make my people good, she told herself, but I should at least try to make them a little less bad. Daenerys would have prohibited contests between women as well, but Barsena Blackhair protested that she had as much right to risk her life as any man. The queen had also wished to forbid the follies, comic combats where cripples, dwarfs, and crones had at one another with cleavers, torches, and hammers (the more inept the fighters, the funnier the folly, it was thought), but Hizdahr said his people would love her more if she laughed with them, and argued that without such frolics, the cripples, dwarfs, and crones would starve. So Dany had relented.

It had been the custom to sentence criminals to the pits; that practice she agreed might resume, but only for certain crimes. “Murderers and rapers may be forced to fight, and all those who persist in slaving, but not thieves or debtors.”

Beasts were still allowed, though. Dany watched an elephant make short work of a pack of six red wolves. Next a bull was set against a bear in a bloody battle that left both animals torn and dying. “The flesh is not wasted,” said Hizdahr. “The butchers use the carcasses to make a healthful stew for the hungry. Any man who presents himself at the Gates of Fate may have a bowl.”

“A good law,” Dany said. You have so few of them. “We must make certain that this tradition is continued.”

~

The battle was followed by the day’s first folly, a tilt between a pair of jousting dwarfs, presented by one of the Yunkish lords that Hizdahr had invited to the games. One rode a hound, the other a sow. Their wooden armor had been freshly painted, so one bore the stag of the usurper Robert Baratheon, the other the golden lion of House Lannister. That was for her sake, plainly. Their antics soon had Belwas snorting laughter, though Dany’s smile was faint and forced. When the dwarf in red tumbled from the saddle and began to chase his sow across the sands, whilst the dwarf on the dog galloped after him, whapping at his buttocks with a wooden sword, she said, “This is sweet and silly, but …”

“Be patient, my sweet,” said Hizdahr. “They are about to loose the lions.”

Daenerys gave him a quizzical look. “Lions?”

“Three of them. The dwarfs will not expect them.”

She frowned. “The dwarfs have wooden swords. Wooden armor. How do you expect them to fight lions?”

“Badly,” said Hizdahr, “though perhaps they will surprise us. More like they will shriek and run about and try to climb out of the pit. That is what makes this a folly.”

Dany was not pleased. “I forbid it.”

“Gentle queen. You do not want to disappoint your people.”

“You swore to me that the fighters would be grown men who had freely consented to risk their lives for gold and honor. These dwarfs did not consent to battle lions with wooden swords. You will stop it. Now.”

~

The boar buried his snout in Barsena’s belly and began rooting out her entrails. The smell was more than the queen could stand. The heat, the flies, the shouts from the crowd … I cannot breathe. She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.

“Khaleesi?” Irri asked. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off my floppy ears.” A dozen men with boar spears came trotting out onto the sand to drive the boar away from the corpse and back to his pen. The pitmaster was with them, a long barbed whip in his hand. As he snapped it at the boar, the queen rose. “Ser Barristan, will you see me safely back to my garden?”

Hizdahr looked confused. “There is more to come. A folly, six old women, and three more matches. Belaquo and Goghor!”

“Belaquo will win,” Irri declared. “It is known.”

“It is not known,” Jhiqui said. “Belaquo will die.”

“One will die, or the other will,” said Dany. “And the one who lives will die some other day. This was a mistake.”

~

“Magnificence, the people of Meereen have come to celebrate our union. You heard them cheering you. Do not cast away their love.”

“It was my floppy ears they cheered, not me. Take me from this abbatoir, husband.” She could hear the boar snorting, the shouts of the spearmen, the crack of the pitmaster’s whip.

ADWD Daenerys VIII

“...They can close their fingers around our throat again whenever they wish. They have opened a slave market within sight of my walls!”

“Outside our walls, sweet queen. That was a condition of the peace, that Yunkai would be free to trade in slaves as before, unmolested.”

“In their own city. Not where I have to see it.”

~

So Daenerys sat silent through the meal, wrapped in a vermilion tokar and black thoughts, speaking only when spoken to, brooding on the men and women being bought and sold outside her walls, even as they feasted here within the city. Let her noble husband make the speeches and laugh at the feeble Yunkish japes. That was a king’s right and a king’s duty.

~

No queen has clean hands, Dany told herself. She thought of Doreah, of Quaro, of Eroeh … of a little girl she had never met, whose name had been Hazzea. Better a few should die in the pit than thousands at the gates. This is the price of peace, I pay it willingly. If I look back, I am lost.

~

When the gluttony was done and all the half-eaten food had been cleared away—to be given to the poor who gathered below, at the queen's insistence—tall glass flutes were filled with a spiced liqueur from Qarth as dark as amber.

~

“If it please you, Yurkhaz will be pleased to give us the singers, I do not doubt,” her noble husband said. “A gift to seal our peace, an ornament to our court.”

He will give us these castrati, Dany thought, and then he will march home and make some more. The world is full of boys.

~

Hard by the bay was the abomination, the slave market at her door. She could not see it now, with the sun set, but she knew that it was there. That just made her angrier.

~

“It would please me if he had turned up with these fifty thousand swords he speaks of. Instead he brings two knights and a parchment. Will a parchment shield my people from the Yunkai’i? If he had come with a fleet ...”

[...] “Dorne is too far away. To please this prince, I would need to abandon all my people. You should send him home.”

~

“Bring him to me. It is time he met my children.”

[...] She smiled. “My prince. It is a long way down. Are you certain that you wish to do this?”

“If it would please Your Grace.”

“Then come.”

~

Broken chains clanked and clattered about his legs. Quentyn Martell jumped back a foot.

A crueler woman might have laughed at him, but Dany squeezed his hand and said, “They frighten me as well. There is no shame in that. My children have grown wild and angry in the dark.”

~

“They are ... they are fearsome creatures.”

“They are dragons, Quentyn.” Dany stood on her toes and kissed him lightly, once on each cheek. “And so am I.”

ADWD Daenerys VII

Her foes were all about her. [...] They would not try to take Meereen by storm. They would wait behind their siege lines, flinging stones at her until famine and disease had brought her people to their knees.

Hizdahr will bring me peace. He must.

~

“Dorne is fifty thousand spears and swords, pledged to our queen’s service.”

“Fifty thousand?” mocked Daario. “I count three.”

“Enough,” Daenerys said. “Prince Quentyn has crossed half the world to offer me his gift, I will not have him treated with discourtesy.”

~

“Your Grace does not love the noble Hizdahr. This one thinks you would sooner have another for your husband.”

I must not think of Daario today. “A queen loves where she must, not where she will.”

~

“The day is too hot to be shut up in a palanquin,” said Dany. “Have my silver saddled. I would not go to my lord husband upon the backs of bearers.”

“Your Grace,” said Missandei, “this one is so sorry, but you cannot ride in a tokar.”

The little scribe was right, as she so often was. The tokar was not a garment meant for horseback. Dany made a face. “As you say. Not the palanquin, though. I would suffocate behind those drapes. Have them ready a sedan chair.” If she must wear her floppy ears, let all the rabbits see her.

~

“...This match will save our city, you will see.”

“So we pray. I want to plant my olive trees and see them fruit.” Does it matter that Hizdahr’s kisses do not please me? Peace will please me. Am I a queen or just a woman?

~

Galazza Galare awaited them outside the temple doors, surrounded by her sisters in white and pink and red, blue and gold and purple. There are fewer than there were. Dany looked for Ezzara and did not see her. Has the bloody flux taken even her?

ADWD Daenerys VI

“...Let us distribute the food, Your Grace.”

“On the morrow. I am here now. I want to see.”

~

The Astapori stumbled after them in a ghastly procession that grew longer with every yard they crossed. Some spoke tongues she did not understand. Others were beyond speaking. Many lifted their hands to Dany, or knelt as her silver went by. “Mother,” they called to her, in the dialects of Astapor, Lys, and Old Volantis, in guttural Dothraki and the liquid syllables of Qarth, even in the Common Tongue of Westeros. “Mother, please … mother, help my sister, she is sick … give me food for my little ones … please, my old father … help him … help her … help me …”

I have no more help to give, Dany thought, despairing.

~

It was growing harder to find drivers willing to deliver the food as well. Too many of the men they had sent into the camp had been stricken by the flux themselves. Others had been attacked on the way back to the city. Yesterday a wagon had been overturned and two of her soldiers killed, so today the queen had determined that she would bring the food herself. Every one of her advisors had argued fervently against it, from Reznak and the Shavepate to Ser Barristan, but Daenerys would not be moved. “I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.”

~

Their eyes followed her. Those who had the strength called out. “Mother … please, Mother … bless you, Mother …”

Bless me, Dany thought bitterly. Your city is gone to ash and bone, your people are dying all around you. I have no shelter for you, no medicine, no hope. Only stale bread and wormy meat, hard cheese, a little milk. Bless me, bless me.

What kind of mother has no milk to feed her children?

~

“Food should not be wasted on the dying, Your Worship. We do not have enough to feed the living.”

He was not wrong, she knew, but that did not make the words any easier to hear.

~

The queen surveyed the scene around her. “If we were to share our food equally …”

“… the Astapori would eat through their portion in days, and we would have that much less for the siege.”

Dany gazed across the camp, to the many-colored brick walls of Meereen. The air was thick with flies and cries. “The gods have sent this pestilence to humble me. So many dead … I will not have them eating corpses.”

~

“I cannot heal them, but I can show them that their Mother cares.”

~

There was an old man on the ground a few feet away, moaning and staring up at the grey belly of the clouds. She knelt beside him, wrinkling her nose at the smell, and pushed back his dirty grey hair to feel his brow. “His flesh is on fire. I need water to bathe him. Seawater will serve. Marselen, will you fetch some for me? I need oil as well, for the pyre. Who will help me burn the dead?”

By the time Aggo returned with Grey Worm and fifty of the Unsullied loping behind his horse, Dany had shamed all of them into helping her. Symon Stripeback and his men were pulling the living from the dead and stacking up the corpses, while Jhogo and Rakharo and their Dothraki helped those who could still walk toward the shore to bathe and wash their clothes. Aggo stared at them as if they had all gone mad, but Grey Worm knelt beside the queen and said, “This one would be of help.”

Before midday a dozen fires were burning. Columns of greasy black smoke rose up to stain a merciless blue sky. Dany’s riding clothes were stained and sooty as she stepped back from the pyres. “Worship,” Grey Worm said, “this one and his brothers beg your leave to bathe in the salt sea when our work here is done, that we might be purified according to the laws of our great goddess.”

The queen had not known that the eunuchs had a goddess of their own. “Who is this goddess? One of the gods of Ghis?”

Grey Worm looked troubled. “The goddess is called by many names. She is the Lady of Spears, the Bride of Battle, the Mother of Hosts, but her true name belongs only to these poor ones who have burned their manhoods upon her altar. We may not speak of her to others. This one begs your forgiveness.”

“As you wish. Yes, you may bathe if that is your desire. Thank you for your help.”

“These ones live to serve you.”

~

“No ruler can make a people good,” Selmy had told her. “Baelor the Blessed prayed and fasted and built the Seven as splendid a temple as any gods could wish for, yet he could not put an end to war and want.” A queen must listen to her people, Dany reminded herself. “After the wedding Hizdahr will be king. Let him reopen the fighting pits if he wishes. I want no part of it.” Let the blood be on his hands, not mine.

~

“Daenerys, my queen, I will gladly wash you from head to heel if that is what I must do to be your king and consort.”

“To be my king and consort, you need only bring me peace.[”]

~

Would she never have a friend that she could trust? What good are prophecies if you cannot make sense of them? If I marry Hizdahr before the sun comes up, will all these armies melt away like morning dew and let me rule in peace?

~

“I thought you would be the one to betray me. Once for blood and once for gold and once for love, the warlocks said. I thought … I never thought Brown Ben. Even my dragons seemed to trust him.” She clutched her captain by the shoulders. “Promise me that you will never turn against me. I could not bear that. Promise me.”

ADWD Daenerys V

Daenerys received them in the grandeur of her hall as tall candles burned amongst the marble pillars. When she saw that the Astapori were half-starved, she sent for food at once.

~

“I’m no maester, mind you, but I know you got to keep the bad apples from the good.”

“These are not apples, Ben,” said Dany. “These are men and women, sick and hungry and afraid.” My children. “I should have gone to Astapor.”

~

“You want me to loot Meereen and flee? No, I will not do that.[”]

~

Daenerys looked at the faces of the men around her. The Shavepate, scowling. Ser Barristan, with his lined face and sad blue eyes. Reznak mo Reznak, pale, sweating. Brown Ben, white-haired, grizzled, tough as old leather. Grey Worm, smooth-cheeked, stolid, expressionless. Daario should be here, and my bloodriders, she thought. If there is to be a battle, the blood of my blood should be with me. She missed Ser Jorah Mormont too. He lied to me, informed on me, but he loved me too, and he always gave good counsel.

~

“I cannot fight two enemies, one within and one without. If I am to hold Meereen, I must have the city behind me. The whole city. I need … I need …” She could not say it.

“Your Grace?” Ser Barristan prompted, gently.

A queen belongs not to herself but to her people.

“I need Hizdahr zo Loraq.”

ADWD Daenerys IV

Two of Dany’s favorite hostages served the food and kept the cups filled—a doe-eyed little girl called Qezza and a skinny boy named Grazhar. They were brother and sister, and cousins of the Green Grace, who greeted them with kisses when she swept in, and asked them if they had been good.

“They are very sweet, the both of them,” Dany assured her. “Qezza sings for me sometimes. She has a lovely voice. And Ser Barristan has been instructing Grazhar and the other boys in the ways of western chivalry.”

~

The cowards broke in on some weavers, freedwomen who had done no harm to anyone. All they did was make beautiful things. I have a tapestry they gave me hanging over my bed.[”]

~

“...You have not harmed any of the noble children you hold as hostage.”

“Not as yet, no.” Dany had grown fond of her young charges. Some were shy and some were bold, some sweet and some sullen, but all were innocent. [...]

Dany pushed her food about her plate. She dare not glance over to where Grazhar and Qezza stood, for fear that she might cry. [...] Hazzea was enough. What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children? “These murders are not their doing,” Dany told the Green Grace, feebly. “I am no butcher queen.”

~

Only then would her womb quicken once again …

… but Daenerys Targaryen had other children, tens of thousands who had hailed her as their mother when she broke their chains. She thought of Stalwart Shield, of Missandei’s brother, of the woman Rylona Rhee, who had played the harp so beautifully. No marriage would ever bring them back to life, but if a husband could help end the slaughter, then she owed it to her dead to marry.

~

“...Meereen cannot endure another war, Your Radiance.”

That was a good answer, and an honest one. “I have never wanted war. I defeated the Yunkai’i once and spared their city when I might have sacked it. I refused to join King Cleon when he marched against them. Even now, with Astapor besieged, I stay my hand. And Qarth … I have never done the Qartheen any harm …”

~

“...I would sooner perish fighting than return my children to bondage.”

“There may be another choice. The Yunkai’i can be persuaded to allow all your freedmen to remain free, I believe, if Your Worship will agree that the Yellow City may trade and train slaves unmolested from this day forth. No more blood need flow.”

“Save for the blood of those slaves that the Yunkai’i will trade and train,” Dany said, but she recognized the truth in his words even so. It may be that is the best end we can hope for.

~

“So,” she said to him, “it seems that I may wed again. Are you happy for me, ser?”

“If that is your command, Your Grace.”

“Hizdahr is not the husband you would have chosen for me.”

“It is not my place to choose your husband.”

“It is not,” she agreed, “but it is important to me that you should understand. My people are bleeding. Dying. A queen belongs not to herself, but to the realm. Marriage or carnage, those are my choices. A wedding or a war.”

~

“You are fighting shadows when you should be fighting the men who cast them,” Daario went on. “Kill them all and take their treasures, I say. Whisper the command, and your Daario will make you a pile of their heads taller than this pyramid.”

“If I knew who they were—”

“Zhak and Pahl and Merreq. Them, and all the rest. The Great Masters. Who else would it be?”

He is as bold as he is bloody. “We have no proof this is their work. Would you have me slaughter my own subjects?”

“Your own subjects would gladly slaughter you.”

He had been so long away, Dany had almost forgotten what he was. Sellswords were treacherous by nature, she reminded herself. Fickle, faithless, brutal. He will never be more than he is. He will never be the stuff of kings. “The pyramids are strong,” she explained to him. “We could take them only at great cost. The moment we attack one the others will rise against us.”

“Then winkle them out of their pyramids on some pretext. A wedding might serve. Why not? Promise your hand to Hizdahr and all the Great Masters will come to see you married. When they gather in the Temple of the Graces, turn us loose upon them.”

Dany was appalled. He is a monster. A gallant monster, but a monster still. “Do you take me for the Butcher King?”

ADWD Daenerys III

The cedars that had once grown tall along the coast grew no more, felled by the axes of the Old Empire or consumed by dragonfire when Ghis made war against Valyria. Once the trees had gone, the soil baked beneath the hot sun and blew away in thick red clouds. “It was these calamities that transformed my people into slavers,” Galazza Galare had told her, at the Temple of the Graces. And I am the calamity that will change these slavers back into people, Dany had sworn to herself.

~

“I want no slave. I free you.” His jeweled nose made a tempting target. This time Dany threw an apricot at him.

Xaro caught it in the air and took a bite. “Whence came this madness? Should I count myself fortunate that you did not free my own slaves when you were my guest in Qarth?”

I was a beggar queen and you were Xaro of the Thirteen, Dany thought, and all you wanted were my dragons. “Your slaves seemed well treated and content. It was not till Astapor that my eyes were opened. Do you know how Unsullied are made and trained?”

~

He was too eloquent for her. Dany had no answer for him, only the raw feeling in her belly. “Slavery is not the same as rain,” she insisted. “I have been rained on and I have been sold. It is not the same. No man wants to be owned.”

~

“My dragons have grown, my shoulders have not. They range far afield, hunting.” Hazzea, forgive me.

~

Dany wondered how many men thirteen galleys could hold. It had taken three to carry her and her khalasar from Qarth to Astapor, but that was before she had acquired eight thousand Unsullied, a thousand sellswords, and a vast horde of freedmen. And the dragons, what am I to do with them? “Drogon,” she whispered softly, “where are you?” For a moment she could almost see him sweeping across the sky, his black wings swallowing the stars.

~

"As you say, Your Grace. Still. I will be watchful."

She kissed [Barristan] on the cheek. "I know you will. Come, walk me back down to the feast."

~

One of her young hostages brought her morning meal, a plump shy girl named Mezzara, whose father ruled the pyramid of Merreq, and Dany gave her a happy hug and thanked her with a kiss.

~

“We are all dead, then. You gave us death, not freedom.” Ghael leapt to his feet and spat into her face.

Strong Belwas seized him by the shoulder and slammed him down onto the marble so hard that Dany heard Ghael’s teeth crack. The Shavepate would have done worse, but she stopped him.

“Enough,” she said, dabbing at her cheek with the end of her tokar. “No one has ever died from spittle. Take him away.”

~

Dany would gladly have sent the rest of the petitioners away … but she was still their queen, so she heard them out and did her best to give them justice.

~

Late that afternoon Admiral Groleo and Ser Barristan returned from their inspection of the galleys. Dany assembled her council to hear them. Grey Worm was there for the Unsullied, Skahaz mo Kandaq for the Brazen Beasts. In the absence of her bloodriders, a wizened jaqqa rhan called Rommo, squint-eyed and bowlegged, came to speak for her Dothraki. Her freedmen were represented by the captains of the three companies she had formed—Mollono Yos Dob of the Stalwart Shields, Symon Stripeback of the Free Brothers, Marselen of the Mother’s Men. Reznak mo Reznak hovered at the queen’s elbow, and Strong Belwas stood behind her with his huge arms crossed. Dany would not lack for counsel.

~

Reznak mo Reznak gave a piteous moan. “Then it is true. Your Worship means to abandon us.” He wrung his hands. “The Yunkai’i will restore the Great Masters the instant you are gone, and we who have so faithfully served your cause will be put to the sword, our sweet wives and maiden daughters raped and enslaved.”

“Not mine,” grumbled Skahaz Shavepate. “I will kill them first, with mine own hand.” He slapped his sword hilt.

Dany felt as if he had slapped her face instead. “If you fear what may follow when I leave, come with me to Westeros.”

~

“Those left behind in Meereen would envy them their easy deaths,” moaned Reznak. “They will make slaves of us, or throw us in the pits. All will be as it was, or worse.”

“Where is your courage?” Ser Barristan lashed out. “Her Grace freed you from your chains. It is for you to sharpen your swords and defend your own freedom when she leaves.”

“Brave words, from one who means to sail into the sunset,” Symon Stripeback snarled back. “Will you look back at our dying?”

“Your Grace—”

“Magnificence—”

“Your Worship—”

“Enough.” Dany slapped the table. “No one will be left to die. You are all my people.” Her dreams of home and love had blinded her. “I will not abandon Meereen to the fate of Astapor. It grieves me to say so, but Westeros must wait.”

~

“My lord, I will gladly have those ships, but I cannot give you the promise that you ask.” She took his hand. “Give me the galleys, and I swear that Qarth will have the friendship of Meereen until the stars go out. Let me trade with them, and you will have a good part of the profits.”

Xaro’s glad smile died upon his lips. “What are you saying? Are you telling me you will not go?”

“I cannot go.”

ADWD Daenerys II

“Who is that weeping?”

“Your slave Missandei.” Jhiqui had a taper in her hand.

“My servant. I have no slaves.”

~

“Magnificence,” murmured Reznak mo Reznak, “we cannot know that these great nobles mean to join your enemies. More like they are simply making for their estates in the hills.”

“They will not mind us keeping their gold safe, then. There is nothing to buy in the hills.”

“They are afraid for their children,” Reznak said.

Yes, Daenerys thought, and so am I. “We must keep them safe as well. I will have two children from each of them. From the other pyramids as well. A boy and a girl.”

“Hostages,” said Skahaz, happily.

“Pages and cupbearers. If the Great Masters make objection, explain to them that in Westeros it is a great honor for a child to be chosen to serve at court.”

~

“[...] Will you hear my friends? There are seven of them as well. [...] They have come to add their voices to mine own, and ask Your Grace to let our fighting pits reopen.”

[...] Dany had no answer for that. If this is truly what my people wish, do I have the right to deny it to them? It was their city before it was mine, and it is their own lives they wish to squander. “I will consider all you've said. Thank you for your counsel.” She rose. “We will resume on the morrow.”

~

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.

~

Somewhere beneath those roofs, the Sons of the Harpy were gathered, plotting ways to kill her and all those who loved her and put her children back in chains. Somewhere down there a hungry child was crying for milk. Somewhere an old woman lay dying. Somewhere a man and a maid embraced, and fumbled at each other’s clothes with eager hands. But up here there was only the sheen of moonlight on pyramids and pits, with no hint what lay beneath. Up here there was only her, alone.

She was the blood of the dragon. She could kill the Sons of the Harpy, and the sons of the sons, and the sons of the sons of the sons. But a dragon could not feed a hungry child nor help a dying woman’s pain. And who would ever dare to love a dragon?

~

“The freedmen work too cheaply, Magnificence,” Reznak said. “Some call themselves journeymen, or even masters, titles that belong by rights only to the craftsmen of the guilds. The masons and the bricklayers do respectfully petition Your Worship to uphold their ancient rights and customs.”

“The freedmen work cheaply because they are hungry,” Dany pointed out. “If I forbid them to carve stone or lay bricks, the chandlers, the weavers, and the goldsmiths will soon be at my gates asking that they be excluded from those trades as well.”

~

“Hizdahr swears that the winners shall share half of all the coin collected at the gates,” said Khrazz. “Half, he swears it, and Hizdahr is an honorable man.”

No, a cunning man. Daenerys felt trapped. “And the losers? What shall they receive?”

~

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. “Take me down, ser, if you would.”

~

What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness?

~

If I look back, I am doomed, Dany told herself … but how could she not look back? I should have seen it coming. Was I so blind, or did I close my eyes willfully, so I would not have to see the price of power?

[...] On the road to Yunkai, when Daario tossed the heads of Sallor the Bald and Prendahl na Ghezn at her feet, her children made a feast of them. Dragons had no fear of men. And a dragon large enough to gorge on sheep could take a child just as easily.

Her name had been Hazzea. She was four years old. Unless her father lied. He might have lied. No one had seen the dragon but him. His proof was burned bones, but burned bones proved nothing. He might have killed the little girl himself, and burned her afterward. He would not have been the first father to dispose of an unwanted girl child, the Shavepate claimed. The Sons of the Harpy might have done it, and made it look like dragon’s work to make the city hate me. Dany wanted to believe that … but if that was so, why had Hazzea’s father waited until the audience hall was almost empty to come forward? If his purpose had been to inflame the Meereenese against her, he would have told his tale when the hall was full of ears to hear.

 [...] Dany chose to pay the blood price. No one could tell her the worth of a daughter, so she set it at one hundred times the worth of a lamb. “I would give Hazzea back to you if I could,” she told the father, “but some things are beyond the power of even a queen. Her bones shall be laid to rest in the Temple of the Graces, and a hundred candles shall burn day and night in her memory. Come back to me each year upon her nameday, and your other children shall not want … but this tale must never pass your lips again.”

~

Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.

ADWD Daenerys I

“Your Grace,” said Ser Barristan Selmy, the lord commander of her Queensguard, “there is no need for you to see this.”

“He died for me.”

~

“Grey Worm, why was this man alone? Had he no partner?” By her command, when the Unsullied walked the streets of Meereen by night they always walked in pairs.

“My queen,” replied the captain, “your servant Stalwart Shield had no duty last night. He had gone to a ... a certain place ... to drink, and have companionship.”

“A certain place? What do you mean?”

“A house of pleasure, Your Grace.”

[...] “What could a eunuch hope to find in a brothel?”

“Even those who lack a man’s parts may still have a man’s heart, Your Grace,” said Grey Worm. “This one has been told that your servant Stalwart Shield sometimes gave coin to the women of the brothels to lie with him and hold him.”

The blood of the dragon does not weep. “Stalwart Shield,” she said, dry-eyed. “That was his name?”

“If it please Your Grace.”

“It is a fine name.” The Good Masters of Astapor had not allowed their slave soldiers even names. Some of her Unsullied reclaimed their birth names after she had freed them; others chose new names for themselves. [...]

Dany said a silent prayer that somewhere one of the Harpy’s Sons was dying even now, clutching at his belly and writhing in pain. “Why did they cut open his cheeks like that?”

“Gracious queen,” said Grey Worm, “his killers had forced the genitals of a goat down the throat of your servant Stalwart Shield. This one removed them before bringing him here.”

[...] Shrugging off the lion pelt, she knelt beside the corpse and closed the dead man’s eyes, ignoring Jhiqui’s gasp. “Stalwart Shield shall not be forgotten. Have him washed and dressed for battle and bury him with cap and shield and spears.”

~

To rule Meereen I must win the Meereenese, however much I may despise them.

~

The hall had filled. Unsullied stood with their backs to the pillars, holding shields and spears, the spikes on their caps jutting upward like a row of knives. The Meereenese had gathered beneath the eastern windows. Her freedmen stood well apart from their former masters. Until they stand together, Meereen will know no peace. “Arise.” Dany settled onto her bench. The hall rose. That at least they do as one.

~

“What was the name of the old weaver?”

“The slave?” Grazdan shifted his weight, frowning. “She was … Elza, it might have been. Or Ella. It was six years ago she died. I have owned so many slaves, Your Grace.”

“Let us say Elza. Here is our ruling. From the girls, you shall have nothing. It was Elza who taught them weaving, not you. From you, the girls shall have a new loom, the finest coin can buy. That is for forgetting the name of the old woman.”

~

Reznak would have summoned another tokar next, but Dany insisted that he call upon a freedman. Thereafter she alternated between the former masters and the former slaves.

~

“Some men have brought burnt bones.”

“Men make fires. Men cook mutton. Burnt bones prove nothing. Brown Ben says there are red wolves in the hills outside the city, and jackals and wild dogs. Must we pay good silver for every lamb that goes astray between Yunkai and the Skahazadhan?”

“No, Magnificence." Reznak bowed. "Shall I send these rascals away, or will you want them scourged?”

Daenerys shifted on the bench. “No man should ever fear to come to me.” Some claims were false, she did not doubt, but more were genuine. Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they'll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day. “Pay them for the value of their animals,” she told Reznak, “but henceforth claimants must present themselves at the Temple of the Graces and swear a holy oath before the gods of Ghis.”

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

“I am going to take you home one day, Missandei,” Dany promised. If I had made the same promise to Jorah, would he still have sold me? “I swear it.”

“This one is content to stay with you, Your Grace. Naath will be there, always. You are good to this—to me.”

“And you to me.”

~

“The city bleeds. Dead men rot unburied in the streets, each pyramid is an armed camp, and the markets have neither food nor slaves for sale. And the poor children! King Cleaver’s thugs have seized every highborn boy in Astapor to make new Unsullied for the trade, though it will be years before they are trained.”

The thing that surprised Dany most was how unsurprised she was. She found herself remembering Eroeh, the Lhazarene girl she had once tried to protect, and what had happened to her. It will be the same in Meereen once I march, she thought.

~

“Any man who wishes to sell himself into slavery may do so. Or woman.” She raised a hand. “But they may not sell their children, nor a man his wife.”

~

“Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.”

“There is nothing to stay for,” said Brown Ben Plumm.

“Your Grace, the slavers brought their doom on themselves,��� said Daario Naharis.

“You have brought freedom as well,” Missandei pointed out.

“Freedom to starve?” asked Dany sharply. “Freedom to die? Am I a dragon, or a harpy?” Am I mad? Do I have the taint?

“A dragon,” Ser Barristan said with certainty. “Meereen is not Westeros, Your Grace.”

“But how can I rule seven kingdoms if I cannot rule a single city?” He had no answer to that. Dany turned away from them, to gaze out over the city once again. “My children need time to heal and learn. My dragons need time to grow and test their wings. And I need the same. I will not let this city go the way of Astapor. I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.” She turned back to look at their faces. “I will not march.”

“What will you do then, Khaleesi?” asked Rakharo.

“Stay,” she said. “Rule. And be a queen.”

ASOS Daenerys V

Her host numbered more than eighty thousand after Yunkai, but fewer than a quarter of them were soldiers. The rest ... well, Ser Jorah called them mouths with feet, and soon they would be starving.

The Great Masters of Meereen had withdrawn before Dany’s advance, harvesting all they could and burning what they could not harvest. Scorched fields and poisoned wells had greeted her at every hand. Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen. Leading her van, Daario had given orders for the children to be taken down before Dany had to see them, but she had countermanded him as soon as she was told. “I will see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”

By the time they came to Meereen sitting on the salt coast beside her river, the count stood at one hundred and sixty-three. I will have this city, Dany pledged to herself once more.

~

“Strong Belwas needs liver and onions.”

“You shall have it,” said Dany. “Strong Belwas is hurt.” His stomach was red with the blood sheeting down from the meaty gash beneath his breasts.

“It is nothing. I let each man cut me once, before I kill him.” He slapped his bloody belly. “Count the cuts and you will know how many Strong Belwas has slain.”

But Dany had lost Khal Drogo to a similar wound, and she was not willing to let it go untreated. She sent Missandei to find a certain Yunkish freedman renowned for his skill in the healing arts. Belwas howled and complained, but Dany scolded him and called him a big bald baby until he let the healer stanch the wound with vinegar, sew it shut, and bind his chest with strips of linen soaked in fire wine. Only then did she lead her captains and commanders inside her pavilion for their council.

~

Daario Naharis gave Grey Worm a smile. “Perhaps the Unsullied should wield the axes. Boiling oil feels like no more than a warm bath to you, I have heard.”

“This is false.” Grey Worm did not return the smile. “These ones do not feel burns as men do, yet such oil blinds and kills. The Unsullied do not fear to die, though. Give these ones rams, and we will batter down these gates or die in the attempt.”

“You would die,” said Brown Ben. At Yunkai, when he took command of the Second Sons, he claimed to be the veteran of a hundred battles. “Though I will not say I fought bravely in all of them. There are old sellswords and bold sellswords, but no old bold sellswords.” She saw that it was true.

Dany sighed. “I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey Worm.”

~

“...You stopped at Astapor to buy an army, not to start a war. Save your spears and swords for the Seven Kingdoms, my queen. Leave Meereen to the Meereenese and march west for Pentos.”

“Defeated?” said Dany, bristling.

[...] Dany set great store by Ser Jorah’s counsel, but to leave Meereen untouched was more than she could stomach. She could not forget the children on their posts, the birds tearing at their entrails, their skinny arms pointing up the coast road. “Ser Jorah, you say we have no food left. If I march west, how can I feed my freedmen?”

“You can’t. I am sorry, Khaleesi. They must feed themselves or starve. Many and more will die along the march, yes. That will be hard, but there is no way to save them. We need to put this scorched earth well behind us.”

Dany had left a trail of corpses behind her when she crossed the red waste. It was a sight she never meant to see again. “No,” she said. “I will not march my people off to die.” My children. “There must be some way into this city.”

~

The grove of burnt olive trees in which she’d raised her pavilion stood beside the sea, between the Dothraki camp and that of the Unsullied. When the horses had been saddled, Dany and her companions set out along the shoreline, away from the city. Even so, she could feel Meereen at her back, mocking her. When she looked over one shoulder, there it stood, the afternoon sun blazing off the bronze harpy atop the Great Pyramid. Inside Meereen the slavers would soon be reclining in their fringed tokars to feast on lamb and olives, unborn puppies, honeyed dormice and other such delicacies, whilst outside her children went hungry. A sudden wild anger filled her. I will bring you down, she swore.

ASOS Daenerys IV

Dany considered. The slaver host seemed small compared to her own numbers, but the sellswords were ahorse. She’d ridden too long with Dothraki not to have a healthy respect for what mounted warriors could do to foot. The Unsullied could withstand their charge, but my freedmen will be slaughtered. 

~

One of the first things Dany had done after the fall of Astapor was abolish the custom of giving the Unsullied new slave names every day. Most of those born free had returned to their birth names; those who still remembered them, at least. Others had called themselves after heroes or gods, and sometimes weapons, gems, and even flowers, which resulted in soldiers with some very peculiar names, to Dany’s ears. Grey Worm had remained Grey Worm. When she asked him why, he said, “It is a lucky name. The name this one was born to was accursed. That was the name he had when he was taken for a slave. But Grey Worm is the name this one drew the day Daenerys Stormborn set him free.”

“If battle is joined, let Grey Worm show wisdom as well as valor,” Dany told him. “Spare any slave who runs or throws down his weapon. The fewer slain, the more remain to join us after.”

“This one will remember.”

“I know he will. Be at my tent by midday. I want you there with my other officers when I treat with the sellsword captains.” Dany spurred her silver on to camp.

~

Within the perimeter the Unsullied had established, the tents were going up in orderly rows, with her own tall golden pavilion at the center. A second encampment lay close beyond her own; five times the size, sprawling and chaotic, this second camp had no ditches, no tents, no sentries, no horselines. Those who had horses or mules slept beside them, for fear they might be stolen. Goats, sheep, and half-starved dogs wandered freely amongst hordes of women, children, and old men. Dany had left Astapor in the hands of a council of former slaves led by a healer, a scholar, and a priest. Wise men all, she thought, and just. Yet even so, tens of thousands preferred to follow her to Yunkai, rather than remain behind in Astapor. I gave them the city, and most of them were too frightened to take it.

The raggle-taggle host of freedmen dwarfed her own, but they were more burden than benefit. Perhaps one in a hundred had a donkey, a camel, or an ox; most carried weapons looted from some slaver’s armory, but only one in ten was strong enough to fight, and none was trained. They ate the land bare as they passed, like locusts in sandals. Yet Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. She gazed at the smoke rising from their cookfires and swallowed a sigh. She might have the best footsoldiers in the world, but she also had the worst.

~

“I cannot sleep when men are dying for me, Whitebeard,” she said.

~

“Our own losses?”

“A dozen. If that many.”

Only then did she allow herself to smile.

~

“Sellsword or slave, spare all those who will pledge me their faith. If enough of the Second Sons will join us, keep the company intact.”

~

“Mhysa! Mhysa!”

Dany looked at Missandei. “What are they shouting?” “It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means ‘Mother.’”

Dany felt a lightness in her chest. I will never bear a living child, she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have, because the man grinned and shouted again, and others took up the cry. “Mhysa!” they called. “Mhysa! MHYSA!” They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her. “Maela,” some called her while others cried “Aelalla” or “Qathei” or “Tato,” but whatever the tongue it all meant the same thing. Mother. They are calling me Mother.

The chant grew, spread, swelled. It swelled so loud that it frightened her horse, and the mare backed and shook her head and lashed her silver-grey tail. It swelled until it seemed to shake the yellow walls of Yunkai. More slaves were streaming from the gates every moment, and as they came they took up the call. They were running toward her now, pushing, stumbling, wanting to touch her hand, to stroke her horse’s mane, to kiss her feet. Her poor bloodriders could not keep them all away, and even Strong Belwas grunted and growled in dismay.

Ser Jorah urged her to go, but Dany remembered a dream she had dreamed in the House of the Undying. “They will not hurt me,” she told him. “They are my children, Jorah.” She laughed, put her heels into her horse, and rode to them, the bells in her hair ringing sweet victory. She trotted, then cantered, then broke into a gallop, her braid streaming behind. The freed slaves parted before her. “Mother,” they called from a hundred throats, a thousand, ten thousand. “Mother,” they sang, their fingers brushing her legs as she flew by. “Mother, Mother, Mother!”

ASOS Daenerys III

“All,” growled Kraznys mo Nakloz, who smelled of peaches today. The slave girl repeated the word in the Common Tongue of Westeros. “Of thousands, there are eight. Is this what she means by all? There are also six centuries, who shall be part of a ninth thousand when complete. Would she have them too?”

“I would,” said Dany when the question was put to her. “The eight thousands, the six centuries ... and the ones still in training as well. The ones who have not earned the spikes.”

~

Dany let them argue, sipping the tart persimmon wine and trying to keep her face blank and ignorant. I will have them all, no matter the price, she told herself. The city had a hundred slave traders, but the eight before her were the greatest. When selling bed slaves, fieldhands, scribes, craftsmen, and tutors, these men were rivals, but their ancestors had allied one with the other for the purpose of making and selling the Unsullied. Brick and blood built Astapor, and brick and blood her people.

~

“My need is now. The Unsullied are well trained, but even so, many will fall in battle. I shall need the boys as replacements to take up the swords they drop.” She put her wine aside and leaned toward the slave girl. “Tell the Good Masters that I will want even the little ones who still have their puppies. Tell them that I will pay as much for the boy they cut yesterday as for an Unsullied in a spiked helm.”

The girl told them. The answer was still no.


Dany frowned in annoyance. “Very well. Tell them I will pay double, so long as I get them all.”


~

Two thousand would never serve for what she meant to do. I must have them all. Dany knew what she must do now, though the taste of it was so bitter that even the persimmon wine could not cleanse it from her month. She had considered long and hard and found no other way. It is my only choice. “Give me all,” she said, “and you may have a dragon.”

~

“When you are ... when you are done with them ... your Grace might command them to fall upon their swords.”

“And even that, they would do?”


“Yes.” Missandei’s voice had grown soft. “Your Grace.”

Dany squeezed her hand. “You would sooner I did not ask it of them, though. Why is that? Why do you care?”

“This one does not ... I ... Your Grace ... ”


“Tell me.”


The girl lowered her eyes. “Three of them were my brothers once, Your Grace.”

Then I hope your brothers are as brave and clever as you.

~

“Magister Illyrio is not here,” she finally had to tell him, “and if he was, he could not sway me either. I need the Unsullied more than I need these ships, and I will hear no more about it.”

The anger burned the grief and fear from her, for a few hours at the least.

~

“Do you remember Eroeh?” she asked him. “The Lhazareen girl?”

“They were raping her, but I stopped them and took her under my protection. Only when my sun-and-stars was dead Mago took her back, used her again, and killed her. Aggo said it was her fate.”

“I remember,” Ser Jorah said.

“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.”

~

“Unsullied! Defend us, stop them, defend your masters! Spears! Swords!”

[...] The Unsullied did not so much as look down to watch him die. Rank on rank on rank, they stood.

And did not move. The gods have heard my prayer.

“Unsullied!” Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air ... and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”

“Dracarys!” they shouted back, the sweetest word she’d ever heard. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire.

ASOS Daenerys II

“Tell her that these have been standing here for a day and a night, with no food nor water. [...] Such is their courage. Tell her that.”

“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan Whitebeard, when the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the end of his hardwood staff against the bricks, tap tap, as if to tell his displeasure. The old man had not wanted to sail to Astapor; nor did he favor buying this slave army. A queen should hear all sides before reaching a decision. That was why Dany had brought him with her to the Plaza of Pride, not to keep her safe.

~

He stopped before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there, bleeding. “Would you like another?” asked Kraznys.

“If it please your worship.”

It was hard to pretend not to understand. Dany laid a hand on Kraznys’s arm before he could raise the whip again. “Tell the Good Master that I see how strong his Unsullied are, and how bravely they suffer pain.”

~

“There are other ways to tempt men, besides the flesh,” Arstan Whitebeard objected, when she was done.

“Men, yes, but not Unsullied. Plunder interests them no more than rape. They own nothing but their weapons. We do not even permit them names.”

“No names?” Dany frowned at the little scribe. “Can that be what the Good Master said? They have no names?”

~

“More madness,” said Arstan, when he heard. “How can any man possibly remember a new name every day?”

“Those who cannot are culled in training, along with those who cannot run all day in full pack, scale a mountain in the black of night, walk across a bed of coals, or slay an infant.”

Dany’s mouth surely twisted at that. Did he see, or is he blind as well as cruel? She turned away quickly, trying to keep her face a mask until she heard the translation. Only then did she allow herself to say, “Whose infants do they slay?”

“To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it before its mother’s eyes. In this way, we make certain that there is no weakness left in them.”

She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself. “You take a babe from its mother’s arms, kill it as she watches, and pay for her pain with a silver coin?”

~

Dany climbed into her litter frowning, and beckoned Arstan to climb in beside her. A man as old as him should not be walking in such heat.

~

“Make way!” Jhogo shouted as he rode before her litter. “Make way for the Mother of Dragons!” But when he uncoiled the great silver-handled whip that Dany had given him, and made to crack it in the air, she leaned out and told him nay. “Not in this place, blood of my blood,” she said, in his own tongue. “These bricks have heard too much of the sound of whips.”

~

“Dog,” he said happily when he saw Dany. “Good dog in Astapor, little queen. Eat?” He offered it with a greasy grin.

“That is kind of you, Belwas, but no.” Dany had eaten dog in other places, at other times, but just now all she could think of was the Unsullied and their stupid puppies.

~

“How many men do they have for sale?”

“None.” Was it Mormont she was angry with, or this city with its sullen heat, its stinks and sweats and crumbling bricks? “They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick, like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don’t even have names. So don’t call them men, ser.”

“Khaleesi,” he said, taken aback by her fury, “the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained—”

“I have heard all I care to of their training.” Dany could feel tears welling in her eyes, sudden and unwanted. Her hand flashed up and cracked Ser Jorah hard across the face. It was either that, or cry.

Mormont touched the cheek she’d slapped. “If I have displeased my queen—”

“You have. You’ve displeased me greatly, ser. If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty.”

~

“They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi,” Irri told her. “Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit me.” She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand.

“Did any of them try to burn their way free?” That was the thing that frightened Dany the most.

“No, Khaleesi. Drogon breathed his fire, but in the empty air. The slaver men feared to come near him.”

She kissed Irri’s hand where Drogon had bitten it. “I’m sorry he hurt you. Dragons are not meant to be locked up in a small ship’s cabin.”

~

Dusk had begun to settle over the waters of Slaver’s Bay before Dany returned to the deck. She stood by the rail and looked out over Astapor. From here it looks almost beautiful, she thought. The stars were coming out above, and the silk lanterns below, just as Kraznys’s translator had promised. The brick pyramids were all glimmery with light. But it is dark below, in the streets and plazas and fighting pits. And it is darkest of all in the barracks, where some little boy is feeding scraps to the puppy they gave him when they took away his manhood.

~

Cheaper than fighting, Dany thought. Yes, it might be. If only it could be that easy for her. How pleasant it would be to sail to King’s Landing with her dragons, and pay the boy Joffrey a chest of gold to make him go away.

~

“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?” Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited for an answer.

ASOS Daenerys I

The captain appeared at her elbow. “Would that this Balerion could soar as her namesake did, Your Grace,” he said in bastard Valyrian heavily flavored with accents of Pentos. “Then we should not need to row, nor tow, nor pray for wind.”

“Just so, Captain,” she answered with a smile, pleased to have won the man over. Captain Groleo was an old Pentoshi like his master, Illyrio Mopatis, and he had been nervous as a maiden about carrying three dragons on his ship. Half a hundred buckets of seawater still hung from the gunwales, in case of fires. At first Groleo had wanted the dragons caged and Dany had consented to put his fears at ease, but their misery was so palpable that she soon changed her mind and insisted they be freed.


Even Captain Groleo was glad of that, now. There had been one small fire, easily extinguished; against that, Balerion suddenly seemed to have far fewer rats than she’d had before, when she sailed under the name Saduleon. And her crew, once as fearful as they were curious, had begun to take a queer fierce pride in “their” dragons. Every man of them, from captain to cook’s boy, loved to watch the three fly ... though none so much as Dany.

~

“Ser Jorah named Rhaegar the last dragon once. He had to have been a peerless warrior to be called that, surely?”

“Your Grace,” said Whitebeard, “the Prince of Dragonstone was a most puissant warrior, but ...”

“Go on,” she urged. “You may speak freely to me.”

~

“...A change in the wind may bring the gift of victory.” He glanced at Ser Jorah. “Or a lady’s favor knotted round an arm.”

Mormont’s face darkened. “Be careful what you say, old man.”

Arstan had seen Ser Jorah fight at Lannisport, Dany knew, in the tourney Mormont had won with a lady’s favor knotted round his arm. He had won the lady too; Lynesse of House Hightower, his second wife, highborn and beautiful ... but she had ruined him, and abandoned him, and the memory of her was bitter to him now. “Be gentle, my knight.” She put a hand on Jorah’s arm. “Arstan had no wish to give offense, I’m certain.”

~

“A queen must listen to all,” she reminded him. “The highborn and the low, the strong and the weak, the noble and the venal. One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.” She had read that in a book.

~

“It seems to me that a queen who trusts no one is as foolish as a queen who trusts everyone. Every man I take into my service is a risk, I understand that, but how am I to win the Seven Kingdoms without such risks? Am I to conquer Westeros with one exile knight and three Dothraki bloodriders?”

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys V

“Make way,” Aggo shouted, while Jhogo sniffed at the air suspiciously. “I smell it, Khaleesi,” he called. “The poison water.” The Dothraki distrusted the sea and all that moved upon it. Water that a horse could not drink was water they wanted no part of. They will learn, Dany resolved. I braved their sea with Khal Drogo. Now they can brave mine.

~

The brass merchant was still rolling on the ground. She went to him and helped him to his feet. “Were you stung?”

“No, good lady,” he said, shaking, “or else I would be dead. But it touched me, aieeee, when it fell from the box it landed on my arm.” He had soiled himself, she saw, and no wonder.

She gave him a silver for his trouble and sent him on his way before she turned back to the old man with the white beard.

ACOK Daenerys III

They must weigh twice what they had in Vaes Tolorro. Even so, it would be years before they were large enough to take to war. And they must be trained as well, or they will lay my kingdom waste. For all her Targaryen blood, Dany had not the least idea of how to train a dragon.

~

“The Pureborn refused you?”

“As you said they would. Come, sit, give me your counsel.”

ACOK Daenerys II

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.

~

Beneath Dany's gentle fingers, green Rhaegal stared at the stranger with eyes of molten gold. When his mouth opened, his teeth gleamed like black needles. "When does your ship return to Westeros, Captain?" 

"Not for a year or more, I fear. From here the Cinnamon Wind sails east, to make the trader's circle round the Jade Sea." 

"I see," said Dany, disappointed. "I wish you fair winds and good trading, then. You have brought me a precious gift."

~

Dany laughed. "And will see more of them one day, I hope. Come to me in King's Landing when I am on my father's throne, and you shall have a great reward."

ACOK Daenerys I

They are not strong, she told herself, so I must be their strength. I must show no fear, no weakness, no doubt. However frightened my heart, when they look upon my face they must see only Drogo’s queen. She felt older than her fourteen years. If ever she had truly been a girl, that time was done.

~

Dany hungered and thirsted with the rest of them. The milk in her breasts dried up, her nipples cracked and bled, and the flesh fell away from her day by day until she was lean and hard as a stick, yet it was her dragons she feared for.

~

Jhogo said they must leave her or bind her to her saddle, but Dany remembered a night on the Dothraki sea, when the Lysene girl had taught her secrets so that Drogo might love her more. She gave Doreah water from her own skin, cooled her brow with a damp cloth, and held her hand until she died, shivering. Only then would she permit the khalasar to press on.

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys X

“You will be my khalasar,” she told them. “I see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.” The black eyes watched her, wary, expressionless. “I see the children, women, the wrinkled faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday. Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say, give me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a place for you.”

AGOT Daenerys IX

“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside the city of the Lamb Men.

“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her high and low and gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They were six. When they were done with her, they cut her throat.”

“It was her fate, Khaleesi,” said Aggo.


If I look back I am lost. “It was a cruel fate,” Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.”

The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. “Khaleesi,” the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, “Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”

She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormhorn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo.”

AGOT Daenerys VIII

“He fell from his horse,” Haggo said, staring down. His broad face was impassive, but his voice was leaden.

“You must not say that,” Dany told him. “We have ridden far enough today. We will camp here.”

~

“We must bathe him,” she said stubbornly. She must not allow herself to despair. “Irri, have the tub brought at once. Doreah, Eroeh, find water, cool water, he’s so hot.” He was a fire in human skin.

[...] While the bath was being prepared, Dany knelt awkwardly beside her lord husband, her belly great with their child within. She undid his braid with anxious fingers, as she had on the night he’d taken her for the first time, beneath the stars. His bells she laid aside carefully, one by one. He would want them again when he was well, she told herself.

~

“Help him,” Dany pleaded. “For the love you say you bear me, help him now.”

[...] “Your khal is good as dead, Princess.”

“No, he can’t die, he mustn’t, it was only a cut.” Dany took his large callused hand in her own small ones, and held it tight between them. “I will not let him die ...”

~

Dany hugged herself. “But why?” she cried plaintively. “Why should they kill a little baby?”

“He is Drogo’s son, and the crones say he will be the stallion who mounts the world. It was prophesied. Better to kill the child than to risk his fury when he grows to manhood.”

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—”

~

Dany did not want to go back to Vaes Dothrak and live the rest of her life among those terrible old women, yet she knew that the knight spoke the truth. Drogo had been more than her sun-and-stars; he had been the shield that kept her safe. “I will not leave him,” she said stubbornly, miserably. She took his hand again. “I will not.”

~

“This is your work, maegi,” Qotho said. Haggo laid his fist across Mirri’s cheek with a meaty smack that drove her to the ground. Then he kicked her where she lay.

“Stop it!” Dany screamed.

~

“So you have saved me once more.”

“And now you must save him,” Dany said. “Please ...”

[...] “All I can do now is ease the dark road before him, so he might ride painless to the night lands. He will be gone by morning.”

Her words were a knife through Dany’s breast. What had she ever done to make the gods so cruel? She had finally found a safe place, had finally tasted love and hope. She was finally going home. And now to lose it all ... “No,” she pleaded. “Save him, and I will free you, I swear it. You must know a way ... some magic, some ...”

~

She told herself she would die for him, if she must. She was the blood of the dragon, she would not be afraid. Her brother Rhaegar had died for the woman he loved.

~

She caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho shoved her aside. Dany fell to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to protect the child within.

~

Someone threw a stone, and when Dany looked, her shoulder was torn and bloody. “No,” she wept, “no, please, stop it, it’s too high, the price is too high.” More stones came flying. She tried to crawl toward the tent, but Cohollo caught her. Fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back and she felt the cold touch of his knife at her throat. “My baby,” she screamed, and perhaps the gods heard, for as quick as that, Cohollo was dead. Aggo’s arrow took him under the arm, to pierce his lungs and heart.

AGOT Daenerys VII

The town was afire, black plumes of smoke roiling and tumbling as they rose into a hard blue sky. Beneath broken walls of dried mud, riders galloped back and forth, swinging their long whips as they herded the survivors from the smoking rubble. The women and children of Ogo’s khalasar walked with a sullen pride, even in defeat and bondage; they were slaves now, but they seemed not to fear it. It was different with the townsfolk. Dany pitied them; she remembered what terror felt like. Mothers stumbled along with blank, dead faces, pulling sobbing children by the hand. There were only a few men among them, cripples and cowards and grandfathers.

~

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. She wondered what the Lamb Men had thought, when they first saw the dust of their horses from atop those cracked-mud walls. Perhaps a few, the younger and more foolish who still believed that the gods heard the prayers of desperate men, took it for deliverance.

Across the road, a girl no older than Dany was sobbing in a high thin voice as a rider shoved her over a pile of corpses, facedown, and thrust himself inside her. Other riders dismounted to take their turns. That was the sort of deliverance the Dothraki brought the Lamb Men.

I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys Targaryen reminded herself as she turned her face away. She pressed her lips together and hardened her heart and rode on toward the gate.

“Most of Ogo’s riders fled,” Ser Jorah was saying. “Still, there may be as many as ten thousand captives.”

Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver’s Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne.

“I’ve told the khal he ought to make for Meereen,” Ser Jorah said. “They’ll pay a better price than he’d get from a slaving caravan. Illyrio writes that they had a plague last year, so the brothels are paying double for healthy young girls, and triple for boys under ten. If enough children survive the journey, the gold will buy us all the ships we need, and hire men to sail them.”

Behind them, the girl being raped made a heartrending sound, a long sobbing wail that went on and on and on. Dany’s hand clenched hard around the reins, and she turned the silver’s head. “Make them stop,” she commanded Ser Jorah.

“Khaleesi?” The knight sounded perplexed.


“You heard my words,” she said. “Stop them.” She spoke to her khas in the harsh accents of Dothraki. “Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no rape.”

The warriors exchanged a baffled look.

Jorah Mormont spurred his horse closer. “Princess,” he said, “you have a gentle heart, but you do not understand. This is how it has always been. Those men have shed blood for the khal. Now they claim their reward.”

Across the road, the girl was still crying, her high singsong tongue strange to Dany’s ears. The first man was done with her now, and a second had taken his place.

“She is a lamb girl,” Quaro said in Dothraki. “She is nothing, Khaleesi. The riders do her honor. The Lamb Men lay with sheep, it is known.”

“It is known,” her handmaid Irri echoed.

“It is known,” agreed Jhogo, astride the tall grey stallion that Drogo had given him. “If her wailing offends your ears, Khaleesi, Jhogo will bring you her tongue.” He drew his arakh.

“I will not have her harmed,” Dany said. “I claim her. Do as I command you, or Khal Drogo will know the reason why.”

“Ai, Khaleesi,” Jhogo replied, kicking his horse. Quaro and the others followed his lead, the bells in their hair chiming.

“Go with them,” she commanded Ser Jorah.

“As you command.” The knight gave her a curious look. “You are your brother’s sister, in truth.”

“Viserys?” She did not understand.

“No,” he answered. “Rhaegar.” He galloped off.

~

Mormont pulled the girl off the pile of corpses and wrapped her in his blood-spattered cloak. He led her across the road to Dany. “What do you want done with her?”

The girl was trembling, her eyes wide and vague. Her hair was matted with blood. “Doreah, see to her hurts. You do not have a rider’s look, perhaps she will not fear you. The rest, with me.” She urged the silver through the broken wooden gate.

It was worse inside the town. Many of the houses were afire, and the jaqqa rhan had been about their grisly work. Headless corpses filled the narrow, twisty lanes. They passed other women being raped. Each time Dany reined up, sent her khas to make an end to it, and claimed the victim as slave. One of them, a thick-bodied, flat-nosed woman of forty years, blessed Dany haltingly in the Common Tongue, but from the others she got only flat black stares. They were suspicious of her, she realized with sadness; afraid that she had saved them for some worse fate.

“You cannot claim them all, child,” Ser Jorah said, the fourth time they stopped, while the warriors of her khas herded her new slaves behind her.

“I am khaleesi, heir to the Seven Kingdoms, the blood of the dragon,” Dany reminded him. “It is not for you to tell me what I cannot do.” Across the city, a building collapsed in a great gout of fire and smoke, and she heard distant screams and the wailing of frightened children.

~

He started to reach out a hand to Daenerys, but as he lifted his arm Drogo grimaced in sudden pain and turned his head.

Dany could almost feel his agony. The wounds were worse than Ser Jorah had led her to believe. “Where are the healers?” she demanded. [...] “Why do they not attend the khal?”

“The khal sent the hairless men away, Khaleesi,” old Cohollo assured her.

[...] “It is not for Khal Drogo to wait,” she proclaimed. “Jhogo, seek out these eunuchs and bring them here at once.”

~

“The khal needs no help from women who lie with sheep,” barked Qotho. “Aggo, cut out her tongue.”

Aggo grabbed her hair and pressed a knife to her throat. Dany lifted a hand. “No. She is mine. Let her speak.”

~

“The Great Shepherd sent me to earth to heal his lambs, wherever I might find them.”

Qotho gave her a stinging slap. “We are no sheep, maegi.”


“Stop it,” Dany said angrily. “She is mine. I will not have her harmed.”

~

“Know this, wife of the Lamb God. Harm the khal and you suffer the same.” He drew his skinning knife and showed her the blade.

“She will do no harm.” Dany felt she could trust this old, plainfaced woman with her flat nose; she had saved her from the hard hands of her rapers, after all.

 AGOT Daenerys VI

She saw a beautiful feathered cloak from the Summer Isles, and took it for a gift. [...] When Doreah looked longingly at a fertility charm at a magician’s booth, Dany took that too and gave it to the handmaid, thinking that now she should find something for Irri and Jhiqui as well.

AGOT Daenerys V

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.” ~

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.”

~

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.”

~

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.”

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.

~

“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. [...] “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.

~

“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.

[midnight-marimba]

Mar’s DQXI Fic OCs

It’s Dragon Quest OC And NPC Week, and I’m going to approach it from the other direction than what’s described in the event proposal, because I rarely end up inventing a detailed character without context, but I often find a specific need for a character in a piece of fanfiction and build them up out of that prompt into something better than a footnote. So I’m going to take the opportunity to talk about some of my fics and the original characters and NPCs who wandered into them and made themselves interesting enough that I’m eager to share a little extra detail or commentary about them.  (Under the cut)

Hair Tie That Binds

A comedic story about Hendrik recruiting Erik for a heist to help fix his own mistake. (9k words)

I needed a minor villain, so I invented Lady Druzy (named off of an obscure corner of a gem list, so as to suit a minor Heliodoran noble).  She is petty, spiteful, vengeful, and apparently my favorite archetype of OC to write.  She is awful and I loved writing her.

After Rain, The Sun Will Shine

A Sylv/Hendrik one-shot involving Hendrik’s memories of Sylv’s mother. (8k words)

When I wrote this, I had not yet heard the detail from the voice drama (please somebody translate the whole thing?? <3) that Sylv's mom's given name was Gerbera and her stage name was Sylvia (that is, exactly the same stage name Sylv took in the Japanese version of the game).  I had only heard a broader rumor about the drama and Sylv choosing a stage name in honor of their mother.

So when I went to write a story about her, I looked at a list of Dutch names (to match Arnout and Hendrik — Zwaardsrust is Dutch) and hunted for one a name with a "Syl" sound.  I landed on Silke, which is also satisfying from a word association perspective (since it looks like "silk" which sounds highly appropriate for a "famous Zwaardsrustian beauty" — one of the few canon details we get for her).

I tried to make her stubborn and determined, inspiring and willfully optimistic for the sake of the people she had under her leadership.  Sylv-like, but with a slightly more intense philosophical flavor than canon Sylv, as she’s walking out of an arguably even greater tragedy (or at least more personal at a larger scale?)

Silk and Swagger

Faris/Reader, from the point of view of a Heliodor guard. (1.7k words)

The guard is nameless and the fic is relatively short, but my goodness it was fun inventing someone who is instantly smitten with Faris and believes the best of him at all times.

When Home Isn't Marked on the Map

A Sylv/Erik longfic set a couple years after the end of the game, in which Erik is coming out of a period of self-imposed isolation after a disastrous attempt at confessing his one-sided romantic feelings for the Luminary, and he begins by going looking for Sylv, the one old companion he dares hope won’t yell at him for his absence.  (74k words)

Since the ultimate seed of the idea behind this fic was "Erik would be protective towards orphans and Sylv would like that about him" I needed some kids to put in the story.  There are two sets of four that I named and included. 

First is the group from the rural area near Puerto Valor, and thus they have Spanish names: Isabella, Serafito, Paz, Ana.  I'm pretty sure I named the younger ones with shorter names to help myself keep them straight.  In my head, they have a darker complexion than the rest of the kids in the story, since I always wish the DQ world was a little more diverse on that front, but I fear that I forgot to actually write that detail in.  (Room for improvement...)

The second group is an expansion of the four child NPCs you can find playing hide-and-seek in downtown Heliodor.  I could only find a canon name for Cammo (the King of Hide-and-Seek) so I gave the rest of them stone related names, figuring the pattern from Cobblestone might extend around Heliodor into the poorer and less formal areas of the kingdom (Ruby the innkeeper notwithstanding). So they are Flint, Crystal, and Mica.

There are so many of them that it was tough to give all of them a lot of characterization, but I tried to distinguish each of them at least a little.  Isabella, the leader of her group, blunt in a way that reminds Erik of Mia and Veronica.  Serafito, a little bit of a self-sacrificing caretaker. Paz, young but outgoing, and Ana, even younger and a little shy.  Flint, the canny, cautious, and slightly manipulative leader of the Heliodor gang.  Cammo, sneaky and adventurous and clever.  Crystal, strong and brave and protective.  Mica unfortunately ended up being most notable for the ordeals he goes through.

My favorite among them ended up being Crystal, from the instant she decided she was after Hendrik's job.

Diamond

A Sylv/Serena and Sylv/Dave fic, from Serena’s point of view.  Set after Act 3 as Serena chooses a mission to research and perform healing around the world, travels alongside Sylv’s new circus troupe, and they both get to pursue some missing character development.  (118k words, technically 1 chapter short of an intended ending but may not be continued.)

Mind the tags and content advisory if you go into the fic itself, because (1) for reasons of 2020, a story about a doctor-hero was simply not an ideal story to begin in the year 2019, and (2) it is NOT a utopian style world — many characters have prejudices, others are closeted in some major ways, and not all of that is gone by the end of the story.  I 100% understand many folks not wanting to go roll around in that kind of fiction, and while there’s a discussion about Representation I could shoehorn in here, I’m going to set it aside for the sake of on-topic rambling about fun OC development.

For this fic, I wanted Sylv and Serena to be traveling the world together.  Serena was to be motivated in part by the allure of getting to meet more new people, and also, I think it’s useful for her personal growth to spend a little time away from her blood family and most of the people from whom she would naturally take direction.  I also wanted to explore Sylv as a leader in a way that’s not so easy within the canon party, and in general, I imagine Sylv both being friendly to every stranger and also having old friends pop up everywhere he goes.

Between the two of them, I ended up needing to plop in OC's left and right, both for Sylv’s new Act 3 circus troupe, and in every town they visited.  Because I’m a nerd, I expanded lore for some of the regions too, and I will mention some of those details here with the characters.

Sylv’s troupe:

Chill, a contortionist from Sniflheim, where people get kind of uncomfy about magic, especially when it looks too close to evil witchery.  Like, say, Zing.

Samir, a short, round bard from Gallopolis who can do amazing things with a variety of instruments, and his partner Grey, once a guard from Heliodor until he decided that job was even more bland than his name, and he ran off to Gallopolis to join the circus.

Maria and Mateo, a couple of quiet, short and slender dancers from Puerto Valor (in my head, Mateo is about 5 feet and Maria’s a couple inches shorter, though I keep gravitating away from talking in Modern Earth units of measurement when writing for this fandom).  Their kids, teenaged Leo and toddler Lena, aren’t (yet) performers, but are present because I thought it was interesting to plug some kids into a story about a traveling circus troupe, and because I wanted to give Sylv an excuse to interact with kids.

Francine. A classically beautiful acrobat from Octagonia, where the only work she could find was being a bunny girl handing out flyers.  She’s had a crush on Sylv, which didn’t work out, and in the aftermath she’s a little bitter and is predisposed to dislike anyone else getting too close to Sylv.  She is rude and spiteful when she does not like someone (though she may do so in an overly-sweet tone), and she awkwardly overcompensates when she wants to prove she’s moved on from something, and she ended up being my favorite OC here.

Some other notable OCs in the world:

In Sniflheim: Healer Heather, the doctor who would really rather not have any magic in her house, so she doesn’t get a mob coming after her next time the tide of public opinion turns against witches.

In Lonalulu: Nohea, the charming and handsome hula dancer who isn’t quite as nice as he seems, and Pika, the shy, plain, and clumsy but kind-hearted net weaver.  Both are there as potential love interests for Serena (and for contrast against Sylv, of course).

In the Inner Sea: Coral the mermaid, a singer.  She's here for advancing Serena's character development, but it was fun to have other OCs react to a mermaid, and trying to write plot-advancing mermaid dialogue raised my respect for the localization team 1000%.

In Gallopolis: Doctor Zel, who is very scientific and good at her job, never makes eye contact, and lacks a comforting bedside presence.  (Happily they have Faris to help with public relations during a health crisis…?)

This is only about half of the OCs and NPCs named in the story, but they’re most of the ones with the most screen time, and most of the ones that stand out in my mind.  But the outgoing and friendly Sylv and Serena I was trying to write, both of whom wanted to engage with the people of the world at large, just spawned new characters around them as they went.  You know those stories about mythical people where flowers bloom after them everywhere they go?  This pair was like that, only with OC’s instead of flowers.

[ironforgedrp]

♛   HELENA SERRETT

↳ details; female, 25,  born in the eighth month of 481AC. ↳ status; asexual, estranged from her husband lord myles serrett, childless. ↳ faceclaim;  jessica brown findlay. ↳ hails from; highgarden, the reach. ↳ loyalty; feigned loyalty to house lannister for the entirety of her marriage, until hearing of the midsummer attack in sunspear and knowing she would no longer hide her loyalty to house tyrell and her family.

↳ position/title; lady serrett of silverhill, former princess of the reach. ↳ religion; faith of the seven. ↳ spoken languages; common tongue. ↳ reason for being in sunspear; formally to make her loyalty to her family aware on the political stage by being by their side during the peace summit, however also because she did not want to return to an empty highgarden. her brothers are yet to know of what has occurred in her marriage until she presents herself in sunspear. she is also seeking to get to know her brothers once again, wanting to begin again; especially now her brother is engaged.

♛   PERSONALITY

↳ type; isfj-a (the defender). ↳ alignment; lawful good. ↳ star sign; virgo. ↳ positives; intelligent, analytical, empathetic, daring, brave. ↳ negatives;  unruly, outspoken, high-strung, over-thinker, critical.

♛  BIOGRAPHY

↳ family lineage.

Born in the eighth month of 481AC, Helena Tyrell was the most traumatic birth of all three times Lady Ensley brought a child into the world. It was an uncharacteristically humid August that year, and Ensley had definitely suffered for the entirety of it, being heavily pregnant with her third child. After two days of pain and impassioned prayers for the baby to turn from being breach throughout the castle of Highgarden, Helena was finally born just as her father Rylic had decided to go hunting with his men, tired of waiting for his wife to birth a child that was no doubt beyond any midwives help at this point. Surprisingly Helena, as her mother named her alone that Summer’s afternoon, was born with a strong set of lungs and completely healthy; in that moment there became the two pearls of Highgarden, a daughter Ensley had so wished for. Her relationship with her mother was the polar opposite of that with her father; two extremes, one could say. On one hand, Rylic Tyrell was disappointed in having a daughter; a waste of time and money when considering the dowry that would have to be included in her marriage. Whilst he was not cruel to his only daughter, he certainly paid her very little attention in comparison to the eye he seemed to keep on his sons. On the other hand, Helena’s relationship with her mother was one of complete dependence; often finding each other attached by the hip as Helena grew into the mirror image of her mother - graceful, poised and elegant.

Ensley tried her hardest to ensure her husband’s indifference toward his daughter did not sting as much as it could have, purposefully going out of her way to ensure her daughter had a personal companion in her mother. After much pleading, Ensley and Helena spent three months as guests of House Hightower in Oldtown, solely for the purpose that Helena may study whatever sparked her interest, from philosophy to arithmetic in the Citadel itself. Whilst they had insisted on Emeric and Cedric joining them, Rylic had insisted that his sons must remain under his eyes and his eyes only. Eventually, whilst Helena was a well-rounded student in the majority of her studied subjects, her passion ended up being for painting. The girl was encouraged by her mother, accompanying her to varying landscapes and helping her paint until she was able to do so on her own. Whilst the pair of them were beyond the walls of Highgarden, where the walls had ears, Ensley would quietly talk to her daughter about how important it was to always ensure her voice was heard by her husband, lest she loose yourself in who they wanted her to be. It puzzled the young girl at first, as her mother was entirely meek and obedient in the face of her father’s stern instructions regarding the upbringing of his children however that soon changed with time and maturity. Helena began to understand her mother meant best for her and her sons, and simply tried to do what could in whatever time she had where she was certain she was not being watched or listened to. Helena needed to be her voice when she was unable to be, in ensuring the protection of her family, especially Emeric as their heir, who seemed to become quieter and quieter as each day passed. Helena was envious of her brother Cedric’s ability to take care of himself as the golden boy, often leaving the family home for weeks at a time for the sake of keeping up relations with the other Houses of the Reach, whilst in a heated exchange he angrily admitted to her that his distance was the direct result of their home no longer being a home - the sooner she realised, the better. As political intrigue and death seemed to take over Highgarden, with uncles and cousins dropping to their untimely end, Helena found the perfect balance that suited her; spending more time in the rolling hills of the Reach with her mother, and finding the correct midpoint between Emeric’s determination to serve his family and Cedric’s ability to mentally distance himself from the strain.

Whilst Highgarden’s daughter was a fast learner, far more attentive than her eldest brother who seemed to always have a far away look in his eye and far more obedient than her middle brother who would rather argue the extent of usefulness of specific arithmetic in a tree, there was one lesson that Helena could not seem to wrap her mind around; the matter of chivalry and courtly love. Her mother tried to explain how the culture had stemmed from the Reach itself, through one of Garth Greenhand’s sons John the Oak. Whilst Helena understood the history and the social context behind her mother’s lessons, she failed to see the attraction in any matters of courtly desire and flirtation. Whilst many other noble girls of the Reach whispered of their future husbands, of tourneys and being the Queen of love and beauty, Helena found herself feeling as though something inside her must be missing. As Helena grew into womanhood, she found no interest in the tales women shared of their wedding nights and of lust, or even whispers of women that found comfort in eachother. Even when Rylic Tyrell arranged a match for her marriage to Myles Serrett, son of Lord Ossifer Serrett of Silverhill, Helena distinctly felt no attraction or lust toward the man.

After the strange sudden wrapped deaths of her parents, Helena obediently married into House Serrett and left behind her family home of Highgarden for that of Silverhill in the Westerlands. She remembered bitterly thinking on how her mother had not wanted her to marry beyond the hills of the Reach, for fear of being too far from home. She personally found the Serretts to be foolishly arrogant and ambitious people, though kept her thoughts to herself. Her husband treated her well, in some ways Helena thought perhaps too well as the man failed to understand his wife was not the least bit interested in doing her wifely duties. She often slept in her own bedchambers at Silverhill, and when Myles would visit to attempt to start their family, Helena found herself feigning sleep, sickness or her monthly bleed. Luckily for her, Myles was meek enough to accept her excuses with a little grumbling but no serious consequences. He was lucky to sleep with his wife at least once a month when she knew she could no longer avoid her duties, though this was only done with the secret protection of moon tea a trusted maid servant she had brought with her from Highgarden attained for her from the apothecary. As a result of Helena’s secret intake of moontea, as well as quietly starting rumours of her own husband’s impotence among her ladies, she has been planting the seeds of her husband’s inability to do his duty as a man. The woman spent much time frequently accompanying her husband and his family in visiting the Lannister’s of Casterly Rock and their cousins of Lannisport.

After hearing the striking news of the sister in law’s death, Helena found herself quietly growing more and more resentful toward her husband’s lion masters. Her brother had become a widow three year after marriage, and knowing Emeric, he was too broken to contemplate letting another woman come close enough to him to legitimately provide an heir for Highgarden - at least for a long time. That left her middle brother Cedric to do the job of providing an heir for the sake of duty, the same brother that had been the best at distancing himself from the burden and could put himself first with such ease. She remained with the Serretts when her brother declared for the independence of the Reach, quietly feigning loyalty to her husband and his family and by proxy, the Lannister King. She would write to her brothers, informing them of what little she had managed to overhear around Silverhill - the nobles of the Westerlands had only been more suspicious of the Traitor King’s sister, though she remained emotionally collected enough to understand and dismiss their stern eyes. Her act continued until news spread to Silverhill of an attack at the Dornish Midsummer Ball, an attack in which all had been targeted by an unseen foe. There had been some confusion in the reports, no doubt due to the distance, about the severity of the injuries that had befallen on her family, with some even whispering of their deaths. With life being increasingly sacred during these troubling times, Helena knew she could no longer stand to allow herself to hear people speak ill of her family, regardless of how distant they had become or how badly her reputation would be impacted. She laid with her husband that night, solely to have access to his seal once he fell asleep after a night of heavy wine infected with the milk of the poppy to help him sleep deeper and longer than he usually did. Feigning a letter from Myles himself ordering his guards to accompany her to Sunspear with ultimate haste with the help of his seal, she scrawled a letter left upon her husband’s desk explaining her regret for how she treated him and what she had resigned herself to do. Arranging for a chest of clothes to be packed into a carriage from her private chambers, she knew once the carriage crossed the boarders into the Reach she was free from any orders her husband could issue his guards upon awaking in the morning. She would be home eventually, but Dorne called first.

↳ personality.

Of all three of Highgarden’s children, Helena has always been the most emotionally mature of the trio. Whilst Emeric wallows in his pain and Cedric remains in denial, Helena spent time and energy in conserving her wellbeing after their twisted deaths and the smallest of suspicions it had brought up in her gut regarding her extent her eldest brother had been willing to go in order to secure their wellbeing. By channeling all her feelings of confusion, fear and hurt into her love of  painting, often getting through multiple canvases a day in the first months after the joint funeral, Helena began to strengthen her resolve and see her healing manifest physically. Her paintings had been full of dark tones at first and often depressing in content, before slowly lightening with time and including streaks of greens, yellows and purples. She is not one to let her emotions get the better of her, though that does not paint her in a cold fashion but rather in a reasonable one. She believes one must always bide their time and do what is needed at the correct time, and is well aware of the consequences that befall her reputation for estranging herself from her husband. She is always open to listening to the problems of others, willing to either hold their hand and listen to them rant about their issues as someone to listen or give them advice for how they could possibly overcome the burden. Her treatment of her husband especially shows a darker streak in Helena that consists mainly of being sneaky and manipulative, though this comes down her independent nature and her refusal to put herself through something she knows she would not enjoy nor want for the sake of a man. She had not leaned on her brothers or her father growing up for support, and whilst her mother had been her guardian angel she was soon dead long before her time, leaving Helena to embark on the turbulent waves of marriage with no female companion to help her.

↳ the splitting of the kingdoms.

Helena was not intending on making herself present at the Dornish peace summit, as her husband Myles Serett, son of Lord Ossifer Serrett, much preferred to keep himself from the drama and scandals of the many courts within Westeros and insisted on his wife remaining within the safe cage of Silverhill by his side. She knew better than to exchange letters regarding the peace summit with her brothers despite her desperation to be involved and help in some way, for fear of their letters being intercepted by the Serretts and the details of the Reach’s trade and numbers of the Redwyne fleet be discovered by the Lannisters earlier than counted on. Helena only fled to Sunspear once hearing of the attack that had befallen all the celebrators at the Midsummer Ball, knowing she would be safe riding within the boundaries of the Reach and doubted the Martell guards of Dorne would intercept her due to the very different culture in Dorne - it was not particularly strange to see a woman travelling alone. 

♛   STATUS:  TAKEN.

[bittersweetmelodie]

cycle

Fandom: RWBY Pairing: Blake Belladonna/Sun Wukong, past Blake Belladonna/Adam Taurus Summary: Because she’s too good at running away, and they’re too good at being left behind; a Blake character study of sorts. Warnings: The first part touches on the relationship between Blake and Adam, so warning for violence, I guess? 

Ao3

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters and places belong to Rooster Teeth

A/N: asdfjkl, I was supposed to post this last week and I!!! I’m so bad with deadlines, omg. I think I sold my soul to finish this, guys. I actually wanted to add more, but I’m so tired right now. 

“Adam, stop!” she yells as she brings Gambol Shroud up to block him. But his attack is so powerful that she is forced to dig her heels into the ground to stop herself from being blown away. It seems like their relationship has always been like that – him constantly pushing and pushing and pushing, and her digging her heels uselessly into the ground and trying not to be blown away by the sheer force of him. And she hates it.

He doesn’t give her a chance to recover from the blow before he is bearing down on her again, his sword pushing hard against her own. “How do you expect to win a war fighting like that, sweetheart?” In one swift movement, he knocks her off her feet and flips his chokutō, slamming the hilt into her stomach with so much force that it sends her flying.

She lands roughly, her face hitting the mud, the rain pouring down relentlessly around her. She struggles to breathe through the blood dripping from her nose, and the metallic taste in her mouth as she pushes herself to her hands and knees. She brings a hand to her nose and stares at the blood on her fingers, her head spinning. Blood dribbles down her chin and she watches dazedly as red splatters the ground, mixing with the mud, before being washed away by the rain.

“Get up, my darling” he orders, his voice calm, as he levels his sword at her. “We aren’t done yet.”

She knows she can’t win, because if he really wanted to, he could easily slice through her katana with his blade. Their battles always end the same way, with her bleeding and broken on the ground, and him standing above her. But it’s like she wants to prove that she can do it, prove that she’s strong enough, and she tries to push herself to her feet, spots swimming in her vision. Pain surges through her and she blacks out, only for a minute, but it’s long enough for her to stagger and fall back to the ground. 

When her vision clears, she finds herself staring at Adam’s mask, and she can’t tell if he’s concerned for her well-being, or if he’s satisfied with how beat up she is, and that scares her.

He pulls her into his arms, and the gentleness of the action is such a huge contrast to the violence of their fight that she nearly startles out of his arms. “I’m sorry. Did I push you too far?”

It’s not the first time he’s asked her that question; it isn’t the first time he’s pushed her to the point of aura depletion during a fight, and she’s sure it won’t be the last. Her answer is always the same. “No,” she whispers. 

She screws her eyes shut and hisses in pain when he brushes his hand against the bruise on her stomach. She clings to him and wonders when things had changed, when it went from him telling her ‘I’ll always protect you’ to her wondering if he would protect her from himself.

Because most of the scars and bruises on her body are from him. It had been gradual – first, it was just a backhanded slap that left a mark that lasted for a couple minutes, then it was a punch a cross her jaw that left a bruise that lasted for a few days, then it was a slash across her arm that left a scar that’s still there today. He doesn’t wait for the bruises and scars to go away before new ones take their place. She hadn’t noticed then, because it had always been in the context of a spar, but she can see it now in the scars on her arms, her back, her torso. She can see it in the blood she coughs out days after their fights are over and done.  

She lets him press a kiss against her lips, and if he’s a little rougher than he usually is, she doesn’t say anything. He pulls her to him, his nails digging painfully into her back, and bites her lip hard enough to draw blood.

She kisses him back, and there’s a sense of urgent desperation, because she’s trying so hard to remember why she fell in love with him. She’s trying to hold on to the last strands of what they used to be – what he used to be – but it feels like trying to hold sand, and he’s slipping right through her fingers.

She stands on the edge of the train car, golden eyes boring into the face of his mask.

She’s conflicted, because this is Adam. Adam, who took care of her when her parents left, and she refused to go with them. Adam, who told her, once upon a time, that he would always love and protect her, who held her as she cried after her first kill. Adam, who told her she was everything he ever wanted and that they would make the world a better place together.

This is Adam, who wouldn’t hesitate to throw her against a wall, or slam the hilt of his chokutō against her, despite knowing that she has almost no Aura left. Adam, who took out his anger on her when a mission didn’t go as he planned. Adam, who pushed and pushed until she couldn’t push back anymore. Adam, who would pull her into his arms after a rough fight, and whisper comforting words in her ear. Words that made her feel like maybe the person she fell in love with is still in there somewhere.

But he changes. She knows it in the bruises that line her body, and the scars hidden beneath her clothes. She knows it in the way he doesn’t hesitate to attack, hurt, kill innocent people, all to make a statement. She knows it in the way he holds her, rough and aggressive and painfully tight.

She changes too. She knows it in the way guilt pools in her stomach and eats away at her conscience, even as she justifies his actions to herself. She knows it in the way his kisses start tasting bitter and wrong on her tongue. She knows it in the way he doesn’t let her take his mask off the way he used to, like he’s trying to hide who – what – he’s become, and she doesn’t think she’ll recognize the person underneath anymore.

She’s tired of watching him kill innocent people, tired of lying to herself, of justifying his actions and of pretending that nothing is wrong. She can’t stand this endless, pointless cycle of pain – they fight, she bleeds and hurts and cries, they kiss and make up, and it starts all over again. He’s not the person she fell in love with, and the White Fang isn’t an organization of peace. Not anymore.

So she reaches up and draws Gambol Shroud, her hand tightening around its hilt. “Goodbye,” she says with a note of finality in her voice. She brings her weapon down, separating the two train compartments. And she feels like she’s severing herself from Adam, from the White Fang, cutting all emotional ties. But that’s a lie. She knows that he’s been too big of a part of her life for her to be able to completely separate herself from that, and there’s a sinking feeling in her chest that tells her she hasn’t seen the last of him yet.

She watches him drift further and further away until he finally disappears. There’s a bittersweet taste in her mouth, and a hole in her chest, because she’s glad – so, so glad – that she escaped, but the White Fang was her entire life. And in spite of everything, she still feels guilty for leaving Adam (her mentor, her partner, her lover), for leaving Ilia, for leaving her family. But she hasn’t felt this free in a very long time, and she thinks she can probably live with the guilt.

The first couple weeks are the hardest. She is so used to having Adam and Ilia at her side, and suddenly they aren’t there anymore. She didn’t realize how much she’s come to rely on Adam during fights, and defending herself against Grimm is a lot more difficult when it’s just her. And she’s so full of negative emotions – with fear, and loneliness, and doubt – that she seems to be constantly surrounded by Grimm.

She learns to defend herself because her life depends on it. An ursa teaches her to never turn her back to the enemy, because Adam is not there to watch her back anymore. A boarbatusk and a nevermore teach her to be aware of her surroundings at all times, because Adam is not at her side, and there is nobody to defend her but herself.

She doesn’t really know what to do with herself. She’s been a part of the White Fang for as long as she can remember, and it’s all she’s ever known. She can’t go home; the guilt weighs too heavily on her, and she can’t face her parents yet, not after the angry words she threw at them in a fit of rage, not after all the things she’s done.

She applies for Beacon Academy, because Huntsmen and Huntresses are noble, brave and selfless, and she has to do something to undo some of the violence that she had a hand in creating.

There’s nowhere she can go where people won’t judge her for the ears on top of her head, so she dons a bow and wears it like a shield, hiding who she is and what she’s done, and hopes she’s making the right choice.

Learning to work with a new partner is a struggle. Adam has been her only partner ever since he taught her how to fight, and she isn’t as in sync with Yang. She and Adam have fought together for so long that they can read each other like a book, and fight like they’re a single entity. No words are ever needed; she can look at him, and know exactly what he’s going to do next. He’ll give her a nod, and she’ll know what he wants her to do. But everything about Yang is new and different, and she doesn’t know if she can trust her to have her back.

Learning to fight as a team is even harder, and learning to trust them is harder yet. She doesn’t sleep for her first few nights at Beacon – how can she, when she’s surrounded by people she barely knows, and there’s nobody to keep a lookout? It takes her a week and a half to be comfortable enough around them to get a full nights’ rest. The first time Yang casually throws an arm across her shoulders to point something out to her, she draws her weapon and very nearly takes off her arm.

But as the days turn into weeks, and the weeks into months, she learns and grows and heals, until fighting with the rest of Team RWBY starts to become like second nature, and they start to become something of a family to her. She starts to take down some of her walls; she stops looking for something in the shadows that isn’t there; she stops jumping at every small sound. She even lets Yang pull her into a group hug with very little resistance.

But there will always be some walls that she’ll never take down. There are parts of her that she will never willingly let her teammates – her friends – see.

She meets a boy with sunshine in his hair and gold in his heart, who shines brighter than anybody she’s ever known. And she thinks his name – Sun – is befitting, because he radiates warmth and happiness.

She learns about him in bits and pieces over tea and coffee at the quaint little teashop off the docks of Vale; he’s like an open book with nothing to hide. She never has to ask, but he tells her anyways.

She learns that his team is the first real family that he’s ever really had, and even though they’re crazy, he loves them, and would do anything to make sure that they’re safe. She learns that Sage is their team mom, that Neptune is afraid of water, that Scarlet is an annoying idiot.

She learns that his favourite colour is blue, like the ocean on a sunny day. She looks at him, and swears she can see the world reflected in his eyes, and she thinks her favourite colour might be blue too.

She learns that, unlike her, he’s an early riser; he likes to wake up before sunrise and watch the sun come up, because he likes watching the world light up. She thinks it’s fitting, because that’s what he does – he makes the world a brighter place. She remembers Adam telling her once that he likes watching the sun set, because it’s like the world is being cloaked in shadows. And she thinks maybe that’s fitting too.

She knows that he cares for her in a way that’s different than the way he cares for Neptune, or Scarlet, or Sage – he wears his heart on his sleeve, and looks at her with stars in his eyes and treats her with a gentleness that shouldn’t exist in a person who has gone through as much hardship as he has.

She tries to keep her walls up for fear of corrupting him, but he can take them down so much faster than she can put them back up again. So she tells him stories too, not her whole history, but she shares bits and pieces.

She tells him about her parents, how her father is one of the bravest people she knows, and how her mother is one of the sweetest, but she doesn’t tell him about how they left the White Fang, or how she called them cowards (she’s sure he won’t judge her for it, but she’s not sure if she’s ready for him to know that much).

She tells him about how her team, while not her first, has slowly become a family to her. She tells him how Ruby is the baby, even if she is the leader, how Yang would do anything to protect them, how Weiss is strong and independent, despite how she was raised.

But she doesn’t think she’ll ever tell him how much he actually means to her, because he is everything that is pure and bright and good, and she thinks she might break him if she tries to hold him with her bloodstained hands.

She stands on the roof of a nearby building, watching helplessly as Grimm continue to destroy Beacon (her home, she vaguely registers), and she clenches her fist. She’s been standing there for the past five minutes, because she doesn’t want to go. She hadn’t expected to make friends when she applied to Beacon, but there are people here that she loves more than her own life, people she doesn’t want to leave – Ruby, Weiss, Yang. Sun. She feels her heart clenching at the thought of Sun, but it only cements her decision to leave. Adam’s words still echo in her head, and the image of Yang’s severed arm is still fresh in her mind. She can’t put any of them in that kind of danger.

She crouches, ready to make another jump, but she falters when she hears somebody calling out to her. She didn’t think anybody had seen her leave.

“Blake!” Her name echoes and reverberates through the quiet of the night.

She would know that voice anywhere, could pick it out in a crowd of thousands of others, and right now, she thinks it might be the only voice capable of making her stay. She turns, and their eyes meet, blue and gold colliding for just a moment, but that’s all it takes for her to pause. Because, even from 50 feet away, she can see the desperation on his face as he tries to reach her.

He lifts an arm to reach for her, and he opens his mouth, his lips forming her name, and his stance is all too familiar to her. It’s that moment on the train all over again – she’s running, leaving behind everything that she knows, and the one person who might have an inkling of a chance of persuading her to change her mind is trying to get to her. But Sun isn’t wearing a mask, and his face is honest and open, and somehow, that makes it all worse. Because it’s a reminder that this time, she isn’t choosing to run – she’s being forced to leave to keep her loved ones safe.

She forces herself to tear her eyes away from his, because she’s afraid that if she watches him a second longer, she’s going to lose all her willpower, and give in to her desire to talk to him. Turning away from Sun is one of the hardest things she’s ever done, but she can’t give him the chance to catch up, because he might be the only person who would be able to convince her to stay. He has too much power over her, and she’ll melt in his hands. She would probably give him anything he wants – he only has to ask – and she can’t take that risk.

With a heavy heart, she takes a deep breath and jumps off the roof, his desperate plea following behind her. She can hear him scrambling to follow her as she disappears into the Emerald Forest, but she’s always been too good at running away, and he’s too good at being left behind.

This time, she doesn’t say goodbye.

Sun crashes back into her life when she least expects it – on a boat, thousands of miles from shore, in the middle of a Grimm fight – and she’s not sure why she’s surprised to see him – he would probably follow her to the ends of the earth to make sure she’s safe (and she loves him for it, but she wishes he wouldn’t).

The relief comes first, washing over her in waves. Sun is alive. He was fine when she last saw him, but with Adam’s threat lingering, a million and one things could have happened to him in the time between her running away, and now. So she is relieved to see, with her own eyes, that he is unharmed.

Then it’s fear, because he’s here, and that means he’s not safe. He’s never going to be safe if he’s with her. Because this boy – this boy who spreads warmth and happiness wherever he goes, who can light up an entire room with just his smile – would die to save a girl who isn’t worth saving. She can already see his unconscious body in the back of her mind, and it fills her with cold dread. She can’t let that happen.

Then it’s anger, because she doesn’t know how else to handle the fear. Her words are sharp, and meant to hurt; she’ll do anything – absolutely anything – to keep him away from her, even if it means he will hate her for it. Having him hate her is better than having to see him get hurt because of her. But of course her anger doesn’t work – he always did have the uncanny ability to see through her rough exterior.

It isn’t until much later, when the Grimm has been defeated, and the passengers reassured, that she feels the warmth spreading through her. The hollow feeling of loneliness has been eating at her for the past couple weeks since she left Vale. She didn’t realize that between her team, Sun, and his team, she hasn’t truly been alone for a long time, and now that she is, the silence that surrounds her is deafeningly loud. It’s nice to have somebody to talk to again, and Sun has always made her feel warm and safe and protected.

“Well, I’m coming with you.” He says the sentence like it should be the most obvious route for him to take – to follow her, and protect her – and she doesn’t understand what he sees in her that would be worth risking his life for.

She opens her mouth so say something – to say you can’t come, it’s not safe, or to tell him off, to say something that will make him hate her – but he’s looking at her with eyes the colour of the ocean, and she swallows her words. She was right; he has too much power over her – he makes her weak, and she can’t say no.

She’d been right to be scared, because now he’s bleeding out in front of her, his life fading, his breathing shallow, and his blood flowing from his wound like a river, staining her hands and sleeves a red so deep that she thinks she will never quite get rid of it.

She tears through the night with Sun in her arms, leaving a bloody trail behind her. With each passing second, with each drop of blood that hits the ground, the panic and fear in her throat builds, and she feels like she’s suffocating. By the time she reaches her house, his face is ashen, and she can barely hear his breathing. Please, she thinks, please, please let him be okay.

“Mom! Dad!” she means for voice to come out much louder, but there isn’t enough air in her lungs, and she can barely manage more than a strangled gasp. She stumbles over the front steps and falls to her knees, desperately clutching Sun to her chest.  

Fortunately, her parents heard her crashing through the front door, and they come running. Her father takes one look at the boy dying in her arms and takes him from her shaking hands to lay him on the couch. He removes Sun’s bloodied shirt to get a better look at the wound.

Kali hands her Sun’s shirt (Sun’s blood-soaked shirt) and moves to obscure her view of Sun’s unconscious body. “Your father and I will take care of Sun’s wound. Why don’t you clean his shirt? If we don’t wash it now, it’ll be impossible to get out later.”

She numbly takes the shirt with frozen fingers and walks over to the kitchen sink as if she’s in a trance. She turns on the water and fills the kitchen sink without really thinking about what she’s doing, and submerges the shirt. But the tears blur her vision, and all she can see is the redness of his blood seeping into the water.  

She sobs quietly to herself, her shoulders trembling violently, as she tries desperately to rub the bloodstain out of his shirt, but no matter how hard she scrubs, she can’t seem to get rid of the deep, deep red. She drops the shirt into the bloodstained water and sinks to the ground. She stares at her shaky hands, the blood water dripping down from her hands to her arms, and she wants to laugh at the irony of it, because now she has Sun’s blood on her hands, both figuratively and literally.  

She doesn’t know how long she sits on the kitchen floor with tears running down her cheeks before her mother comes into the kitchen to get her, a tired smile on her face.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says. She kneels down next to Blake and gathers her into his arms. “He’s going to be fine.”

“I – I did that to him,” she whispers, stumbling over her words. “I did that.”

“No, sweetheart, no.” Her mother says, shushing her. “This is not your fault. You weren’t the one who stabbed him.”

But I might as well have, she thinks. She sobs into her mother’s shoulder as her mother combs her hand through her hair and whispers comforting words into her ear.

Sun wakes a few days later in the early afternoon, and her heart nearly leaps out of her chest, because he’s alive. She knows he’s alive, but hearing his voice somehow makes it more real.  

He wakes with a lecture about how she’s being stupid and selfish by pushing her friends out, and what is basically a promise to protect her, regardless of what might happen to him.

She’s glad that her mother falls through the door when she does, because if she hadn’t, she might have done something stupid; she might have leaned over and kissed Sun, she might have told him she loves him. And doing that would be dangerous. That’s one more person Adam can use against her; it’s one more reason for Sun to throw himself in front of her.

He wakes to the news that there is a war brewing, and Adam is standing right in the middle of it. This is a crossroads for her, and she has a choice to make.

She can keep running, just as she’s doing now. She has every reason to stay away. Because Adam’s words still haunt her nights, and the image of Sun’s lifeless body might be permanently burned into her mind. Every fibre of her being is screaming at her to keep him away. She can’t risk losing him. Not again.

She glances at Sun, and is surprised to see the fiercely determined look on his face. Haven, she remembers, is where he attended school, and if his team was his first real family, then Haven might have been his first real home.

So she can keep running. Or she can go to Mistral and fight against the White Fang. Because this war is so much bigger than her history with the White Fang, her history with Adam. There are so many people at risk, people who might die if she doesn’t do something. After all, isn’t this what she’s been training for?

She stands, her hands clenched into fists, and all eyes are on her. She’s done running. She’s done letting her fears control her, done letting Adam’s words dictate her every move. She can’t keep running from her past and her mistakes; it’s finally time she does something to fix some of what is wrong with the world. And she’ll start with the White Fang.

“No,” she says, her voice hard. “We’re not going to destroy the White Fang. We’re going to take it back.”

This time, she doesn’t run, because she feels like she can take on the world with him at her side.

She wakes up to sunlight filtering in through her window, and Sun’s feather-light touch on her bare back, tracing lines and patterns, like her back is a canvas, and he’s drawing a picture. She hums contently as she lets her face drop back onto her pillow, basking in the warm glow of the early morning sunlight.

“Where did you get this scar?” he asks quietly, running a finger gently along a jagged line on the small of her back. He does this a lot – asks about her scars so they can string together the story of her life. But she has so many that there are days when she thinks there will never be enough time for her to tell him about all of them.

She mumbles something into the pillow before pushing herself up onto her elbows and twisting around to see what he’s talking about. “Ursa attack,” she mumbles, her voice still hoarse and grainy from sleep. “It was stupid. I turned my back to it for just a second, and it got me. It was right after I left the White Fang, and I guess I was too used to having Adam there to watch my back. It was just different, fighting by myself, without a partner.”

He presses a soft kiss to the scar and moves on. “What about this one?” He traces a scar that runs from her right shoulder, across her back, all the way down to her left hip.

She stills, because she knows exactly which scar it is, and where it came from. She knows what the scar looks like without having to look in a mirror: a thin, clean line that looks like it was made by the edge of a sharp object.

“Blake?” he asks, his voice concerned, when she doesn’t say anything.

“It was from Adam’s sword,” she finally says. She turns to face him, and his eyes are hard, his jaw clenched. She swallows the lump in her throat. It’s an old scar now, probably almost the colour of her skin and mostly faded, but it won’t ever really disappear. Kind of like Adam, who is nothing but a faded and distant memory, but he’ll always be there.

She closes her eyes and takes a shaky breath. “We had a mission that went wrong in every possible way, and he was –,” she takes a deep breath and gathers the sheets in her hands, clutching them tightly. “He was really angry. It was one of our worse fights, if I could even call it that.” She laughs hollowly, the memory causing her chest to tighten. “It was mostly him attacking, and me trying to defend myself.”  

His hand stills and he goes quiet, the rage rolling off him in waves. “I hate that he did this to you,” he mutters as he brushes his hand along her back. “I hate that –”

“I know, Sun,” she murmurs, shushing him. She hates them too, hates what they stand for, hates what Adam did to her, but they are a part of her, no matter how much she wishes they aren’t.

He presses a soft kiss to her right shoulder blade, where the scar starts, and trails butterfly kisses down her back, along the entire scar, and the action is so tender that it makes her throat close up. “You are more than the scars on your back, or what he did to you. You’re beautiful, Blake” he says, lips brushing against her skin. “Even with the scars. Or maybe because of the scars – they’re proof that you were stronger than him, proof of all the things that you overcame to become the person that you are today.” He leans up and presses his lips against hers. “And I love every part of who you are.”

She smiles against his lips and leans into the kiss. “I love you too.”

Sun makes her feel beautiful again. He traces her scars and kisses her bruises, and treats them like a map. And, in a way, she supposes they are a map, because each scar has a story, and they come together to paint the picture of her life. He leaves bruises too, draws his own map on her skin, not the kind that you get in a fight, but the kind you get along with whispered sweet nothings and entangled limbs, between sweat-soaked sheets, and she thinks maybe having a map on her skin might not be so bad.

A/N: Rotations started and my licensing exams are at the end of May, so I won’t be actively writing until then. Sorry guys!

[sciencespies]

Op-ed | Honor Our Fallen Space Pioneers This Memorial Day

https://sciencespies.com/space/op-ed-honor-our-fallen-space-pioneers-this-memorial-day/

Op-ed | Honor Our Fallen Space Pioneers This Memorial Day

This Memorial Day, as we remember American servicemen and women who gave their lives for their country, we should also recognize another group of patriots who also paid the ultimate price in service to the nation — our fallen astronauts. America’s astronaut corps — that elite community of brave space pioneers — represent the very best that our country has to offer. Unfortunately, twenty-two of these great Americans perished while serving in our nation’s space program.

From its earliest inception in the late 1940s, and under the direction of NASA starting in 1958 until now, America’s space program has been both challenging and ambitious, and continuously marked with significant uncertainty and monumental risk. Even with world-class training, testing, and simulation, and the deepest confidence in technology produced by the most brilliant technicians and engineers — venturing into space remains precarious. But for those who’ve worn the NASA patch, suited up, and strapped into a spacecraft, the prospect of accomplishment for both country and humankind was worth the risk. 

In reciting the names of our fallen astronauts, we not only commit their lives to memory, but we recall the missions and incidents that caused their loss.

Astronauts, from the left, Gus Grissom, Ed White II and Roger Chaffee stand near Cape Kennedy’s Launch Complex 34 during training for Apollo 1 in January 1967. Credit: NASA

The Apollo 1 fire on Jan. 27, 1967, which killed Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee — sparked by an electrical fire fed by pure oxygen in the cabin of the spacecraft during a test — was the first major catastrophe in our space program. While tragic, the event had the effect of driving safety changes and procedures, likely enhancing the preservation of life on future missions. 

The Challenger shuttle disaster on Jan. 28, 1986 took the lives of STS-51-L crew members Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. It was a tragedy of magnified resonance due to the large number of Americans who witnessed the explosion live — and much like Apollo I, post-incident investigations led to major changes in the shuttle program, and policies and processes at NASA.

On Feb. 1, 2003, the Columbia shuttle accident saw the loss of American astronauts Michael P. Anderson, Rick D. Husband, David M. Brown, William C. McCool, Kalpana Chawla, and Laurel Clark, as well as Israeli crew member Ilan Ramon. Damage to the shuttle’s thermal protection system caused the craft to disintegrate during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. That mission, STS-107, had been Columbia’s 28th flight; Columbia was the first orbiter of the shuttle program to fly in space.

Like military exercises, training and testing operations for space missions often carry significant hazard — and several American astronauts have died performing test and training duties in support of the nation’s space program as well. Michael J. Adams, Elliot See, Charles Basset, Theodore Freeman, Clifton C. Williams, and Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr. unfortunately passed away while executing a variety of flight operations and tests.   

In recognizing the contributions and sacrifice of America’s fallen astronauts, it is important to consider a few other things. First — most, if not the overwhelming majority of America’s early astronaut corps were military veterans, many selected right from active service. In fact, a great number of those early astronauts had already been in combat in World War II and Korea — and members of later NASA generations served valiantly in Vietnam. These people already put life and limb on the line before volunteering for the space program.      

In this photo from Jan. 9, 1986, the Challenger crew takes a break during countdown training at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. From left to right are Teacher-in-Space Christa McAuliffe and astronauts Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Mission Commander Dick Scobee, astronaut Ronald McNair, pilot Mike Smith, and astronaut Ellison Onizuka. Credit: NASA

Second — it’s important to remember the historical context in which NASA was organized and the space program pursued. It was a central part of our existential conflict with the USSR and other communist states at the height of the Cold War. Not only were the missions extremely risky — in fact, pushing into uncharted territory with novel technology — but the overarching pressure to succeed on the global stage against our greatest geopolitical foes was immense. Americans who risked it all to serve in space believed in the cause, knew the stakes, and intimately understood the strategic implications of their mission and role.    

Moving forward into the 21st century, it is doubly important that we recognize and remember these great citizens, who accepted the danger inherent in their duties and pushed the envelope to advance the high and noble purpose of the nation in space — for one reason: Because America is once again embarked on a course of significant objectives in space, and we are in fierce competition with other nations who are actively seeking to displace us in the skies above. 

In many ways, we are in a new space race, reminiscent of that which occurred during the Cold War of the 20th Century. Americans will be called upon to serve, to face great odds in support of a new national mission, and to accept the idea that, in pushing farther into space, they might not come back. 

At Arlington Cemetery — which is the final resting place for several astronauts, including many of those who died while in space program service — are two memorials dedicated to the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters. That these memorials have earned a place in America’s most hallowed grounds is a clear indicator of the importance of our astronaut community to national purpose, principles and prestige.    

From the left (top row), wearing blue shirts, are Columbia STS-107 astronauts David M. Brown, mission specialist; William C. McCool, pilot; and Michael P. Anderson, payload commander. From the left (bottom row), wearing red shirts to signify their shift’s color, are astronauts Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist; Rick D. Husband, mission commander; Laurel B. Clark, mission specialist; and Ilan Ramon, payload specialist, representing the Israeli Space Agency. Credit: NASA

Finally, it is notable that this past week saw the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech in which he called upon the Nation to press forth and get to the moon:

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” 

Of course, the effort to land on the Moon — as well as every other human spaceflight mission in America’s space program thereafter — would never have occurred or succeeded without significant sacrifice on the part of America’s finest and bravest — indeed, the sacrifice of some was total. It is for these reasons why the commercial space industry — especially companies that specialize in life support and safety — works so hard to protect the lives of astronauts who put full faith in their training and technology to claim new achievements beyond Earth.       

So as we take a moment to reflect on the profound and eternal service of military veterans who gave their all to protect and preserve our way of life, let’s also remember the commitment and contributions of the astronauts who died in the course of America’s endeavors in space. 

Remember their names, learn their stories, and honor our fallen space pioneers.

Barry W. Finger is the vice president of engineering at Paragon Space Development Corporation where he provides technical leadership and oversight of the engineering development process for the company’s flight programs. His career has focused on the development and implementation of affordable and robust life support and thermal control solutions for the human exploration and development of space.

#Space

[thechroniclesofdaraliss]

D&D Story: Love Hurts

In one of my favorite D&D campaigns I’ve run, I amassed an impressive group of PCs. Among our ranks were a mysterious Cleric, a careful Rogue, a protective Wizard, an extremely well-read Monk, an improvising Illusionist, and a Paladin of many...interests. Despite all of the odds, I managed to get the party in a place where they could all get what they wanted out of each session, and still make the dynamic work. But just when you think you’ve got a whole party dynamic down, things change. In this installation of D&D Story, I learned that sometimes the best moments in campaign occur when things go horribly wrong. Here’s what happened.

Context: The party has been travelling through the wilderness trying to find the alchemists responsible for twisting innocent children into horrible monsters. The journey was trying, and they finally got a lead on a castle that belonged to a noble named Mallister. Here’s what happened.

DM: You arrive at Fort Mallister. It’s a grand fortress meant to repel any invading force. You see dozens of archers along every wall, and each wall goes forty feet high. You also see that there’s only one entrance through the front gate, and you know that all of the men inside are tried and tested battle combatants.

Rogue: This may be a problem

Paladin: Are you kidding? There are six of us. We can take them.

Cleric: I wouldn’t go that far.

Illusionist: Wait! What if we caused a distraction?

Rogue: A distraction large enough to make all of the guards leave?

Illusionist: I’m sure we can think of something. What about the Cleric? Can’t she summon monsters?

Cleric: I can, but I don’t have a lot of control over what comes out of that spell.

Illusionist: Well I say it’s worth a shot.

The party looks to each other, and they come to an unsteady agreement

Cleric: Let’s do this.

Cleric proceeds to summon a monster. Everyone looks eagerly to see what emerges.

DM: You look out and see that the Cleric’s summoning has caused a circle of brimstone to emerge in the ground. From its smoldering confines, you feel a horrible flame and rank smell emerge as a obsidian-scaled dragon emerges. It is of medium size, but its ferocity shows in its wild eyes and blood-soaked teeth. Smoke emerges from its wide-set horns and its sharp nose burns like coals in a fire.

Rogue: Crap!

DM: The dragon looks at you all, and its pupils disappear in excited bloodlust.

Cleric: We need to get out of here, now!

The party proceeds to duck behind a massive stone

DM: You duck safely behind cover, but the dragon hurtles molten venom at the boulder that separates you. In mere moments, the rock begins to crack and the pieces that fall to the ground start an impressive fire

Rogue: I thought you had control over the creatures you summon!

Cleric: I let myself get possessed by a Demon in my backstory, and most of my power comes from him! It’s not my fault!

Illusionist: I’ve got another idea!

Party: We don’t need any more ideas!

Illusionist: Just because he’s out here, doesn’t mean we can’t use him! We just need to direct his anger elsewhere!

Rogue: A distraction for a distraction?!

Monk: That’s crazy! The last thing we need is for a hot-tempered male dragon to get distracted by something else. You might just get him angry!

Wizard: How do you know it’s a male?

Monk: I don’t like to assume gender, but I read up on dragons in the last village. He has the wider horn structure and the sharp nose of an Abyssal Dragon.

Illusionist: I’ll just need to focus. Give me some time! DM! What do I need to roll?

DM: In conditions like these, you’ll get a -4 to Concentration. You need to roll a 16 or higher.

Illusionist: 16!!!

DM: You hold your staff tightly in both hands. Your eyes glow as you cast an illusion just beyond the reaches of the growing forest fire. Soon, a cloud of azure smoke forms and lightening bursts at the center like a heartbeat. But then, the smoke settles, and the light turn orange. A radiant burst of energy shoots out and reveals another dragon as grand and piercing as the dawn.

Wizard: How does that help us?!

Monk: DM, what does this dragon look like? DM: The dragon is almost exactly like its predecessor, save for its redder scales, its closely-set horns, and its aerodynamic nose.

Cleric: Are you suggesting…

Paladin: I think he is.

Illusionist: I roll to make my illusion dragon seduce the real dragon.

DM: You do specialize in illusions, not dragons, so you will take a slight penalty.

Monk: I’m going to give him advice.

DM: Then forget I spoke.

The Monk whispers in the Illusionist’s ear

DM: As you wave your staff toward your Illusion, she spreads her wings and gives the Abyssal Dragon a demure look. The Dragon soon forgets he’s chasing the party and turns his attention to his potential mate. A sort of dance occurs, and he approaches.

Illusionist: Guys, we have a problem.

Paladin: What?!

Illusionist: I specialize in illusions, and when the dragon realizes that this was a fake, he’s going to be pissed!

Rogue: We’ll think of something!

DM: You hear a voice call up from Fort Mallister.

Cleric: Oh yeah, I forgot that was a thing.

Paladin: Shh! I’m trying to watch a Dragon mating display!

The party loses it

DM: You hear the voice again, only this time more intense.

Guard Captain: FIRE!!!!

DM: A storm of arrows falls onto the dragons, and while one feels the arrows burn on contact with is flesh, the “female dragon” is untouched.

Illusionist: I have my Illusion take flight above the fortress!!!

Rogue: But why?

Illusionist: Apparently mating displays among dragons turn violent.

Wizard: Do you ever get tired of writing down this flavor text?

DM: Not when you guy use it to such amazing effect!

Rogue: So what’s happening?!

DM: The Dragons descend on the other side of the walls. The Guards immediately launch everything they have. Arrows, men, even the dogs are being loosed to attack these dragons head-on. You see flares of dragon fire shooting off into the sky, and the gate has been swung open. Some Guards flee in either terror or pain, and they search desperately for the closest river.

Paladin: Hot.

Illusionist: Guys. I’m not sure how much longer this spell is going to work. My magic works best when I can see my spellwork in front of me.

Monk: DM, how much time do we have?

DM: One turn.

Party: NO!!!!!

The party charges through the gate, consequences be damned

Rogue: We have so many questions that need to be answered!

Wizard: We need to save the children!

Paladin: I’m not missing out on a Draconic one-night-stand!

DM: You look out and see that the illusion is working too well. The Illusion Dragon stares deeply into the Abyssal Dragon’s eyes, and they both seem entranced. But you see that the Illusion is fading. The Abyssal Dragon is none the wiser.

Cleric: He’s found love!

Illusionist: I can’t believe I’m doing this.

Monk: What?! The Illusionists waves his staff, and with what arrows that are still flying at them, they seem to pierce the neck of the Illusion Dragon

Party: NOOOOOO!!!!!!

DM: The Abyssal Dragon is devastated, and lets his fiery tongue gently wipe off the blood that seeps from the arrows. The Guards continue running in different directions, and the Abyssal Dragon charges directly through the front door leading into the stronghold. You hear countless battle cries, the unsheathing of swords, and the cries of those who perish in Dragonfire. Finally, a whimper calls out louder than any hateful cry.

The Party rushes inside, finding that dozens, perhaps even hundreds have perished in this fire. Yet the Abyssal Dragon looks out to all of you, gutted, pierced, and nearly decapitated

Cleric: I’m so sorry…

The Party crowds around the Abyssal Dragon and gently touches its head.

DM: The head is quite cool.

Cleric: I didn’t mean for this to happen. You were supposed to take down some thugs and then disappear back into the Abyssal Plane.

Paladin: May the spirits take you to your beloved Illusion Dragon.

Rogue: Shit, I’m actually crying.

Monk: It’s alright.

Wizard: You will be avenged. Folmer Mallister will pay. This is no longer his castle, it is the tomb of a Dragon brave enough to love.

DM: The Dragon gives you what appears to be a smile, and falls to the ground lifeless.

Party: …

Party: LET’S GET MALLISTER!!!!

And thus began the revenge quest to avenge a fallen dragon that was so ready to love he burned down an entire army and castle.

[maxmcyfield]

'Zenith Academy' is a fantasy, action, mystery genre television show based around ten supernatural young adults who are attending the well-known and ancient supernatural school of Zenith Academy. Premiering on Freeform (and Netflix internationally) in 2016 and gaining critical acclaim and growing ratings, the show has been winning since it's debut for its fresh take on the supernatural genre mixed with great performances and even better writing. Variety’s stance on the end of season one captures the essence of the show perfectly, “Spicy, intricate, and action-packed [...] This show entices you and enraptures until the end, boasting talent, interesting morally grey character, and a plot that simply nudges them in the right direction.”

The first season focused on the growing tensions between the prominent popular figures of the academy (the vampires) and a rising new pack of werewolves that has formed on school grounds. Halfway through the 13 episode season, the show was renewed for a second season. Season two will feature more complications from the inter-student conflict but will also be a slow pan towards focus on the 'bigger picture’ - namely the secrets and origins of the corrupt Zenith Academy as well as te overall supernatural community.

This is a request for the tight main cast, consisting of ten people (eight billed as ‘main’ and two as ‘recurring’ - but they appear in almost all episodes)! They're generally very close to each other, but I'm leaving the details for you to decide and move around within this context. The only thing set are the type of characters within the show that they portray - which will help give it more structure and more of an idea of how the show works. Please bring them all to the thing here for all the group texts and threads and #drama. ALL FACES AND AGES ARE OPEN AS YOU SEE FIT and you’re encouraged to name your character's character in the show (lol). New characters and existing characters welcome.

If you’re interested, DM me! If you'd like your character to be a minor character/guest star or a crew member, feel free to DM me with the desired spot and details you see fit!!

crew members !!

name, age, position (specifics)

yeah

minor characters/guest stars

name, age, character (specifics)

yeah

MAIN CAST

vampire 1 m (open) / seen as the 'leader' of the group, vampire 1 is calm and collected - which is what makes him dangerous. he's lethal and you can't predict what he'll do next, not to mention he's the part of the oldest vampire bloodline currently known. him and (vampire 2) have been on and off as long as the show has been running. something may develop between him and (vampire 4) in a later season. 

vampire 2 f (open) / a hbic, she really doesn't give a shit about everyone else's opinions of her as long as she gets what she wants. she's all snark and no bite though, and is one of the first characters to realise the bigger picture. on and off with (vampire 1), and can't seem to get out of it. yet, notably she has been playing around with (witch 2) a lot. 

vampire 3 m (open) / a member of a noble vampire house, vampire 3 is a lot more aggressive than usually someone of his standing is supposed to be, and as such is seen as the brawn of the group. may have had a thing for ella lee in season 1, but fans are noticing the maybe(?) sexual tension between him and (werewolf 2) 

vampire 4 f (open) / just as much snark as her friends, just a lot less cruel. she's mostly in this group because of her family, and her family friendship with (vampire 1) but in reality, she's a lot kinder and is the rational one of the vampires. something may develop between her and (vampire 1) in a later season. 

werewolf 1 m (open) / a classic alpha: strong, brave, and maybe just a little too reckless, he's willing to do much anything to protect his pack - which means he has to be held back a lot by his friends. he is the titular character for every season's first and last episodes. 

werewolf 2 m (open) / quiet, brooding, and rational, werewolf 2 stops the pack from doing anything too stupid - he's basically the mommy wolf between them. a very grumpy mom wolf. he's ella lee's childhood friend and companion, and has some sexual tension(?) with (vampire 3). 

ella lee played by percy yeom (zahra) / ella is the only daughter and therefore heir of the lee clan, and therefore is tough and cold, her skill and power is very much noted. throughout season one, there has been (unintended) chemistry between her and (werewolf 4), and the relationship will be explored in season two. originally there was supposed to be something between her and (vampire 3) but that is being deconstructed. 

werewolf 4 m  (open) / the main comedic relief of the show, werewolf 4 is a fairly new werewolf that was turned by his father as he was half human just two years before the events of season 1. his strength is beyond than that it should be at his wolf age. he's the clear fan favourite so far, and there has been (unintended) chemistry between him and ella lee.

witch 1 nb (open) / witch 1 is usually seen with the werewolves as a friend and ends up helping them. they're sweet, but is obviously a lot more nuanced than that, leading on to a mysterious past that no one knows and is too scared to know about 

witch 2 f (open) / starts helping the vampires in episode 3, witch 2 is a meek and withdrawn practitioner of magic; she was picked up by travelling witches a the age of two and her magic has never stopped flourishing since then. she has a thing going on with (vampire 2) behind vampire 1's back, but she isn't sure where it is going.