#the rats fought valiantly

[ginger-hades]

I survived, just so everyone knows 👍

submitted by @silvermoondarkening

[808airsoftbros]

Painful Ressurection (Lusi Zhao)

Author: Another AI written story that I made when I was playing around with during my hiatus. Hope you enjoy and do check out my Masterlist

Author's POV

Lusi stood by the alleyway, her gaze fixed on the young boy, Y/N Todd, as he frantically tried to remove the tires from her car. A mix of anger and curiosity stirred within her. "Hey, kid!" She called out, her voice cold and commanding. "What do you think you're doing?"

Startled, Y/N froze and slowly turned to face Lana, his big, innocent eyes filled with fear. "I... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... I was just hungry," he stammered, his voice barely audible.

 Lusi's stern expression softened as she noticed the hunger etched into the boy's face. She sighed, realizing the struggles he must have faced as an orphan. "Hungry, huh? Come with me," she said, extending her hand. "I don't tolerate thieves, but I'm not heartless either."

Y/N hesitated for a moment before reaching out and clasping Lasi's outstretched hand. He felt a strange mixture of apprehension and gratitude as he followed her.

Weeks turned into months, and Y/N was settled into his new life with Lusi and her vampire clan. But instead of clapping erasers and solving quadratic equations, Y/N was learning to fight.

"You need to be able to protect yourself, Y/N," Lusi insisted, her voice firm as she trained him in the art of combat. "The world out there is dangerous, and you need to be ready."

Y/N sparred with Lusi tirelessly, his determination fueled by his desire to prove himself. Slowly, he began to develop an uncanny skill for fighting.

One fateful night, Y/N grew tired of the crime plaguing the city. His blood boiled with righteous fury, and he decided to take matters into his own hands.

 "Lusi, I have to do this," Y/N pleaded, his jaw set with determination. "I want to take down the mafia clan that killed my parents."

Lusi's eyes filled with worry as she observed her young protege. She understood his thirst for vengeance but feared the consequences. "Please, Y/N, let us help you. You're not ready to take on the entire mafia alone."

Y/N's eyes hardened, and he shook his head. "I have to do this on my own. Don't worry. I'll be back."

As Y/N ventured into the den of the mafia clan, Lusi fought off a horde of goons who attempted to prevent her from following him. A fierce battle raged, but she knew time was running out.

Inside the warehouse, Y/N found himself outnumbered and overwhelmed. He fought valiantly, but the boss of the mafia clan proved to be his match.

The boss smirked, bloodlust gleaming in his eyes. "You think you can take me down, kid? You're nothing but a rat caught in a trap.

Though battered and bruised, Y/N refused to succumb to fear. He locked eyes with the boss, a defiant fire burning within him. "I may be a rat, but even rats bite back."

Just as Y/N was about to deliver a final blow to the mafia boss, an explosion ripped through the warehouse. Chaos ensued, engulfing Y/N in a sea of flames.

Lusi fought her way toward the warehouse, her heart pounding in her chest. But as she finally reached the entrance, the sight before her shattered her soul.

Flames danced in her tear-filled eyes as she saw the lifeless body of Y/N amid the wreckage. Grief washed over her, consuming her entirely.

As the years passed, Lusi mourned for the loss of Y/N, berating herself for not being able to save him. The world grew darker, and crime seized the city tighter in its clutches.

Until one day, news reached Lusi's ears of an enigmatic anti-hero known as the Red Hood, who had miraculously taken control of the city's crime syndicates

Intrigued and suspicious, Lusi set out to uncover the truth behind the Red Hood's sudden rise to power. Her instincts told her there was more to this vigilante than met the eye.

The streets of Beijing were shrouded in darkness as the Red Hood emerged from the shadows. Lusi observed him from a distance, her senses heightened, ready to strike. The Red Hood turned, his piercing gaze meeting Lusi's eyes. A smirk played on his lips as he twirled a silver dagger in his hand. "You still haven't lost your touch, Lusi," he taunted.

The sound of her real name falling from the Red Hood's lips sent a chill down Lusi's spine. How did he know? Who was this mysterious figure, taunting her with familiarity?

Determined to uncover the truth, Lusi set about examining surveillance footage, hoping to catch any glimpse of the Red Hood's true identity.

Days melded into nights, as Lusi meticulously studied every frame, every movement, determined to find the key that unlocked the identity of the Red Hood.

A sudden gasp escaped Lusi's lips as she stumbled upon a significant revelation. The Red Hood's blood stained her sword during their last encounter - a source of DNA to be tested. Shen Xiaoting, the clan's expert in all things scientific, took charge of the DNA testing.

Excitement and apprehension mingled within the group as they awaited the results.

Time seemed to stretch into eternity as the DNA results finally arrived. The clan gathered, their eyes fixated on the paper in Shen Xiaoting's trembling hands.

Shen Xiaoting's voice trembled as she spoke. "The DNA results... they match. The Red Hood is Y/N. He's still alive."

Shock rippled through the clan, their emotions a chaotic whirlwind of joy, confusion, and apprehension. Their lost brother, their fallen comrade, had returned to them, but in what state?

Determined to find answers, Lusi sought out the person she believed held the key to this cruel twist of fate - Ra's al Ghul, the mastermind behind the Lazarus Pit.

Ra's al Ghul, cloaked in shadows, offered a melancholic smile as he revealed the truth. "I stole Y/N's body, dipped it in the Lazarus Pit, but I did not foresee the monstrous result."

The weight of Ra's al Ghul's revelation pressed heavy upon Lucy's shoulders. Thoughts of vengeance and redemption warred within her mind.

Against her sister's cautionary advice, Lusi made the difficult decision to confront Y/N, to face the monster he had become and bring him back into the light.

The alleyway was filled with an eerie silence as Lusi ventured into the night, her heart pounding with equal parts fear and hope. She called out Y/N's name, her voice laced with desperation.

The Red Hood emerged from the darkness, his eyes cold and devoid of the warmth Lucy once knew. "So, you came to face the monster I've become, Lusi?" he sneered.

Determined to reach the remnants of the Y/N she once knew, Lusi stood her ground. "You are not a monster, Y/N. I won't let you believe that lie. You're still my family."

The air crackled with tension as the two clashed, their skills matched with an eerie synchronicity. Each strike and parry echoed the bond that once bound them together.

Sweat drenched Lusi's brow as she fought against the Red Hood's relentless assault. Her heart ached with each blow, longing for the gentle soul she had lost.

In a rare moment of vulnerability, Y/N's expression faltered. The light of recognition flickered within his eyes as Lucy managed to cut his arm, their blood mingling on her sword.

The pain of the wound seemed to jolt Y/N's consciousness back, if only for a fleeting moment. He faltered and stared at Lusi, his voice laced with confusion. "Lusi...?"

Tears welled in Lusi's eyes as she whispered, her words a bittersweet plea. "Come back to me, Y/N. Fight against the darkness that consumes you. Remember who you once were."

The weight of his sister's words bore down upon Y/N's fragmented mind. Emotions long buried beneath the monster's façade began to resurface.

Days turned into weeks, and Y/N woke up with a throbbing headache, his memories slowly returning. The atrocities he had committed haunted him, leaving him plagued by regret and guilt.

Surrounding him, the clan welcomed him back, overjoyed to have him once again, even if the price paid was steep. Yet, their smiles held a tinge of sadness, for they knew he would never be the same.

Lusi embraced Y/N with open arms, her tears mingling with his own. Grief and relief intertwined, creating a bittersweet symphony within their hearts.

he city began to heal, but the scars from Y/N's reign as the Red Hood remained, a reminder of the darkness he had once become.

Over time, Y/N focused on redemption, using his newfound skills to protect and serve, to ensure others didn't succumb to the same path he had walked.

As the years rolled by, Y/N's journey became a legend whispered among the citizens of Beijing. The Red Hood's name synonymous with redemption and hope.

Lusi watched from afar, her heart filled with a mixture of pride and sorrow. She had succeeded in bringing Y/N back, but a part of her mourned the loss of the innocent boy he once was.

Lana stood beside Lusi, her gaze fixed on Y/N as he fought off the criminals that plagued their city. She nudged her sister playfully. "Well, I must say, sis, we did a pretty good job raising a monster."

Lusi smirked, a glimmer of mischief in her eyes. "Oh, Lana, they say the best monsters are the ones you create yourself."

Shen Xiaoting joined in with a chuckle. "Indeed, and I suppose we can claim the title of 'Monster Creators Extraordinaire.'"

The lighthearted banter brought a much-needed respite from the weight of their shared past. The world had turned dark, but the bond between the Zhao siblings remained a beacon of light.

Surrounded by her clan, Lucy found solace in their unwavering support. Together, they stood tall, guardians of the city, forever united in their eternal dance of shadows and redemption.

And so, the story of Y/N Todd, the boy caught stealing tires, the monster that emerged from the Lazarus Pit, and the hero reborn as the Red Hood, came to a bittersweet close. The echoes of his legacy whispered through the city's streets, reminding all who heard of the power of redemption and the strength that lies within the bonds of family.

[mostfuckableffvillain]

Round 5 - Eliminations

I'm going to be real with you, I'm... shocked. This is not the outcome I predicted. I honestly thought three of these characters were going to move on. I guess that goes to show you how bad I am at predicting this tournament, lmao. Unfortunately, it's time to say goodbye to Tseng of the Turks, Reno of the Turks, Sorceress Edea, and Estinien Varlineau. These were all close races, you all put up a huge fight right up until the bitter end. There's no shame here. These are all highly attractive characters who fought valiantly to defend their own fuckability right to the end. Godspeed.

Congratulations to Kain Highwind, Emet-Selch, Aranea Highwind, and Ysayle Dangoulain. The four of you are already so sexy and are all winners already. Can't wait to see you in the semifinals.

If you want to know why these sexy bitches were nominated in the first place, you know the drill.

Tseng of the Turks: >Tall, delicate features, long silky hair, fitted suit, stoic personality, sexy leather gloves, high level of competence and ruthless efficiency. >He is the leader of the Turks and looks dangerous. Also Final Fantasy7remake Tseng GIF - Final Fantasy7Remake Tseng Ff7 … >Look at the man. Hair. Suit. Questionable ethics.

Reno of the Turks: >have you seen him. he's gay, he's a twink, he's a rat bastard<3 >He’s a Turk and looks damn good in those suits and he’s a cocky spitfire >I don't know if this poll is just accepting main villians, but like, if we're going side villians? Reno is so fuckable. The twinkness, the attitude, the look. The man literally looks like simp bait. He's an asshole, a shitty villian, but a fuckable one regardless. I rest my case.

Estinien Varlineau: >He's only sexy when he's covered in dragon blood and raging out of his mind.

[redux-iterum]

Burning Hearts: Chapter Fifteen

(AO3 counterpart here.)

Greystripe and Ravenwing did not speak to each other for the next several days. Fireheart had to juggle his interactions with them, keeping Ravenwing company for half the night and then chatting with awkward, unstable cheeriness with Greystripe when he returned home. Fireheart worked valiantly under the (perhaps not entirely unfounded) paranoid worry that every single eye in ThunderClan was on him and his friends, watching with curiosity as Greystripe and Ravenwing gave each other a wide berth and slept on opposite ends of the warriors’ den. No one said anything, but their puzzlement was palpable.

It got to the point that one night, Bluestar called Fireheart into her den to speak privately. When they were alone, she said, “Your friends are troubled by something, it’s very obvious. What happened between them?”

Fireheart fought not to squirm as he tried to find a way to not rat Greystripe out while telling the truth. “Well, um, they had a big argument over… over RiverClan.”

Bluestar blinked, then narrowed her thoughtful eyes. “Ravenwing doesn’t agree with sending them prey, I assume.”

“He doesn’t.” Fireheart sighed and bowed his head. “The fight got really personal, so they’re just not talking.”

Bluestar’s voice, unusually gentle, made him look up again. “I know this is upsetting for you. Don’t blame yourself for it, and don’t try to fix it for them. They can talk when they’re ready. If it gets worse, I will speak to them. Don’t make this your task, no matter how close you are with them.”

Fireheart nodded as his mentor’s words pulled a bit of a stony weight off his back. He took a moment to properly absorb them, keep them in the back of his mind to remind him where his position was in this painful situation. He privately pleaded to StarClan for it to resolve itself before Bluestar stepped in.

It didn’t quite improve as the month went on. Greystripe at least had the decency to look guilty when Ravenwing hurried past him or avoided eye contact, but he made no effort to apologize or even greet him with a single word. Ravenwing’s anxiety kept him from saying anything himself. Fireheart supposed he ought to say something, but…

“Fireheart?”

He looked to his left as he stepped out of camp to see an uncharacteristically nervous Greystripe trotting towards him.

“Hey, there you are,” Greystripe said hurriedly, his attempt to sound casual as sturdy as a dead leaf. “I was going to ask, uh– do you want to hunt? Just ThunderClan prey tonight, RiverClan’s doing fine.”

Fireheart swiveled an ear to make sure they were alone before leaning his head forward and whispering, “Silverstream’s busy, isn’t she?”

“Wh– no, no—” Greystripe stood straight with a violent jerk upright. “I just– I can hunt with my friend, can’t I?”

Fireheart gave him a look.

Greystripe sighed. “She told me to stay away for a bit to let our scents fade.”

“Thank you for being honest.” Fireheart walked past him, tapping his chest with his tail. “Come on, it’s been a while. Tigerclaw said to hunt near the Sycamore for a bit.”

Greystripe stuttered out some gratitudes before following after him.

The Sycamore was rather close to camp—only a short walk in the opposite direction of the camp entrance. When they reached it, Fireheart gazed up as far back as he could tilt his head, marveling silently at its height. Most of its leaves had fallen off, leaving the pale branches to scratch at the sky with long, crooked claws. The very top of the tree reminded Fireheart of a human’s hand, its stretched toes straining to catch a star.

“If this place has the most sacred cats buried here,” he asked Greystripe, “does it feel a little weird to you to hunt prey around this tree?”

Greystripe snorted. “It’s not like the prey has the souls of these cats, Fireheart. If anything, they’d encourage us to catch them.”

“I hope so.” Fireheart looked around, sniffing.

Mouse. Somewhere close by. He lowered his body into a half-crouch and took a few steps to his right, testing the direction of the scent-trail.

“Uh—” Greystripe cleared his throat. “Actually, hold on a moment.”

Fireheart blinked and stood up straight. “What’s up?”

It was interesting, how much a stone-colored tower of stark stripes and long fur could emulate a tiny kit about to be scolded by his parents. His head turned back and forth anxiously as his front feet kneaded the ground like he wanted to run and was trying to sate his paws by stepping in place. Even his broad, hard-cheeked face was weirdly youthful, his eyes big and darting side-to-side, as if seeking an exit. Fireheart waited patiently until he spoke.

“Listen,” Greystripe started unsteadily. “About Silverstream, and Ravenwing—”

He stopped, like he was expecting an interruption. Fireheart didn’t give him one; he just stood and looked up at his friend, head slightly tilted.

Greystripe worked his jaw and then continued. “It’s messed up, I know. I should talk to Ravenwing.“

“You should apologize to him,” Fireheart said, faintly surprised by the edge in his voice.

“I know… but—”

Fireheart didn’t hesitate to cut him off this time, and he didn’t bother to hide his stern anger. “There is no ‘but’. You said some incredibly cruel things. You already know how sensitive he is, and you did it anyway just to get him to go away.”

Greystripe almost looked grateful for the chance to go on the defensive. “Hey, he was yelling at me for something I can’t help!�� His voice muted a little. “You don’t know what Silverstream means to me. You’ve never been in this situation before, you wouldn’t get it.”

Fireheart’s chest suddenly blazed with frustration, and for once, he was having a hard time controlling it. He focused his eyes skyward, away from Greystripe, and inhaled a deep, calming breath, forcibly blowing the fire out. Unfortunately, that frustration had a few sparks left, and they latched onto his next words.

“Honestly, Greystripe?” he said, almost too conversationally for the heat coming out of his mouth. “I don’t know if I care.”

Greystripe stared at him, his expression between outraged and shocked.

 “Maybe I haven’t felt love like that, and maybe I never will…” Fireheart met his eyes and focused hard on not blinking. “But you know, I don’t think I’d let that change how I talk to my friends. To cats that are just looking out for me and making sure I don’t make a mistake.”

Greystripe bristled. “She is not a mistake!”

“You breaking the law is,” Fireheart said coolly.

“Since when did you care about the code?” Greystripe snapped. “You know how often you got in trouble as an apprentice? How you helped me with RiverClan before Bluestar allowed it?”

Fireheart blinked slowly, passive-aggressive in its friendliness. “At the very least, I would say my decisions led to cats being saved.”

“Ohhh, big savior, you,” Greystripe said sarcastically. “Well, my decisions have led to me being happy. I’m just hanging out with someone I care about. I’m not talking with stupid kittypets and refusing to fight to protect my Clan.”

Fireheart twitched his whiskers in grim amusement. “You know, when you immediately jump to being hurtful to get someone to leave you alone, that says something about the validity of your argument.”

Greystripe opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Fireheart cocked his head, a half-challenge that Greystripe didn’t meet. Instead, he just turned and stalked away, disappearing into the underbrush in a very similar fashion to Ravenwing, albeit much noisier.

Fireheart sighed deeply, trying to shoo all the tension and anger out of his body. It left him trembling a little. He waited until he was a bit steadier before walking back for camp, his hunting trip forgotten. The walk was longer, his feet slow and a little wobbly. He didn’t bother catching anything.

He re-entered camp, only for a squeal to make him jump. Before he could look, a weight barreled into him, making him stumble to the side. His alarm passed as soon as he got a look at his assailant: a fluffy dark golden-brown kitten with dark blue eyes that was frowning at him.

“You were s’posed to fall over,” the little tom said.

Fireheart purred. “I’m sorry. You can tackle me again, if you like.”

“You will do no such thing.” Frostfur approached and extended a graceful paw to pull the kitten back. “It’s rude to attack your Clanmates.”

Fireheart blinked, the brightened up considerably, standing straighter. “Oh! Are all your kits out now?”

“They are.” Frostfur swept with her long tail, gesturing to a cluster of various shades of gold and white wrestling in a pile. “I’m sure you’d like to meet them.”

“I would!” Fireheart beamed, then looked at Frostfur nervously. “They’re safe outside now, right?”

To his surprise, Frostfur’s eyes were bright with amusement. “Yes, they’re safe. This one is Thornkit.”

“H’lo,” Thornkit said, his thin tail wagging. He puffed out his white chest.

Fireheart dipped his head to the little tom. “Hello. I’m Fireheart.”

Thornkit blinked owlishly. He looked up at his much taller mother. “Can I go play?”

Frostfur lifted her long, feathery-furred leg. “Be nice to your Clanmates.”

Thornkit didn’t bother to respond, just waddle-ran at the now splitting pile of kittens. Fireheart could pick them out separately; one was a lighter golden-brown than Thornkit, but with white feet and a tail-tip, another was white all over, and the last was vibrantly patched with white and a gingery-gold.

“Who are the rest?” Fireheart asked Frostfur.

Frostfur pointed to each one separately. “The lighter tom is Brackenkit, the white one is Snowkit, and their sister is Brightkit.”

A trill escaped Fireheart’s throat. “They’re all adorable.”

“They better be,” Frostfur said, with a rare warmth. “That’s the only way they can get away with being little beasts when I’m trying to sleep.”

Fireheart chuffed. He didn’t comment aloud, but aside from color, Thornkit looked every bit like his father. Even Snowkit, who was smaller than the others, had Lionface’s mane already growing out.

That reminded him.

“So…” He looked up at Frostfur again. “Did Snowkit’s hearing come in?”

Frostfur sighed through her nose, her ears turning back. “No. I think he’s deaf for life.”

“Oh, no,” Fireheart said before he could think. He rushed to add, “I mean, not that– well– I just imagine it’ll be hard to talk to him, right?”

“Among other things,” Frostfur replied unhappily, paused, then quietly continued, “He hasn’t said a single word, and all of his siblings can talk easily. I’m… a little worried that he won’t even be able to leave camp without someone to watch him if he grows up.”

Fireheart nodded sympathetically.

Frostfur was silent for a moment before adding, even quieter than before, “There’s just too much out there that can hurt him, you know? He’d just have to not notice a fox, or turn his back on the road…”

Silence for a long moment between them as they watched the kits. Thornkit was doing his best to corral his exuberant siblings, who kept getting away from him. Brackenkit ran in circles to greet every cat he caught sight of, while Brightkit bit at Snowkit’s tail and tried swatting at him. Snowkit’s eyes, a paler blue than the rest of them, were wide with wonder and excitement as he turned in place, staring at everything around him, flopping onto his back haunches a few times. He didn’t even look like he noticed his sister’s antagonizing.

“Well…” Fireheart turned to Frostfur now. “I think he’ll be okay. He’s got a whole Clan to keep him safe, doesn’t he?”

Frostfur’s eyes slid over to him, somewhere between wary and hopeful. He gave her a firm, supportive nod and her body relaxed a little.

“I appreciate that,” she murmured. “Thank you.”

Fireheart blinked at her encouragingly before returning to watching her litter.

“Said ‘come back’!” Thornkit was shouting, running clumsily after Brightkit.

Brightkit stuck her tongue out at him and continued on her way, which was heading straight for the ferns by the meeting stump.

“We can’t go there!” Thornkit tried to put on the speed and just tripped over his front feet, rolling and tumbling. “Brightkit!”

Brightkit squeaked triumphantly just as Cinderpaw was pushing her way out of the fern patch. Fireheart didn’t have a chance to warn Cinderpaw before the patched kitten barreled into her.

Frostfur stood up in alarm, but Cinderpaw took the hit easily. She looked down at Brightkit, who was sitting up from the collision, before wriggling her haunches and tackling the kit back. The pair rolled around in a ball of fur and playful yowls.

“By a crow’s eye, fool girl!” Yellowfang rasped, hobbling after her. “You’re on seer business, not queen duty!”

“I’m allowed to play with my Clanmates!” Cinderpaw called back, pretending to be pinned by Brightkit. “It builds character!”

Yellowfang made a noise between a grumbling growl and a heavy sigh. She squinted one eye at Fireheart, gesturing with a paw at her apprentice with an air of ‘Can you believe this rot?’.

Fireheart didn’t bother hiding his amusement. “Let them play. It’s fine.”

“Ach, you’re useless.” Yellowfang shook her head, croaking at Cinderpaw, “And you acted like the world ends tomorrow just a moment ago. Does StarClan speak to you through that lump?”

Fireheart glanced at Frostfur, whose eyes narrowed.

“Fine, fine,” Cinderpaw sighed dramatically. “Let me up, Brighty.”

Brightkit obeyed immediately—perhaps, judging by the nervous look she gave Yellowfang, that was no surprise. Cinderpaw got up and licked the kitten's forehead before trotting back to her mentor, her own fur sticking out in all directions and covered in sand.

“Did she already meet Brightkit before I got here?” Fireheart asked Frostfur.

“Both of them did,” Frostfur replied. “They visited me after the kits were born to tell me their story.”

Fireheart tilted his head. “Sorry?”

“Oh! That’s a really cool thing!” Cinderpaw said suddenly, darting over to Fireheart just as she reached Yellowfang. “Yeah, when kits are born, seers visit and tell the mother what they see in the kits’ futures!”

Yellowfang rolled her bugged-out eyes and limped over. “Trade secret, you dolt. Now don’t you go telling him what we saw.”

“Sorry!” Cinderpaw bobbed her head at her mentor. “It’s just such a cool thing to do!”

“That is cool,” Fireheart agreed, eyes wide in amazement. No matter how many times he was told about it, seers being able to read the future still blew his mind. Such an incredible ability, given to cats like squat and grumpy Yellowfang, and overly-energetic Cinderpaw…

He realized something and asked Yellowfang, “Hey, maybe you can check on what happens to them now? At least maybe Snowkit?” His eyes darted to Frostfur, worried he’d upset her, but she looked interested in this idea too, leaning forward a little.

“It’ll have to wait, boy.” Yellowfang jerked her head her apprentice’s way. “The fuzzy idiot here wants to go back to the road.”

“Oh,” Fireheart said, deflating a little in worry. “Are you still having those dreams, Cinderpaw?”

“And that dumb feeling,” Cinderpaw grumbled. She looked back at the scattered kits before leaning in and whispering, “And we’ve both gotten new visions about something else!”

“Girl!” Yellowfang said sharply.

Cinderpaw waved her tail at her mentor. “He can hear about it.”

“Seer business isn’t warrior business,” Yellowfang growled. “Especially when we know not what we see.”

Frostfur opened her mouth, but then looked past them and stood up. “Brightkit! Stop that! Come here!” She looked at the other cats, adding, “I’ll leave you to it,” before loping off towards her kits, who were wrestling and squealing.

“Fireheart can keep a secret,” Cinderpaw insisted. “He already knows about the road thing.”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me,” Fireheart said quickly. “I mean, I am curious, but…”

Yellowfang scowled between him and Cinderpaw before scoffing and flicking a paw. “Go on.”

Cinderpaw immediately closed in on Fireheart’s personal space, whispering conspiratorially, “So we both saw it twice so far—there’s this puddle, and Bluestar’s reflection is in it, right? But it keeps rippling, like wind’s blowing on it or something, until you can’t even see her face really. And we both smelled the road at the same time before we woke up!”

An immediate feeling of something cold and gut-twisting hit Fireheart’s stomach without him understanding why. “Is that a bad thing?”

“Haven’t a proper clue yet,” Yellowfang muttered as she walked past him. “But never do I see a leader without something grave about to happen.”

Fireheart didn’t say anything. His throat clenched.

“We’re going to the road now to see for ourselves,” Cinderpaw added. “If something bad comes up, we can tell you later.”

Fireheart nodded, trying to ease himself back down to cheeriness. “Good luck out there.”

“Later!” Cinderpaw said, completely oblivious to whatever Yellowfang was squinting at Fireheart’s face for. She bounced past him and trotted out of camp, tail high.

Yellowfang was close enough to swat Fireheart with her tail. “Chin up. We’ll find something yet. This isn’t your problem.”

Fireheart nodded again. Yellowfang didn’t look satisfied, but she turned with a snorting sniff and hobbled out after her apprentice.

Fireheart sighed and turned back to watch the kits be scolded by their mother. The cold in his belly set there, just chilly enough to refuse to let him focus on anything else.

Why Bluestar’s reflection? Why ripples?

Whatever the answer was, Fireheart was sure he wasn’t going to like it.

[silcoitus]

I hope Silco know that as his campaign manager, we really did everything we could 😔

He knows. Don't worry. He knows.

Hold your head up high.

You fought valiantly. It was an honor to fight alongside you. To spread the good gospel of our favorite, beloved, sexy rat man. We came out in droves and we did not give them an easy victory. Every percentage point was hard fought. They'll not soon be forgetting us.

I will likely still write one final chapter for The Campaign as we all deal with this great loss.

[devilsons]

who: dove moreno ( @chorusgirls ) where: a desolate building a few streets away from the old world casino, a carcass of a space like an abandoned supermarket, a warehouse with leftover shelves and steadily dimming florescent lights.  when: sometime after midnight, the bars have begun last call and the windows of all the nicer establishments have been shuttered. a storm swirls steadily overhead, the air thick with the promise of rain.

in hindsight he should’ve known better, but then again, he rarely does.

‘ do not fucking go to old world casino tonight. ‘ the words of someone that held high title within the hanging man had barely grazed the surface of his psyche. he had been intent on staying home tonight, but those magic words had sent his adrenaline on fire. he nodded his head as if dazed, the words hand picked to send him reeling; the promise of chaos, the promise of intrigue. he always wanted to see that which he wasn’t supposed to. thinking about it now, laid out on an endless slab of concrete bleeding from ( he sucks his teeth, the rust flavor taking his tongue and rolling down his throat, tangy and vicious, undeniable ) his gums and god knows where else, he wondered how that message had gotten relayed so fluidly, how they had found their mark. he liked to applaud himself on being unpredictable... right.

some things really were too good to be true. dove moreno. what would a girl like that want with a grimy little street rat like him anyways?

it wasn’t as extravagant as most would expect of the starlet, their meeting that is, but despite the opposition in everything about them, strangely, he had felt they hit it off. galivanting about the casino, passing through nearby bars, the sight of starstruck patrons and fluttering excitement at the presence of one of the cities most recognizable faces. it didn’t affect him, the existence or idea of ‘fame,’ he saw her the way he saw everyone. at the time he thought maybe it was why she was spending time with him, but this... this makes a lot more sense.

he assumed it was another bar hop, following mink and silk down an alleyway it had no place being, the shock of blonde hair. he remembers having the thought that that shade of blonde on a woman meant she was well put together, but on him, bleached and brassy, dark roots peppering his scalp, meant just the opposite. as he followed her into the big, empty, building whose walls were screaming of something horrible he remembered thinking that two people could not be more different. it wasn’t the warehouse that sent the warning bells off, it was instead this thought. he wandered a bit further into the building, the hum of drugs still singing in his veins, eyes wandering to the flickering fluorescents, an abandoned body of a building. when he turned back around she was gone, the footsteps he heard not the soft and practiced clicking of heels but heavy-footed. he knew he was fucked. 

out came two men, about twice his body mass. he fought hard, valiantly some may say, but he was high. and drunk. and somewhere along the night he’d lost his knife, snatched from his pocket. in his memory he sees a flash of manicured nails. yeah, it was surely just a coincidence. he got his ass beat, bad. eyes swollen and body aching, he rolls onto his side and coughs wet and red, his ribcage feels as if it’s been pried open, surely something there broken. he tries to crawl to his hands and knees but collapses again. he’s taken his fair share of beatings over the years, but this is one of the worse for wear in recent memory. cuts and bruises, he thinks someone said something about revenge, but at one point he blacked out so he couldn’t be sure. “aw fuuu — uuck.” leaves his lips and he rolls onto his back, head hitting the concrete, a long breath out of his nose. his phone seems to be gone too. his eyes flicker closed. it looked as if he might be here awhile.

[jonquildove]

thesilverhairedkhaleesi:

As the boat docked at the waters edge of Westeros Dany made her way to the hull of the ship. Taking in a deep breath she, she let the cool air sting her lungs. She wasn’t used to these low temperatures, and she had to pull her hood up over her to shield herself from the cold. She had travelled across the seas with her Unsullied soldiers, her dragons flying through the sky with their large wings and breathing fire, the people in the castle running for cover from their fiery breath. As a dragon was not a slave. As she made her way off the boat, she noticed the young girl standing near a pallet of goods. She had the fair red hair and soft features that matched the description of the individuals she was told to meet upon her arrival. Advising her army’s commander to seek shelter for her awesome dragons, her commander being Grey Worm, she made her way over to the girl. Rhaegal is on her shoulder, her dragon breathing red wisps of fire. She missed her son Rhaego, the stallion who mounted the world, having dreamed of her khal and him in the afterlife. It had been snowing, and she had gone into the tent, seeing him cradling her son. It was a beautiful life, another life with him. Her hair shines gold in the snow, as she wistfully looks at him, touching his face. He was at peace now, she saw. She trusted the brown skinned man called Grey Worm, he saying he was proud to have this name, as that was when she had freed him from being a slave. He had been in Astapor for a long time, there being masters like Kraznys, he being sold when he was a babe. The masters had been cruel, whipping the soldiers, even though they did not feel, the cruelty was not lost on them. They had killed the masters, Daenerys saying to do so. He fought valiantly with the Sons of the Harpy, they wearing golden hawk masks, like the harpy statue in Yunkai. Fighting in the alley, where the brothel girl had pointed to. He realised, as he walked there with only a handful of Unsullied, they patrolling the streets as per every night, the main battle over, that the girl had tricked them, had killed White Rat, his friend and fellow soldier. He was a very good warrior, fighting with the spear, and wounding and killing the harpies, yet they had stabbed and wounded him, he bleeding. Barristan Selmy had come to his aid, and together, they fought the remaining men. As she approached the girl, she was shocked by how young the maiden was. Surely this couldn’t be the girl that had been through so much, as told in her previous letters. Varys had sent letters to her, or one of his spies had, as he was the spider in the garden of King's Landing, he and Tyrion hearing about a possible good ruler for Westeros across the narrow seas. Dany herself had also been through so much in her short life. She hoped that the two could work together, and possibly become fast friends. “Excuse me.” She asked “But would you by chance be Sansa Stark?”

Sansa looks over at the pale blonde-haired woman whom had just gotten off the ship. She had been waiting to meet the dragon woman, who had been ruling one of the Free Cities. They could rule together, she thought. Joffrey was a cruel tyrant, she wishing there to be a kinder monarch. She read about the Targaryen dynasty, liking the stories of knights fighting monsters and rescuing princesses. She read who Princess Alyssa was, whom was named after the waterfall in the Eyrie. She had been in Jaehaerys’s reign, he and Alysanne, the good queen, bearing her. She had loved water. She looking through the book, gently handling the tatters when Joffrey cut through it with a sword. She uncreasing the pages, and singing through them. Tyrion had given the book to him as a wedding present. “Afternoon, Your Grace…” Sansa smiled at the woman. “Yes, my name is Sansa.” “–And you’re Queen Daenerys, I’m guessing?”

[anthonysstupiddailyblog]

Anthony’s Stupid Daily Blog (432): Tue 23rd May 2023

The sun was shining brightly today so I headed into the back garden to soak into the rays and start reading the next book in my Edgar Award challenge: Bones by Jan Burke. It’s about a forensic team who take a serial killer up into the mountains so he can show them where the body of one of his victims is buried. However when the team exhume the body they are killed due to a bomb the killer buried beneath the body. The only survivor is journalist Irene Kelly and her sniffer dog who the killer proceeds to pursue down the mountain. This was a fucking amazing book, definitely one of the highlights of the entire challenge. The main character Irene Kelly is actually the star of numerous books by Burke and "Bones" is the seventh in the series. Then this challenge FINALLY draws to an end I'll certainly be purchasing the other books in the series because this one absolutely gripped me and to my surprise I finished the entire book in one day! Through this book I also learned about the case of Brenda Spencer, an American woman who as a child grabbed hold of a shotgun one morning and began firing at a crowd of schoolkids and teachers across the street from her house, killing several. When asked by the police why she did this she replied "I Don’t Like Mondays". I never realized that the Boomtown Rats song of the same name was actually inspired by such a horrific event. I also wondered whether Garfield's hatred for Mondays was also inspired by the Spencer killings but it seems unlikely that Jim Davis would use a slaying as motivation for a mediocre and extremely repetitive comic strip. If I ever go crazy and commit a massacre, then the police ask me why I did it I'm going to reply "I don't like Garfield".

Today was the final chance for the Lakers as they were three points down in their semi final series against the Denver Nuggets, the number one team in the conference. They absolutely needed to win this game (and then another three games) in order to move on to the finals. Despite a closely contested game right up until the very end the Lakers came up short. LeBron had hold of the ball and fought valiantly to wrestle it away from the Nuggets and propel it upwards but the final buzzer went off before the ball had left his hands and with that the Lakers 22-23 season was over and done with. This is the moment every sports fan dreads, the moment where their teams entire season filled with triumph and catastrophe comes to an end. I was obviously disappointed but at the end of the day the Lakers have had an amazing season. It started off badly as it often does for the Lakers but to their credit they managed to pull their fingers out of their arses when the time came to gather points needed to get to the playoffs. The major highlight of this season for me was Austin Reaves, this guy was certainly the Lakers MVP, pulling them out of danger numerous times and providing hope when it looked like the Lakers weren't going to make it. I still contend that trading Russell Westbrook was a mistake and if they had kept him on then he and Reaves could have gotten them even further up the conference table. I can't really complain because this season will always stick in my mind due to the fact that I got to see the Lakers play live against the Clippers in the Crypto arena and though they came up short I can still die happy knowing that I got to cheer them on in person with an arena full of my fellow fans (well half full of my fellow Lakers fans and half filled with idiot Clipper fans). With the Lakers' season finally over I went onto the NBA website and unsubscribed, disappointed but also a tiny bit relieved that it was over and welcoming for the four month long breather I'll get until the next season starts in September. It won't just be basketball I'll be following when the new season starts because this will also be the year that I start following American football when the new NFL season starts at round about the same time. I tried baseball but the length of the games was too much for me and the blackout restrictions for ice hockey are fucking moronic considering I don't live in the USA so I shouldn't be subject to any fucking restrictions. However the one major American sport I haven't tried is football so I think it's time to give that a go. I'm all but settled on choosing the Denver Broncos as my team solely on the basis that their logo looks the nicest (same reason I chose the Lakers) but I might still change my mind before the season starts. It still seems crazy to me that five years ago I wasn't remotely interested in sport and I'm now at the stage where I've got an LA Lakers tattoo, I've just returned from seeing them play live and now I'm looking forward to following a second sport.

[tllgrrl]

Talk Like A Pirate Day 2022

Part 2

The Paul & Darlene’s Ship Log - Sarah Wilson, Captain

Two weeks later…

As expected, the battling started immediately upon boarding each others’s ships.

I caught one of their lines, swung over to The Shield and found Captain Wilson waiting.

We both knew what was going to happen but as we’re both civilized, we exchanged the usual greetings and pleasantries:

I informed him of his status as Ass-kissing Royal Navy Scum.

He informed me of my status as a Thieving Rapscallion and a Pirate.

The grapple began.

He fought valiantly, but he was never a match for my skills, not when we were children, certainly not now that we’re grown, and I took great pleasure reminding him of that fact just before I prepared to run him through, when I heard a shout, then a very large man, came running across the deck, practically launching himself at me.

Hearing the shout made me drop back, rolling away from Sam, and the attacker landed in a crouch between me and my brother.

We both stood, and when I say we got an eyeful of each other, that is to say, I got more than an eyeful.

He wasn’t wearing a naval uniform. He wasn’t wearing any uniform, for that matter.

He was, in fact, wearing only his drawers, carrying a sword in his right hand, and he had a belt with a dagger strapped around his waist.

His left hand was gone.

Actually, most of his left arm was gone from just above the elbow, but his chest was broad with well-defined muscle that told me he was no stranger to working or fighting.

And I’ve seen my share of men in various states of dress and undress in many situations, including fighting, but there was something about this man’s nakedness that was beyond just his lack of clothing.

It was his eyes.

I can’t lay a finger on it, but there was something in his eyes.

He asked Samuel if he was harmed, then said he’d never killed a pirate before and was looking forward to doing so.

I told him to let me know when he sees a pirate he can kill, then I took off my yellow silk coat and gave it to Tommy. I didn’t want to get this scurvy, one-armed brigand’s blood on it.

I told the bilge rat to make peace with his god.

It’s not like I hadn’t ever seen a man run his eyes over me like he knew me personally. But there was something about the way he was looking at me like that…it made me titter like a bloody barmaid and that made me angry at the same time.

Then he lunged, I used a parry of six to defend my left side, and faded back to keep distance between us.

That he looked so surprised to see I knew at least a basic move made me pray to Ogun he’d make a proper challenge so I could show him that he wasn’t dealing with a novice..

He came at me again and I blocked that attack as well.

Then he nodded, and that grin grew even wider.

I was going to wipe that smug smile off of his face, if it was the last thing I did, but he didn’t make it easy as he was an excellent swordsman.

Almost as good as me.

(Just noting.)

I don’t know if it was my being distracted by his skill or his…prominence…but somehow he caught my sword and sent it flying across the deck.

This grinning jackal was besting me with one arm, and as I retreated to try and retrieve my sword, I fell backwards grabbed his belt (I swear I was grabbing at his belt), our feet tangled and we hit the deck, him landing on top of me, much to the delight of both crews, and my brother.

Next thing I knew, one of the sails was unfurling, falling to the deck, and it landed on the half-naked brigand and me, still pinned to the deck beneath him.

“Commander Barnes?” Sam said, joining in the with the laughing,

“This is my sister, Sarah Wilson. Captain of the Paul and Darlene.

Sarah? This is Commander James Buchanan Barnes, retired former member of the Royal Navy.”

Believe it or not, the fool was full out smiling when he said “Pleased to meet you, Captain…”

ADDENDUM/ERRATA: Apologies, I had to make a correction.

It is Bucky’s LEFT HAND and arm that are missing.

He does, indeed, have a complete and fully-functioning Right Hand And Arm

* * * * *

Sarah’s Ship Logs: Entry 1 / Entry 3 / Entry 4

Bucky’s Journal: Entry 1 / Entry 2 / Entry 3 / Entry 4

(ICYMI: Bucky’s Journal is written by @btwxsixesandsevens )

* * * * *

Dividers by @firefly-graphics.

[rat-detector-24]

Rat lore detected. I could be wrong, so please don't take this as the official lore or me dismissing your version of the lore. There is talks of Mu in the ancient scrolls. That much is 100% true. The rest of what I'm going to tell you is speculation on my behalf, based off what I've seen in the scrolls as a rat detector. Some of the scrolls vary in their accounts of our history, so I will just tell you what parts I personally believe.

I've heard Mu was a beautiful place built for the first rat king, Remy the 1st. The culture did flourish, he was a loving king who cared for his people. He created the many temples of Rat. However there are many rat detectors (what you call priests) and I can't imagine any of my dedicated brethrats sinning against one of the big cheeses. I sure wouldn't and we also believe in a few different gods and goddesses. Some don't believe in any god and still do the work of the rat.

Now I will admit there was a huge flood, but that was honestly just a leaky sink that got out of hand. Mu was built for rats, so the leak caused a lot of damage. The citizens of Mu did climb to the top of the counters and hid in a box, but I wouldn't call that a sky temple. Things kind of get embellished after countless retellings. Mu was unfortunately considered a total loss. They later went on to build Nu Mu which was ruled by Remy the 1st for about another year. Remy died valiantly defending the city from a calico cat. There is no mention if the cat survived or not.

Remy ll took his father's place as a ruler. He was not as kind unfortunately and many innocent rats suffered under his grueling reign. The oppressed rats rebelled and executed Remy ll. The brutal fighting left the city not only virtually destroyed, but also emotionally, there were too many bad memories for them to stay. So they started building the city of Rattopia. Remy lll was exiled from Rattopia as a child, for fears he would end up like his father (this plays a very important part in our history at later point).

The citizens picked Queen Rattana to lead them. She built a beautiful city of solid gold, 4 to 5 times the size of Mu. Everyone was happy and there was so much hope in the air. During the Cheese Moon Festival, one of the tower guards came running in with a look of panic on his face. He shouted in horror to the queen "MY QUEEN THERE IS A SNAKE APPROACHING THE CITY".

Queen Rattana never really faced any direct challenges like this and was relatively still young. She was overly confident in her golden walls. The walls were sadly breached by the snake almost instantaneously. The queen froze in shock. The guards fought the snake off the best they could, but most of them didn't make it. The queen snapped out of her trance and attacked the snake herself and mortally wounded it. However she was bitten by the snake and could feel the venom coursing throughout her veins. Laying in a pool of her own blood, she reached out to her only child, Prince Rattus, who saw the whole ordeal. She asked him to lead their people. He nodded and said he loved her. He begged her to stay but she explained she couldn't. He was still too young to understand.

So King Rattus began to rebuild. At first he was a loving king. He tried really hard to respect his people. Something in him craved more though. He lead Rattopia into many wars with other kingdoms. The people of Rattopia couldn't handle many more wars. He was demanding too many crops from the farmers, too many weapons from the smiths, they had no money left after the taxes raised. That all changed when a mysterious figure approached the still golden gates. Rattopia would never be the same.

considering one of your tags is ‘rat detectors mad scribblings on an abandoned wall’ I feel like you have lore. and if you don’t I will make it up

I am what you make of me. My only confirmed lore was…the sandwich incident…everything else is smoke and mirrors. Let not everything that lies linger. Be swift little mutual, before it’s too late.

[obislittleone]

Cruel Irony

2/?

Bruce Wayne x Reader

Mother trucker dude my calves hurt like a buttcheek on a stick... needless to say I spent a lot of time sitting today and I cranked this out.

Series Summary: Growing up on infinity Island, Moyra is taught very well in the art of assassination. As the daughter of Ra's Al Ghul, she sits highly amongst the brotherhood known as the League of Shadows. When her father orders her to lure a stranger from the outside to be recruited amongst the mysterious clan, she will question everything she's ever believed.

Chapter Warnings: angst, opening up about sadness ig?? Not much honestly this chapter is pretty vanilla.

Rating: PG

My father was more than exhilarated for me to return with such news of the man I'd been following. I hadn't known much about current affairs around the world, for I was too caught up in my training and my studies, however my father knew exactly who I was talking about as soon as I uttered the name of Bruce Wayne. He knew that this young socialite was the perfect recruit, for he more than anyone would appreciate the bringing of justice to others.

He knew that this man was the right pick, so he'd instructed me to go into town again and cause a fight that would likely end up revolving mainly around Bruce.

I had to be sneaky, with the way I subtly gave off hints to some strong men about the crown prince of Gotham. I still hadn't known about his status, nor did I understand the extent of his life in luxury. I knew he wasn't from around here, that was pretty clear on it's own, but aside from a few non evident statements made by my father, I did not know the real Bruce Wayne. I only knew the street rat. The one who stole and shared with others. Truly a mystery he would be to unfold, but eventually I would get into every little crevice and nook of his backstory.

The day of the big fight, I watched from a close hiding space. My father insisted he needed no help in his efforts of defending himself, and causing havoc on others, but something in me felt the urge to stick close anyway, just incase he needed help. It would be a shame to get him killed before I could put the puzzle that he was together.

He fought valiantly, nearly every man he encountered was down after a few swings. His technique was definitely sloppy, but he had the right ideas. He needed training, and my father could give it to him. Watching him in the moment I couldn't act like I wasn't somewhat impressed. Already he'd surprised me in ways I didn't think possible. Perhaps I need to learn more about the art of expecting the unexpected. More than six men were laying startled on the ground now, all grabbing their sides in pain of what Bruce had done.

The police were dragging him away through the muddy slums, claiming those poor people needed protection when really I'd put it in their heads to start the fight.

I watched as they went all the way to the small containment unit to hold him. My father would already be waiting when he got there. Now, after my father gave Bruce the decision to join us, it would be up to him. If he chose a higher purpose, it meant I would be able to finally get close enough to crack open that head of his and find out everything I'd been wondering since the moment I saw him.

It was four days before I'd received word of a stranger entering the main temple entrance. Upon hearing from one of my brethren that the new recruit had arrived, I immediately dropped my book and ran to see if it were true.

As I entered the large room, looking upon my father, I had to drop my eyes in order to see Bruce. He was laying on the ground, probably in defeat, and my father placed the small flower he'd quested him to find beneath the rugged lapel of his coat. He looked purely exhausted. My father muttered some words I could not hear, then came towards me, his face exuded pride though he was holding back a genuine smile.

"I have a good feeling about him, make sure he's comfortable." He told me, careful to keep his voice low so that only I would hear the words.

He soon left right after. I smiled and shook my head. With a sigh of what almost seemed to be relief, I strode over to the man on the ground, kneeling lower and offering my hand to him.

"It's you... Moyra." he furrowed his brow in confusion.

"In the flesh. Glad to meet under better circumstances this time." I kept my hand extended with a wide grin, but it seemed his surprise took him off guard, and he had yet to take the offered help to his feet. I looked at my hand once more while he looked at me. "Fine, get up yourself."

When I spoke it was like I snapped him out of a trance. Before I could stand to my feet or retract my arm, he gripped onto my hand with his own firmly.

I smirked and heaved him up, trying yo be more gentle with him as I knew he'd sort of just received a beating.

"So your father, he's-"

"Yes, and he's had his eye on you for sometime now." I lied partially. I had been the one keeping a close watch on him. Sure, my father took interest when I began to tell him about the mystery stranger, but truly I had kept him under my eye like a hawk simply because of my curiosity.

"Come with me, we've prepared you a room." I nodded my head to the doorway in the corner as I began my trek towards it. He followed soon behind, but had a hard time keeping up.

"Well I certainly feel special." He joked, hobbling as fast as he could to the place I'd mentioned. He wasn't totally serious and brooding, and that I was thankful for. All the other soldiers in my brotherhood were so stoic and emotionless most of the time. This would be a good change of tune.

"You should. This is the most powerful league in the world, and you've been chosen to be apart of it. I'm sure my father will cover the details of everything for you later on, but for now..." I trailed off, seeing as though we'd reached the small room. "You should rest. You've got the rest of your life ahead of you, and right now you look like hell."

"Thanks." He rolled his eyes, sitting down on the cot with a breath of relief. He really wasn't in any shape to start training, and might not be for a few days.

"If you need anything, just knock on the door across from yours." I said, making sure everything was in place before I left. He seemed a little more keen om keeping me a moment more.

"Would that door happen to belong to you?" He raised a brow, leaning his back on the wall.

"As a matter of fact, it would. If you'll excuse me, I have things to settle elsewhere..." I lied, knowing the only thing I had to attend to was the book I dropped when hearing he had come. "Just a piece of advice, don't waste your sleeping time. My father's plans start early in the morning."

"Noted." He nodded at me and pressed his lips in a thin line.

I turned and walked out the door, not a moment's hesitation within me. A certain few words did stop me in my tracks before I was able to venture down the hallway, though.

"I'm sorry..." he paused, looking for the right words. "You know... for setting a foot trap for you."

I glanced over my shoulder to see the sincerity written on his face. I smirked before I replied.

"Don't worry about it. It was a lousy trap anyway."

🦇

Months had passed from the day he arrived, and he still didn't feel fully comfortable in this place, around the league. It was strange to think that after staying for so long, he couldn't quite seem at home with the place. My father had begun his training, and told me he was very invested. Perhaps all I needed to do was talk to him. I very much would like to get to know him more, I wanted to know more about his past, and what him the way he was today. My father knew of everything, but of course, as rules of the league, everything said stays between two people unless permission is granted to share outside of that.

It was quite a chilly night when the sun had gone down this evening, and I wanted to offer some extra blankets to the man across the hall from me.

Knocking on the door, I didn't even count a second before it swung open before me. I raised my eyebrows at how fast he'd reacted, but shook off my surprise and continued.

"Hey... it started getting colder, wanted to bring you more of these..." I gestured to the folded pieces of woolen material, but then upon seeing beads of sweat on his forehead, I glanced down to notice his shirt was open, and sweat poured down the rest of his body also. "But it looks like you don't really need them."

He chuckled nervously when he realized I hadn't looked away from his body. Really and truthfully I could not help myself, he was so defined and strong. Eventually he spoke, so my eyes were forced to avert back to his.

"Not really..." he mumbled. I nodded my head getting ready to leave when he stepped aside from his doorway. "You wanna come in?"

That's exactly what I wanted.

"Sure..." I brought the blankets in anyways, setting them down on the bench by the end of his cot before sitting down at the foot of it.

"So your dad...." he started, opting to sit down at the head of his bed, wrapping the shirt up to tie it. One less distraction for me I suppose. "He doesn't really take it easy on anyone, does he?"

I was a bit taken aback by this.

"What, you a pansy?" I realized how possibly hurtful my words could have come across as, and even though he showed no signs of taking offense, I still added on. "I mean... you're such a strong fighter, and a good man. The challenges should be easy for you, both mental and physical."

"Physical is easier... the mental stuff not so much." He scratched the back of his neck while trying to muster up good words to tell what he meant. "I understand that my past is a weakness..."

"But you can use it to be stronger." I finished for him, quoting some of my father's words.

"Yeah, the thing is... I don't know if I want to use a certain part of my past for strength."

Now I understood. He had a traumatic experience sometime back that was making him weary. It was the same with me and the incident with my mother.

"What happened to you?" I asked broadly, but soon seeing that perhaps I was too forward. I shook my head. "You don't have to tell me..."

"No, It's okay."

We both looked up at one another and for a split second, I saw myself in his eyes. The part of his past he was thinking about must have reflected that of, or at least be similar to mine.

"When I was a kid, my parents were shot in an alleyway. I was there, and it was my fault." He ducked his head down again, and though I didn't notice any change in emotion, I could tell he probably wouldn't be able to give me anything else on the matter. I scooted closer to him and put my hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry." I told him, but he didn't respond, except for a small sigh when I touched him. I had been in his shoes... "I know what if feels like. I was eight when my mom died. She was killed too."

I hated opening up about this subject, especially after I'd spent the past several years learning to harness the emotions attached to the memory. Talking about it felt foreign. I knew I had to do it, though. This talking point was the only common ground yet far I had with the man before me. He needed to know he wasn't alone.

"It was my fault, and I was too young to do anything to stop it. Even my father had to watch as she was just.... murdered. I'll never forget how much I hated myself that day. I try not to think about it, but I blame myself. My father tells me that I shouldn't because it can only harbor self hatred.... truth be told I think he blames me too."

Now with both hands in my lap, it was my turn to drop my head to stare at my thighs, wondering why this was so hard for me after all this time.

"I guess what I'm trying to say, is that you're not alone... and if you ever need someone, I'll be there." And I meant every word of it. What started as a ploy to delve into his inner psyche was now a genuine, heartfelt promise.

"Thank you."

The moment our eyes met, I saw a piece of my future, fuzzy yet clear as day. I saw he and I years from now, still confiding in one another. We were loyal to each other for years to come. What a gift that small vision was.

Tags and requests are open!

[dinfeanoriel]

Ghoul Rats and Gibdos

Boy, how I’ve missed writing! Hope you guys enjoy this 5k+ fic I’ve had laying around for months... ~~~~~

I swear to Hylia, if I’ve gone blind…

This was the first thought to filter across Twilight’s muddled mind when he cracked open to pitch blackness. There was no light, no glow, no luminescence of any kind to be found. It was as if the Ordonian had awoken to find himself trapped in a void. A place completely enshrouded by darkness. 

Tell me we did not switch while I was sleeping...

There was no answer save for the silence. Not a voice was to be heard, not a rustle, nor a breeze. Only the absence of sound. 

The Ranch Hand frowned starkly to himself. The absolute stillness and nothingness unsettled him. It reminded him of his time in Arbiter's Grounds- a time he would rather forget. 

Wonderful. How am I supposed to figure out where I am? 

He supposed he could light his lantern but there was no telling if any enemies were nearby. He didn’t want to risk being ambushed if there happened to be a band of Bokoblins or Moblins somewhere close. It wouldn’t do to fend off Dark Link’s infected enemies alone.

He strained his ears, going as far as to extend his senses but couldn’t detect a single sound or presence. With a sinking heart, Twilight came to the grim conclusion that the group must have been separated else the noise would have been plentiful. A welcome distraction from the inky darkness enshrouding him. He could not hear a single, comforting, heartbeat or calm, steady, breathing. He was alone with only the silence for company and no way of knowing whether or not his companions were safe and sound. 

Twilight suppressed the urge to growl. 

Displeasure mingled with worry welled in his chest. There were vague reminders of the time the children of Ordon had been abducted from their homes he couldn’t ignore. For weeks, Twilight hadn’t known whether or not Beth, Talo, Malo, and Colin were alive. Weeks he suffered and wallowed in uncertainty and fear for their lives yet he valiantly pressed on. He stalwartly refused to believe they were dead. 

 It was by chance he’d found them in Kakariko, virtually unharmed but not unaffected by the traumatic experience. Since then, Twilight found himself reluctant to allow anyone out of sight. He’d grown especially protective of the group of Links, keeping a watchful eye on every Hero and tracking where they went. 

It was a habit he couldn’t bring himself to break. An instinctive urge of his he knew grated on some of their nerves but he refused to explain himself. Wild had once tried to ask the reason behind his fierce vigilance only to receive an ambiguous response. The younger Hero merely shrugged it off and let his mentor do as he pleased. 

Twilight grit his teeth together, shoving the dark memories into the furthest corner of his mind. It wouldn’t do for him to linger on them. Three years had passed since that dreadful day and, yet, the experience stubbornly clung to him, refusing to relinquish its grasp. 

He shook his head, inwardly barking at himself to focus. 

Find the others. 

That was his singlemost priority as of this moment. 

A quiet hiss and soft, measured, footsteps from behind broke into Twilight’s thoughts, disproving his aforementioned belief of being alone. With bared teeth, Twilight spun on his heel, ready to attack should the unknown entity prove to be a foe. He instinctively moved to grip the handle of the Ordon sword, poised to unsheathe the blade and strike, but something stilled his hand. His senses weren’t warning him of any danger and he sensed no evil lurking around. He didn’t feel the least bit threatened by this presence. 

His hand slipped from the sword, moving instead to draw his lantern free from his pack. 

The chainlinks of the metal contraption clinked ominously and the ambient, red-orange, candle flared to life. The glow chased away the darkness and allowed Twilight to see- 

“Gah!” “Ah!” 

Two startled cries pierced the foreboding silence. 

Twilight’s heart thundered in his chest, beating a mile a minute as it struggled to overcome the sudden spike of undiluted fear that had seized it whole. He’d been given the scare of his life when the light of the lantern revealed something green and blue standing directly across from him. 

“Hylia’s Grace, Twilight!” Warrior breathed, his voice a pitch higher than normal. The Knight had a hand pressed to his chest, cobalt blues wide with an echo of shock and startlement. “I thought you were a poe!” Twilight, still recovering from his own fright, snapped back just as fraily, “I thought you were a Bokoblin!” 

The look of incredulity and affrontement stealing across Warrior’s features would have been amusing had both not been reeling and fighting to compose themselves. “A Bokoblin?” Warrior repeated sourly, “Really?” 

“What else was I to think?!” “Do Bokoblins wear scarves, Twilight?” The Captain flicked his scarf in emphasis, entirely deadpan in both looks and tone. Twilight defended himself, “You came out of nowhere, Warrior! All I saw was green and blue-” “-And all I heard was the clinking of your lantern!” 

The bickering died down, granting the Ordonian and Captain a moment to recover and collect themselves. The lantern swayed in place, basking them in a warm glow and keeping the darkness at bay. 

“Pretty sure I lost ten years of my life in a single second…” Twilight’s sharp hearing caught Warrior’s murmur. He snorted softly to himself and with a shake of his head, straightened his back and shoulders with a deep exhale. 

“Let’s find a way out of here.” The sooner they were out of the dreadful place the better. 

Warrior followed suit, “Let’s.” 

Slipping alongside the Captain, Twilight held his lantern up to illuminate their path. The Ranch Hand found himself glad for the company. He was reassured upon seeing Warrior unscathed. The blond did not appear the least bit frazzled or disgruntled by the sudden shift. He was calm and collected, taking the abrupt switch in stride and Twilight commended Warrior’s ability to remain level-headed and composed especially under duress. 

The more the Ordonian mulled on it, the more he realized he’d never seen Warrior crack when pressure was high or when circumstances were dire. He marveled at it and wondered if his capability to remain poised and unruffled stemmed from the wars he’d fought.

Together, they followed the tiled path leading across the sandy depths. Twilight suppressed a shudder. This place was increasingly similar to Arbiter’s Grounds. The darkened chamber, the broken and cracked tiles, the neverending sand, and the hollow and ruinous atmosphere… He half-expected stalchildren to unbury themselves and come swarming them with their minuscule spears. Arbiter’s Grounds had been a grisly and gruesome shock to Twilight. The tarnished history of Hyrule brought to life and accentuated the further he’d traversed into the desolate and ghastly dungeon. The heinous crimes committed there...the wretchedness and sufferings of the Gerudo prisoners...The tortured souls...the air of devastating despair and anguish and hopelessness capable of stealing his own living breath... It was not difficult for Twilight to understand what had taken place during the Gerudo-Hylian war. It was painstakingly, earth-shatteringly, clear and vivid. The unimaginable atrocities and horrors sickened him. Twilight persevered to the end of the daunting dungeon through sheer will and determination alone. Midna’s companionship helped. Had he been left on his own, Twilight wasn’t sure he would have managed to endure the vile and tragic environment. At times he swore he could hear the cries of the dead… 

The echoes of terrified, disconsolate, screams ringing in his ears and heart-rending wails piercing the still silence. Sometimes, he thought he caught glimpses of mutilated and deformed spirits floating listlessly and purposelessly, waiting to be released from their tormented state.  

The atmosphere was heavy with grief, wallowing despair, endless cruelty, and malevolence. 

“Oh, look!” Warrior’s voice drew Twilight from his dark thoughts and his keen eyes were quick to follow the direction he was pointing, “A door!” 

A locked door, they soon discovered. 

Blades hissed as swords were unsheathed and the two Heroes pressed their backs to one another, waiting. Twilight found their reaction to be a little saddening although he couldn’t deny his gladness for the distraction. After all, locked doors told of something to come. 

For a long anticipatory moment, both stood unmoving and weapons extended. Nothing happened. “What’s taking so long?” Twilight muttered, loud enough for Warrior to hear. The Captain surveyed the old, archaic chamber as best he could given the limited light. “I see torches there,” He said with a jut of his chin, “I’m guessing they need to be lit.” 

Twilight did so with a couple well-aimed swings. “I hate this part,” He groused to himself, earning a hum of agreeance from his companion. He wanted to be free of this place. He wanted to escape and never look back. He stepped closer to Warrior, ensuring little distance existed between them. The Knight took note of his movement but refrained from remarking on it. Instead, he adapted to the change in position and turned his body so he stood next to the Ordonian. 

Nothing prepared them for what took place next.

A deafening sound erupted from the furthermost wall. The chamber shook and groaned as intense tremors racked the foundation of the old depths. The ground and ceiling quaked violently, showering them with loose rocks and debris. Twilight and Warrior stumbled when the earth then wrenched beneath their feet, arms flailing uselessly as they strove vainly to maintain their balance. The world around them crashed and crumbled. 

The room fell apart. 

The ceiling caved, the walls collapsed, and the floor began to gyrate. 

Instant regret is what Twilight would identify the feelings coursing through him as. He grit his teeth together, expression hardening and growing fierce. “This is not what I imagined would happen!” Warrior’s voice was hardly audible over the chaos taking place around them. It was thanks to his heightened hearing Twilight was able to hear him. “What is going on?” 

Twilight had a sinking feeling he knew. He’d experienced this before. The severe and discomforting sense of déjà vu was so potent it momentarily threw him off-kilter. “Whatever you do, stay off the sand-” He started to holler, words drowned out and unable to reach Warrior through the pervading cacophony of sounds. The sands of the dungeon-like chamber started to drain, the tiles disappearing into its gulphs. “What?” 

It was this moment- this single split second- in which everything spiraled out of control. Warrior staggered back and off the stone ledge. His boot was immediately swallowed up by the thick, coiling, sand. Twilight could pinpoint the exact instant Warrior realized his costly mistake. The look on his face...the widening of his eyes… Twilight made a desperate lunge for his friend, an alarmed cry tearing from his throat, and arm extended in the hopes of snatching him back to safety- “Warrior!” 

The Captain’s back slammed into the sinking sand. 

I shouldn’t have lit the torches

The excruciating thought racked Twilight’s mind, body, and soul as he watched the sand engulf the Hero’s lower half and shoulders. The Ordonian snapped his hand out, curling his fingers tenaciously and yanking Warrior’s wrist. With nothing save but brute strength, Twilight combatted the might of the subsiding sands and succeeded in tearing Warrior partway free. His head, shoulders, and midriff were visible but it wasn’t enough to appease the horror-stricken and determined Hero. Cobalt blues locked onto cerulean and Twilight grimaced as his arm shook from exertion. The strength of the submerging sand forcefully pulling and tugging Warrior towards the center caused his muscles to scream in protest. He refused to relent. “Get out of here, Twilight!” Warrior shouted, earnest and concerned for the safety of his companion and friend. He recognized the dangers. He knew Twilight was risking his life trying to pull him to safety. 

Twilight despised the intrepidity etched into the Captain’s features. His eyes shone, fearless and bold in the face of certain death. Stubbornly, Twilight ignored Warrior’s urgings and bent forward to grasp Warrior’s forearm with his free hand. He leant back on his heels, hauling with all his might. The old, frail and rotting tiles beneath his feet splintered, cracks webbing across and bits of stone disintegrating. 

Pain flashed briefly across Warrior’s face then vanished. He grew more insistent, bellowing and shouting but Twilight couldn’t hear what he was saying. The thunderous roar of the chamber collapsing into itself filled his ears and when the tiles beneath him gave way under the strain, Twilight and Warrior were plunged into the whirling sands. 

Twilight was immersed in complete darkness. He sealed his lips and screwed his eyes shut as his body twisted and turned, prey to the sinking sands. He clung fast to Warrior, never relinquishing his grasp. 

The sands drained, drowning them in its unforgiving depths when suddenly, the disorienting whirling, tossing, and turning stalled and the world froze. Twilight felt gravity take its toll soon afterwards. His back crashed onto solid ground, his breath escaping him with a wheeze, and Warrior’s body tumbled atop him. 

Twilight’s mouth opened in a silent, breathless, gasp. No air left or entered his screaming lungs. The reservoir was completely depleted and a surge of panic ensnared him. 

Sand filtered around them, spilling into the room they’d been unceremoniously discarded into. 

Warrior was the first to recover, his fall having been softened by the unfortunate Twilight. His shock was cast aside as the Knight rolled and scrambled to his hands and knees. His attention was solely on his winded and wide-eyed rescuer. “Twilight!” 

Hands grasped his shoulders, Warrior’s face obscuring his vision of the rough-textured ceiling as the Knight spoke speedily and urgently to him. Twilight understood not a word. Warrior’s expression hardened with steely resolve. The Captain disappeared from view. A strong arm wound around his chest a second later and the Ordonian was effortlessly hauled to safety as the discharge of sand continued to flood the room.

At long last, the ability to breathe was granted to him and Twilight greedily sucked in a huge breath. “Sweet mother of breathing-” 

Warrior slumped with relief, plopping back onto the ground with a shaky exhale. 

The Ordonian remained collapsed against him, dropping his head back and shutting his eyes. 

Warrior was alive. They were alive. Neither of them had died. 

When next he looked, he found the Captain taking in their newfound surroundings with a critical eye before he turned and scrutinized Twilight’s prone form with a creased brow. When the Ordonian grimaced and tried to sit up, Warrior swiftly moved to help. He curled an arm around Twilight’s shoulder, lifting him with ease.  “That was a rough landing,” You don’t say, Twilight grumbled sassily. 

“You’re not hurt are you?” A thread of concern seeped into Warrior’s tone when the Ordonian remained seated. Twilight was simply relishing in his ability to breathe again. With a belated shake of his head, Twilight responded, “A little banged up and bruised,” He took another breath, “But other than that, I’m fine.” The answer satisfied Warrior. “Good to know.” Something in his tone alerted Twilight and the Hylian-turned-wolf studied the Captain in the corner of his eye. “What is it?” He muttered quietly. Warrior pursed his lips, gaze flickering to the far wall. The chamber they were in was brighter than the last with lit torches casting an eerie ambience. 

A chill raced down Twilight’s spine. A sense of wrongness, a deep thrum of warning, crawled along his skin. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, his inner wolf growling. “I don’t think we’re alone.” The foreboding words gravely spoken by the Captain urged Twilight to reach out with his senses once more. He closed his eyes, calling on his wolf spirit to aid him in an in-depth search of the room. A growl rumbled in Twilight’s chest and up to the back of his throat when he detected movement. His ears twitched, eyes narrowing dangerously in the direction Warrior was staring intently in. Warrior flashed him a quick, bemused, glance. “Tell me that was you.” “And if it wasn’t?” Twilight coyly replied. Warrior’s expression flat-lined. “Not funny.” His ears twitched again and Twilight sharply raised a hand in a gesture for silence. Warrior clicked his jaw shut. The Ordonian focused on the subtle sound he’d caught, trying to ascertain the cause of it and determine whether or not it was a threat. He ignored the steady beating of Warrior’s heart and his quiet, even, breathing, forcing them into the background. Something is in that room, Twilight signed. 

Warrior snapped to attention. Drawing his left up, he demanded to know, Threat? 

Without a doubt. Plan? 

Warrior pondered for a moment, perusing their limited options. With no knowledge of what to expect or what anomaly Twilight sensed could potentially be, there were few reliable plans to rely on. 

 Right approach. I’ll take left. 

The two separated into their designated directions, weapons drawn and ready. They crept silently towards the wall. Their eyes met the moment their backs touched the coarse bricks. 

Secret chamber. 

Opening? 

They needn’t look far. Warrior pressed against the wall and a protruding brick was slid back into place. 

The locks and gears of an unseen mechanism started to turn, grinding against one another with a resounding groan. 

Found it. 

Twilight suppressed a snort. 

You don’t say. It’s funny how sarcasm and sass could translate so blatantly clear in their use of sign. 

The entrance to the hidden room was revealed when a part of the wall jerked and coasted open. Dust trickled down on the waiting Heroes. 

Warrior took the first glance into the section. “Gibdos!” “You have got to be kidding…” If there was anything Twilight detested more than the disturbing, mutilated, and terrifying Poes in Arbiter’s Grounds, it was the rotten, bandage-wrapped, limping Gibdos. Their manner of walk, the dragging of their sword, their chilling screams capable of freezing one to the core, was something he could not forget so easily. 

The look on Warrior’s face was difficult for Twilight to interpret but he could recognize the horrified remembrance etched into his tense features. 

“Yours, then?” Twilight asked, risking a peek into the dank, musty, chamber. His nose crinkled from the nauseating scent of death and decay. His fierce eyes fell upon the bony, decrepit figure swathed in bandages and his brow creased. “No, mine.” Warrior spared him a sharp glance, “They’re from your world?” Twilight cocked an eyebrow, “You recognize them?” 

“How could I forget?” Warrior muttered in reply. Twilight shared the unspoken sentiment. 

A terrifying, blood-curdling, screech pierced the silence, cutting sharply into their exchange. The two Heroes pivoted around to discover three skeletal Gibdos gimping towards them. Deformed faces with gaping mouths, broken and distended jaws, and scarred or absent eyes, drew closer. “I’m beginning to believe your world is the most terrifying, Twilight,” Warrior remarked uneasily, shuffling closer to the Ordonian, “And I have yet to visit it. On to more important matters, we need to take these guys down. The three are in close proximity to one another, so-” “Range attacks.” 

Warrior blinked at the abrupt interruption. 

“What?” Twilight took a few steps backwards, features contorted with disgust and unease, “I usually attacked from a safe distance away. Bomb arrows.” He gestured vaguely to his pack. “You…” The corner of Warrior’s lips twitched upwards in repressed mirth. His eyes practically shown with amusement. Twilight narrowed his own with a small snarl, “Careful, or I will leave you to them.” 

Warrior bit his lower lip to keep from smiling. He cleared his throat, trying to compose himself, 

“Right, right. Sorry.” A snicker escaped before he could quell it. “By Hylia’s Grace, War-” 

“I’m sorry!” 

Twilight’s senses told him the Captain was completely unrepentant. A laugh broke loose. 

“You’re on your own.” 

“Hey! Get back here, mutt!”  ~~~~~

“So...How was it?” Twilight asked minutes later when an exasperated, adrenaline-filled, and mirthless Warrior stalked his way. 

“Absolutely wonderful,” Warrior deadpanned, “The thrill of battle, the adrenaline racing through my veins, and the song composed by swords and discordant shrieks was lovely. You should try it sometimes.” 

Twilight couldn’t suppress his grin. “In fact, why don’t you? I handled two of them. You’ll be fine with one, right?” Without giving the incredulous Twilight a chance to respond, Warrior plopped down on the ground beside him and slumped against the wall with his eyes closed and hands casually folded behind his head, “Good. I’ve done my share. It’s only fair you do yours.” 

“What?” 

Warrior peeked an eye open to find Twilight searching thoroughly for the remaining Gibdo. He released a small laugh, “I got rid of all three, Twi.” 

Twilight stilled, then, with agonizing slowness, turned to fix Warrior with a venomous glare. 

The Knight was unfazed. 

Twilight stewed in indignant silence. He utilized the time the Captain used to rest and regain his strength to think of ways to seek vengeance. 

“Alright,” The Captain grunted, moving to stand, “We should probably get a move on. There’s no telling where the others might be.” 

Twilight followed after him. He didn’t spare the dead Gibdos a single glance. 

“Not a fan of them, I take it?” Warrior teased lightly, nudging Twilight with his elbow. Twilight’s lips furled. 

“They are absolutely wretched. Their screams, their walk, the way they freeze you in place then jump and latch onto you-” Warrior abruptly stopped. 

“They what?” Twilight paused, turning slightly to find the Knight looking vaguely ill. 

“They latch onto you..? And...strangle you…” He trailed off at the glimmer of horror stealing across Warrior’s calm features.

“They do?!” The Knight slid a hand up to his neck, horrified. “Is that why they scream when they come close?” “...yes? It makes it easier for them if you are paralyzed and unable to move.” 

Understanding dawned on Warrior and he turned to shoot Twilight a penitent look. “That’s why you hate them so much.” 

Warrior looked horrified enough, Twilight figured, and so the Ordonian did not expound on how exactly the Redeads would fasten onto their victims. He spared the Knight the disturbing details. 

~~~~~

“I don’t like this.” 

The quiet-spoken words gently broke the eerie silence of the chamber Warrior and Twilight had stepped into. Yet another door leading to nothing but a dank, empty, and eerie room with chains, broken tiles, and vases. 

Twilight’s inner wolf huffed, shrinking into itself. Another intense wave of déjà vu washed over him and the Ranch Hand stifled a world-weary sigh. 

Something was wrong with this chamber. He could sense it. 

“There’s a door on the other side.” “Of course there is,” Twilight groused, rolling his head back to give the ceiling his best woe-is-me look. He dropped his chin forward and pursed his lips, “Should we dare to cross..?” 

Warrior hummed. With a small shrug, the Captain murmured, “We might as well go for it. How else will we find a way out?” “If we find a way out.” “Come now, Twi,” Warrior drawled, amusement seeping into his tone, “Have some faith!” 

“In what? You?” 

“Ouch. Felt that one.” Warrior slapped a hand over his heart with a look of mock hurt. He dropped his arm with a growing smile, “This is a first. I don’t think I have ever seen you so antsy before.” 

Twilight shot him a side-eyed glare but reluctantly followed after the Captain when Warrior started to make his way across. 

If Warrior’s strides were noticeably faster than usual, Twilight didn’t remark on it. It let him know he wasn’t the only one affected by whatever place they were trapped within. 

Keen, cobalt blues searched the hollow chamber endlessly. Twilight would not allow himself to be caught off guard by anything. There was no doubt in his mind that there was something in this chamber. It was only a matter of finding out what exactly was there with them. 

Squeak

Twilight came to an abrupt halt, his skin crawling and goosebumps scattering across his skin. 

The spirit of the wolf whined, curling up tightly. 

This was a sound Twilight was far too familiar with. A sound he could never forget no matter how hard he tried. Already, he experienced the phantom sensations of tiny little paws grappling onto his clothes and scrabbling upwards. Sharp, piercing teeth and hauntingly beady eyes that glowed in the dark filtered through his mind. 

He waited for a second, straining his ears to catch the sound again. 

Nothing but silence met them. 

Slowly, Twilight relaxed, the tension bleeding from his back and shoulders. Perhaps it was his paranoia acting up and his mind was making up the noises. This place was a great deal like Arbiter’s Grounds. It would make sense. 

He shook his head and hastened forward. Warrior was already a good distance ahead of him. 

The Ordonian swore he heard the scraping of claws against the disjointed and fractured tiles but he refused to believe it. Reliving Arbiter’s Grounds was not something Twilight was keen on doing. 

And that was when he felt it. 

Something latching onto his pants leg and racing upwards. 

Horror and dismay contorted Twilight’s features as he instinctively stiffened, all sense of mobility fleeing from him. 

“Warrior - Captain - Pretty Boy-” He sifted through Warrior’s names, body paralyzed and frozen stiff. The claws climbed precariously higher, but the Ordonian couldn’t bring himself to look and see what had latched onto him. If it was what he knew it was… Warrior whirled around, concern creasing his brow at the urgency in Twilight’s voice, “Twi, what-” 

Twilight flinched, eyes squeezed shut, limbs cold and hands raised, “Get it off, get it off, get. it. off,” He repeated the mantra two more times. 

Warrior rushed to his side, searching for whatever it was Twilight felt. He saw nothing. “What-” “My back!” Twilight grit his teeth together, catching a barely-audible squeak as razor-sharp claws made their way up his spine, “It’s on my back! Don’t just stand there, Warrior, if you don’t-” He was cut off when Warrior cast aside his confusion and swiped his hand down Twilight back. 

He was taken by surprise when he was met with some resistance. Both Heroes heard a startled squeak as an invisible force made contact with the ground, the impact ringing in their ears. 

Warrior blinked dumbly down at the ground, arm half-bent and hovering in the air. 

There was nothing there. He hadn’t seen anything on Twilight and yet...He’d clearly hit something. “What was that?!” Warrior shrilly demanded to know. “A rat.” “A rat?! I didn’t see a rat!” “Of course you didn’t,” Twilight said with a trace of sarcasm, his heart rate slowing now that he was in no imminent danger, “They’re ghoul rats.” “Ghoul rats?!” 

As if called upon, several other squeaks and the speedy clicking of claws came from somewhere around them. Warrior looked around incredulously. 

A slightly hysterical laugh rose in Twilight’s throat because of course this would happen, but he suppressed it when the Captain shoved him forward. 

“Out, out, out,” The Knight prompted urgently, racing for the door, “I don’t do invisible rats.” 

“You only deal with the visible ones then?” Twilight couldn’t help but quip. 

Warrior all but threw open the door in response, the two stumbling free of the room and slamming it shut behind them. Several thumps resounded against the door. 

Leaning against the cold metal, Warrior heaved a sigh and swore, “Never again. Never.”

Twilight collapsed beside him, more than happy to take a brief respite. 

“Gibdos, ghoul rats, and sinking sand,” He listed off unhappily, his head falling back, “I can only imagine what comes next.”

Warrior turned to him, chest heaving from having all but booked it out of there. 

“No more. I don’t think I can handle whatever horrors your world holds, Twi,” 

Twi snorted quietly. “I’m beginning to wonder how I did.” 

It was a good thing, Twilight figured to himself, that Warrior had never seen what the poes of his world looked like. 

~~~~~

“Should we even dare?” 

Twilight wanted to tear his hair out. 

Warrior shifted indecisively. 

This, Twilight grumbled, is pathetic. 

“There’s no telling what’s behind this door.”

“No, but if we’ve learned anything, it’s that nothing good is behind this door,” Twilight muttered and his wolf self yipped in agreement. 

Warrior gave a small chuckle, the sound lacking its typical warmth and genuinity. He rubbed at the back of his neck, staring at the door in consideration. 

“It could be the last one we have to go through.” 

The ‘or not,’ was left unsaid but not unheard. 

Both knew they were stalling. Neither one of them wanted to cross the threshold to discover what surprise this chamber might hold. Heaving a sigh, eyes closing in resignation, Twilight planted a hand against the cool metal, 

“We might as well get this over with. The sooner we get out of this place, the better.” 

Warrior huffed. Then, with a dramatic gesture of his hand, said, “After you.” 

Twilight was not amused. 

With both hands, he unstuck the door and shoved it upwards then quickly stepped to the side once it vanished. 

Cautiously, both Heroes peered inside to scope out the interior of this new room. 

Warrior blinked, a vague impression of unease and revulsion etched into his features. Twilight was too tired to care anymore. 

“You...Am I seeing correctly?” Warrior asked, his voice the ghost of a whisper. He turned to Twilight, pointing with his left. 

“Well you aren’t imagining it,” Twilight muttered in response. He took hold of the Ordon blade and unsheathed it, “Come along now, Captain, the sooner we finish this, the sooner we leave.” 

Warrior raised both eyebrows, commenting wryly, “Now where was this attitude when-” 

“Captain,” 

“Coming.” 

And with that, Warrior slipped into the room after Twilight. Both stilled when the door slid shut and locked behind them. They spared it a glance then returned their attention to the center of the musty chamber. It was, by far, the smallest room they had been in, meaning there was little space for them to move. 

“Ominous,” Warrior remarked idly, taking in the grotesque, rotting, bony arms sticking out of the ground. “Must be our boss battle.” 

“Disgusting,” Twilight tacked on. His nose crinkled at the foul and overwhelming stench of death and decay in the heavy air. Sometimes, it did not pay to have heightened senses. 

His wolf self grumbled in indignation. 

“Do we chop off the arms?” Warrior wondered aloud, studying the eerie skeletal limbs swaying in a nonexistent breeze. “Where is the main body?”  “If there is one,” Twilight scowled. He and Warrior slowly approached the center of the room, careful not to step within reach of the stiff arms. 

“Here goes nothing,” Warrior shrugged, taking a swing of his sword and chopping a couple of the limbs halfway. 

There was an ear-splitting shriek that made Twilight slap his hands over his ears and cringe.  “Din’s name! The arms grew back!” Warrior exclaimed, drawing Twilight’s attention back to...whatever they were facing. Revulsion contorted Warrior’s face, “Oh, that was sickening.” 

Twilight’s lip curled back in agreement. 

“Maybe all of the arms at once?” He suggested. Warrior gestured for him to give it a whirl. Twilight exhaled deeply and moved to the middle of the extended limbs. Without warning, one of the bony fingers of a nearby hand twitched, agitated after sensing his movement, and snatched. 

Twilight gave a muffled shout when the hand grasped tightly at his face, his vision going dark from his eyes being covered. Sharp nails cut into his skin, trickles of blood slipping free from the slivers.  The Rancher’s hands snatched at the offending limb, striving vainly to tug himself free. He felt Warrior trying to help him, the Knight muttering harshly under his breath. His sharp ears also detected something unburying itself from the ground and his heart plummeted. 

“Sweet Hylia!” Warrior cried from behind, “Din, Farore, and Nayru forbid, that thing is atrocious! Holy heavens,” 

Would you focus on setting me free?! Twilight inwardly shouted. His wolf spirit howled, barked, growled, and snapped his teeth.  

“Oh, gross, it’s coming closer-” Warrior iterated, “-Disgusting. Look at those teeth-” 

I can’t, Twilight deadpanned, not daring to speak. The slimy, rotting hand on his face prevented him from doing anything. He didn’t want to risk even breathing. 

“I have never seen anything so hideously hideous in my entire life-” 

Have you looked in a mirror? Twilight wanted to quip, his wolf self snickering. He growled, the sound muffled. 

“I am not going anywhere near that thing, so-” Strong arms wound around Twilight’s chest and Warrior yanked with all his might, tearing Twilight free of the hand just in time to see what exactly had taken him captive. 

Deep, abyss-filled eyes on a gaunt, white, sickly face inches away from Twilight’s own greeted the Ordonian. Wide, long, teeth stretched in a broad smile on that thin head at the end of an extended neck momentarily horrified Twilight.  Wolfie all but shrieked at the unexpected and ghastly sight, fur standing on end. 

He grunted when Warrior crashed back onto the ground, still holding onto the Rancher. Both stayed sprawled on the ground, staring in terrified wonder at this unfamiliar, wretched, and slouched creature. 

The monster, realizing they were now out of reach, disappeared back into the ground. 

Twilight and Warrior simultaneously released sighs of relief, jumping when the door behind them crashed open. 

“What in Hylia’s name is going on here?” A familiar voice demanded to know. Twilight and Warrior scrambled to their feet with an enthusiastic cry of,  “Time!” 

Time’s eye darted between the two as they bolted towards him, a brooding look of wearied exasperation etched into his features, “I could hear the two of you from down the corridor-” He was cut off when the teens found refuge behind him, huddling together in a vain attempt to disappear from view. His expression flat-lined. “What are you both doing?”  “Did you know Ghoul Rats exist?” Warrior asked, beyond disturbed and scarred.  “Not to mention that thing,” Twilight added with a shudder of his own,  “We don’t talk about that thing, Twi,” 

“’That thing’ came out of the ground-” Twilight pointed ahead of them. Time suppressed the urge to sigh and turned his head to pin whatever creature the two were so thoroughly shaken by with a glare. 

His gaze froze when he took in the rotting, white-limbed, arms sticking up from the ground, clawed fingers curled and ready to snatch at anyone who dared come near.  A strange expression crawled across the Old Man’s face. One neither Twilight nor Warrior had ever seen him wear. His eye had gone dead and cold, recognition flaring to life before the elder Hero spun on his heel, grabbed the teens by their shoulders, and ushered them out. 

“Um, Time, shouldn’t we-” Warrior began, gesturing vaguely back to the room they’d left. 

“We don’t have time to waste,” The Old Man smoothly interjected, patting Warrior’s shoulder. He slipped between the two and began striding down the corridor. “We still have six other Links to find.” 

Twilight and Warrior shared a bemused look but dutifully followed after the golden-clad Hylian. They spared one last glance at the metallic door hiding the monster from view and, recalling the horrors they’d experienced in the span of two minutes, and skittered away. 

“Never again,” Warrior swore, hastening his pace. 

Never, Twilight agreed. 

[aboveallarescuer]

Dany and Jorah’s relationship

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

Thanks to that show, a lot of people misunderstand Jorah's character and the nature of his relationship with Dany. 

In the books, he is a predator trying to groom a teenager who is three times younger than he is. In order to do so, he undermines her authority, tries to make her distrust other men and violates her boundaries several times (e.g. forcing a kiss on her, looking at her breasts, etc).

In the show, he's a Good Guy who we are meant to empathize with; as Benioff describes, "part of Jorah's tragedy is that he was in love with a woman who couldn't love him back".

That change is pretty disgusting, and look how it shaped the general audience's opinion:

I think Dany is ultimately selfish and unfeeling. I'm not sure she actually ever loved Jon at all, and her affection for Ser Jorah Mormont strikes me as more utilitarian than compassionate. Dany is concerned with herself and her dragons and little more. If she doesn't back Jon despite his superior claim to the Iron Throne, that's all the proof I need that she is rotten to the core. (x)

~

What would Jorah (Iain Glen) think of Dany's turn? Would he love her still? Would he have been able to do the deed? In a sense, I wish it had been him instead of Jon. Jorah has loved her for so much longer. But he died defending his queen, and perhaps he would have forgiven her even this atrocity. (x)

~

Her charm, beauty and overall skill in luring people to her cause, whether genuine or not, has always been about creating a facade, someone you wouldn't mind seeing win even if they lose the plot and go crazy. And everyone Dany's recruited along the way has been nothing more than a pawn.

Just look at how she sent away her lover, Daario Naharis, for fear he'd stunt her march on the throne, or exiled Jorah for being a spy. (x)

~

28 Reasons Jorah Mormont Was The Best Man In Westeros (x)

Thankfully, for all his faults, I think GRRM is framing the story the way it should be:

“Will Jorah ever get out of the friendzone?” (side-eyeing the person who asked this). GRRM: “I would not bet on it.” (x)

I really want to get a tattoo of this response, lol.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

Daenerys Targaryen was no stranger to the Dothraki sea, the great ocean of grass that stretched from the forest of Qohor to the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. She had seen it first when she was still a girl, newly wed to Khal Drogo and on her way to Vaes Dothrak to be presented to the crones of the dosh khaleen. The sight of all that grass stretching out before her had taken her breath away. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and I was full of hope. Ser Jorah had been with her then, her gruff old bear. She’d had Irri and Jhiqui and Doreah to care for her, her sun-and-stars to hold her in the night, his child growing inside her. Rhaego. I was going to name him Rhaego, and the dosh khaleen said he would be the Stallion Who Mounts the World. Not since those half-remembered days in Braavos when she lived in the house with the red door had she been as happy.

~

Meereen would always be the Harpy’s city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy.

Never, said the grass, in the gruff tones of Jorah Mormont. You were warned, Your Grace. Let this city be, I said. Your war is in Westeros, I told you.

The voice was no more than a whisper, yet somehow Dany felt that he was walking just behind her. My bear, she thought, my old sweet bear, who loved me and betrayed me. She had missed him so. She wanted to see his ugly face, to wrap her arms around him and press herself against his chest, but she knew that if she turned around Ser Jorah would be gone. “I am dreaming,” she said. “A waking dream, a walking dream. I am alone and lost.”

Lost, because you lingered, in a place that you were never meant to be, murmured Ser Jorah, as softly as the wind. Alone, because you sent me from your side.

“You betrayed me. You informed on me, for gold.”

For home. Home was all I ever wanted. “And me. You wanted me.” Dany had seen it in his eyes.

I did, the grass whispered, sadly. “You kissed me. I never said you could, but you did. You sold me to my enemies, but you meant it when you kissed me.”

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.”

No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.

“Fire and Blood,” Daenerys told the swaying grass.

A stone turned under her foot. She stumbled to one knee and cried out in pain, hoping against hope that her bear would gather her up and help her to her feet. When she turned her head to look for him, all she saw was trickling brown water ... and the grass, still moving slightly.

 ADWD Daenerys IX

Dany had once eaten a stallion’s heart to give strength to her unborn son … but that had not saved Rhaego when the maegi murdered him in her womb. Three treasons shall you know. She was the first, Jorah was the second, Brown Ben Plumm the third. Was she done with betrayals?

 ADWD Daenerys VI

Three treasons will you know. Once for gold and once for blood and once for love. Was Plumm the third treason, or the second? And what did that make Ser Jorah, her gruff old bear? 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?

 ADWD Daenerys V

Afterward, Ser Barristan told her that her brother Rhaegar would have been proud of her. Dany remembered the words Ser Jorah had spoken at Astapor: Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.

~

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.

 ADWD Daenerys III

“Barristan the Old, did you say? Your bear knight was younger, and devoted to you.”

“I do not wish to speak of Jorah Mormont.”

“To be sure. The man was coarse and hairy.”

~

“You heard Xaro make his offer?”

“I did, Your Grace.” The old knight took pains not to look at her bare breast as he spoke to her.

Ser Jorah would not turn his eyes away. He loved me as a woman, where Ser Barristan loves me only as his queen. Mormont had been an informer, reporting to her enemies in Westeros, yet he had given her good counsel too.

 ADWD Daenerys I

Dragons are fire made flesh. She had read that in one of the books Ser Jorah had given her as a wedding gift.

~

The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah the second. Would Reznak be the third? The Shavepate? Daario? Or will it be someone I would never suspect, Ser Barristan or Grey Worm or Missandei?

 A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

The way before her was fraught with hardship, bloodshed, and danger. Ser Jorah had warned her of that. He’d warned her of so many things ... he��d ... No, I will not think of Jorah Mormont. Let him keep a little longer.

~

Dany shifted uncomfortably on the ebony bench. She dreaded what must come next, yet she knew she had put it off too long already. Yunkai and Astapor, threats of war, marriage proposals, the march west looming over all ... I need my knights. I need their swords, and I need their counsel. Yet the thought of seeing Jorah Mormont again made her feel as if she’d swallowed a spoonful of flies; angry, agitated, sick. She could almost feel them buzzing round her belly. I am the blood of the dragon. I must be strong. I must have fire in my eyes when I face them, not tears.

~

Ser Jorah cleared his throat. “Khaleesi ...”

She had missed his voice so much, but she had to be stern. “Be quiet. I will tell you when to speak.”

~

“I will admit you helped win me this city ...”

Ser Jorah’s mouth tightened. “We won you this city. We sewer rats.”

“Be quiet,” she said again ... though there was truth to what he said.

[...]“You helped win this city,” she repeated stubbornly. “And you have served me well in the past. Ser Barristan saved me from the Titan’s Bastard, and from the Sorrowful Man in Qarth. Ser Jorah saved me from the poisoner in Vaes Dothrak, and again from Drogo’s bloodriders after my sun-and-stars had died.” So many people wanted her dead, sometimes she lost count. “And yet you lied, deceived me, betrayed me.”

[...] The other will be harder. When Ser Barristan was done, she turned to Jorah Mormont. “And now you, ser. Tell me true.”

The big man’s neck was red; whether from anger or shame she did not know. “I have tried to tell you true, half a hundred times. I told you Arstan was more than he seemed. I warned you that Xaro and Pyat Pree were not to be trusted. I warned you—”

“You warned me against everyone except yourself.” His insolence angered her. He should be humbler. He should beg for my forgiveness. “Trust no one but Jorah Mormont, you said ... and all the time you were the Spider’s creature!”

“I am no man’s creature. I took the eunuch’s gold, yes. I learned some ciphers and wrote some letters, but that was all—”

“All? You spied on me and sold me to my enemies!”

“For a time.” He said it grudgingly. “I stopped.”

“When? When did you stop?”


“I made one report from Qarth, but—”

“From Qarth?” Dany had been hoping it had ended much earlier. “What did you write from Qarth? That you were my man now, that you wanted no more of their schemes?” Ser Jorah could not meet her eyes. “When Khal Drogo died, you asked me to go with you to Yi Ti and the Jade Sea. Was that your wish or Robert’s?”

“That was to protect you,” he insisted. “To keep you away from them. I knew what snakes they were ...”

“Snakes? And what are you, ser?” Something unspeakable occurred to her. “You told them I was carrying Drogo’s child ...”

“Khaleesi ...”

“Do not think to deny it, ser,” Ser Barristan said sharply. “I was there when the eunuch told the council, and Robert decreed that Her Grace and her child must die. You were the source, ser. There was even talk that you might do the deed, for a pardon.”

“A lie.” Ser Jorah’s face darkened. “I would never ... Daenerys, it was me who stopped you from drinking the wine.”

“Yes. And how was it you knew the wine was poisoned?”

“I ... I but suspected ... the caravan brought a letter from Varys, he warned me there would be attempts. He wanted you watched, yes, but not harmed.” He went to his knees. “If I had not told them someone else would have. You know that.”

“I know you betrayed me.” She touched her belly, where her son Rhaego had perished. “I know a poisoner tried to kill my son, because of you. That’s what I know.”


“No ... no.” He shook his head. “I never meant ... forgive me. You have to forgive me.”

“Have to?” It was too late. He should have begun by begging forgiveness. She could not pardon him as she’d intended. She had dragged the wineseller behind her horse until there was nothing left of him. Didn’t the man who brought him deserve the same? This is Jorah, my fierce bear, the right arm that never failed me. I would be dead without him, but ... “I can’t forgive you,” she said. “I can’t.”

“You forgave the old man ...”

“He lied to me about his name. You sold my secrets to the men who killed my father and stole my brother’s throne.”

“I protected you. I fought for you. Killed for you.”

Kissed me, she thought, betrayed me.

“I went down into the sewers like a rat. For you.”

It might have been kinder if you’d died there. Dany said nothing. There was nothing to say.

“Daenerys,” he said, “I have loved you.”

And there it was. Three treasons will you know. Once for blood and once for gold and once for love. “The gods do nothing without a purpose, they say. You did not die in battle, so it must be they still have some use for you. But I don’t. I will not have you near me. You are banished, ser. Go back to your masters in King’s Landing and collect your pardon, if you can. Or to Astapor. No doubt the butcher king needs knights.”

“No.” He reached for her. “Daenerys, please, hear me ...”

She slapped his hand away. “Do not ever presume to touch me again, or to speak my name. You have until dawn to collect your things and leave this city. If you’re found in Meereen past break of day, I will have Strong Belwas twist your head off. I will. Believe that.” She turned her back on him, her skirts swirling. I cannot bear to see his face. “Remove this liar from my sight,” she commanded. I must not weep. I must not. If I weep I will forgive him. Strong Belwas seized Ser Jorah by the arm and dragged him out. When Dany glanced back, the knight was walking as if drunk, stumbling and slow. She looked away until she heard the doors open and close. Then she sank back onto the ebony bench. He’s gone, then. My father and my mother, my brothers, Ser Willem Darry, Drogo who was my sun-and-stars, his son who died inside me, and now Ser Jorah ...

“The queen has a good heart,” Daario purred through his deep purple whiskers, “but that one is more dangerous than all the Oznaks and Meros rolled up in one.” His strong hands caressed the hilts of his matched blades, those wanton golden women. “You need not even say the word, my radiance. Only give the tiniest nod, and your Daario shall fetch you back his ugly head.”

“Leave him be. The scales are balanced now. Let him go home.” Dany pictured Jorah moving amongst old gnarled oaks and tall pines, past flowering thornbushes, grey stones bearded with moss, and little creeks running icy down steep hillsides. She saw him entering a hall built of huge logs, where dogs slept by the hearth and the smell of meat and mead hung thick in the smoky air.

~

She found herself reading the same passage half a dozen times. Ser Jorah gave me this book as a bride’s gift, the day I wed Khal Drogo. But Daario is right, I shouldn’t have banished him. I should have kept him, or I should have killed him. She played at being a queen, yet sometimes she still felt like a scared little girl. Viserys always said what a dolt I was. Was he truly mad? She closed the book. She could still recall Ser Jorah, if she wished. Or send Daario to kill him.

~

Distant torches glimmered red and yellow where her sentries walked their rounds, and here and there she saw the faint glow of lanterns bobbing down an alley. Perhaps one was Ser Jorah, leading his horse slowly toward the gate. Farewell, old bear. Farewell, betrayer.

 ASOS Daenerys V

The eunuch wrenched the blade loose and parted the hero’s head from his body with three savage blows to the neck. He held it up high for the Meereenese to see, then flung it toward the city gates and let it bounce and roll across the sand.

“So much for the hero of Meereen,” said Daario, laughing.

“A victory without meaning,” Ser Jorah cautioned. “We will not win Meereen by killing its defenders one at a time.”

“No,” Dany agreed, “but I’m pleased we killed this one.”

~

“...Already we’ve had reports of sickness in the camps, fever and brownleg and three cases of the bloody flux. There will be more if we remain. The slaves are weak from the march.”

“Freedmen,” Dany corrected. “They are slaves no longer.”

~

“Then what do you advise, Ser Jorah?”

“You will not like it.”


“I would hear it all the same.”

“As you wish. I say, let this city be. You cannot free every slave in the world, Khaleesi. Your war is in Westeros.”

“I have not forgotten Westeros.” Dany dreamt of it some nights, this fabled land that she had never seen. “If I let Meereen’s old brick walls defeat me so easily, though, how will I ever take the great stone castles of Westeros?”

“As Aegon did,” Ser Jorah said, “with fire. By the time we reach the Seven Kingdoms, your dragons will be grown. And we will have siege towers and trebuchets as well, all the things we lack here ... but the way across the Lands of the Long Summer is long and grueling, and there are dangers we cannot know. 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.

~

“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.”

~

And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did.

Dany tried to imagine what it would be like if she allowed Daario to kiss her, the way Jorah had kissed her on the ship. [...] Could I love Daario? What would it mean, if I took him into my bed? Would that make him one of the heads of the dragon? Ser Jorah would be angry, she knew, but he was the one who’d said she had to take two husbands. Perhaps I should marry them both and be done with it.

~

“I had a look at the river wall,” Ser Jorah started. “It’s a few feet higher than the others, and just as strong. And the Meereenese have a dozen fire hulks tied up beneath the ramparts—”

She cut him off. “You might have warned me that the Titan’s Bastard had escaped.”

He frowned. “I saw no need to frighten you, Your Grace. I have offered a reward for his head—”

“Pay it to Whitebeard. Mero has been with us all the way from Yunkai. He shaved his beard off and lost himself amongst the freedmen, waiting for a chance for vengeance. Arstan killed him.”

Ser Jorah gave the old man a long look. “A squire with a stick slew Mero of Braavos, is that the way of it?”

“A stick,” Dany confirmed, “but no longer a squire. Ser Jorah, it’s my wish that Arstan be knighted.”

“No.”


The loud refusal was surprise enough. Stranger still, it came from both men at once.

Ser Jorah drew his sword. “The Titan’s Bastard was a nasty piece of work. And good at killing. Who are you, old man?”

“A better knight than you, ser,” Arstan said coldly.

Knight? Dany was confused. “You said you were a squire.”

 [...] “I have told you no lies, my queen. Yet there are truths I have withheld, and for that and all my other sins I can only beg your forgiveness.”

“What truths have you withheld?” Dany did not like this. “You will tell me. Now.”

He bowed his head. “At Qarth, when you asked my name, I said I was called Arstan. That much was true. Many men had called me by that name while Belwas and I were making our way east to find you. But it is not my true name.”

She was more confused than angry. He has played me false, just as Jorah warned me, yet he saved my life just now.

Ser Jorah flushed red. “Mero shaved his beard, but you grew one, didn’t you? No wonder you looked so bloody familiar ...”

“You know him?” Dany asked the exile knight, lost.

“I saw him perhaps a dozen times ... from afar most often, standing with his brothers or riding in some tourney. But every man in the Seven Kingdoms knew Barristan the Bold.” He laid the point of his sword against the old man’s neck. “Khaleesi, before you kneels Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who betrayed your House to serve the Usurper Robert Baratheon.”

The old knight did not so much as blink. “The crow calls the raven black, and you speak of betrayal.”

“Why are you here?” Dany demanded of him. “If Robert sent you to kill me, why did you save my life?” He served the Usurper. He betrayed Rhaegar’s memory, and abandoned Viserys to live and die in exile. Yet if he wanted me dead, he need only have stood
aside ... “I want the whole truth now, on your honor as a knight. Are you the Usurper’s man, or mine?”

“Yours, if you will have me.” Ser Barristan had tears in his eyes. “I took Robert’s pardon, aye. I served him in Kingsguard and council. Served with the Kingslayer and others near as bad, who soiled the white cloak I wore. Nothing will excuse that. I might be serving in King’s Landing still if the vile boy upon the Iron Throne had not cast me aside, it shames me to admit. But when he took the cloak that the White Bull had draped about my shoulders, and sent men to kill me that selfsame day, it was as though he’d ripped a caul off my eyes. That was when I knew I must find my true king, and die in his service—”

“I can grant that wish,” Ser Jorah said darkly.

“Quiet,” said Dany. “I’ll hear him out.”

“It may be that I must die a traitor’s death,” Ser Barristan said. “If so, I should not die alone. Before I took Robert’s pardon I fought against him on the Trident. You were on the other side of that battle, Mormont, were you not?” He did not wait for an answer. “Your Grace, I am sorry I misled you. It was the only way to keep the Lannisters from learning that I had joined you. You are watched, as your brother was. Lord Varys reported every move Viserys made, for years. Whilst I sat on the small council, I heard a hundred such reports. And since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises.”

He cannot mean ... “You are mistaken.” Dany looked at Jorah Mormont. “Tell him he’s mistaken. There’s no informer. Ser Jorah, tell him. We crossed the Dothraki sea together, and the red waste ...” Her heart fluttered like a bird in a trap. “Tell him, Jorah. Tell him how he got it wrong.”

“The Others take you, Selmy.” Ser Jorah flung his longsword to the carpet. “Khaleesi, it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love ...”

“Do not say that word!” She backed away from him. “How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was it gold?” The Undying had said she would be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were promised?”

“Varys said ... I might go home.” He bowed his head.

I was going to take you home! Her dragons sensed her fury. Viserion roared, and smoke rose grey from his snout. Drogon beat the air with black wings, and Rhaegal twisted his head back and belched flame. I should say the word and burn the two of them. Was there no one she could trust, no one to keep her safe? “Are all the knights of Westeros so false as you two? Get out, before my dragons roast you both. What does roast liar smell like? As foul as Brown Ben’s sewers? Go!”

Ser Barristan rose stiff and slow. For the first time, he looked his age. “Where shall we go, Your Grace?”

“To hell, to serve King Robert.” Dany felt hot tears on her cheeks. Drogon screamed, lashing his tail back and forth. “The Others can have you both.” Go, go away forever, both of you, the next time I see your faces I’ll have your traitors’ heads off. She could not say the words, though. They betrayed me. But they saved me. But they lied. “You go ...” My bear, my fierce strong bear, what will I do without him? And the old man, my brother’s friend. “You go ... go ...” Where?

And then she knew.

 ASOS Daenerys IV

Yet Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged.

~

“I will like the taste of your tongue, I think.”

She could sense Ser Jorah’s anger. My black bear does not like this talk of kissing.

~

“To be sure, I am only a young girl and know little of war. What do you think, my lords?”

“I think you are Rhaegar Targaryen’s sister,” Ser Jorah said with a rueful half smile.

“Aye,” said Arstan Whitebeard, “and a queen as well.”

~

“My sword is yours. My life is yours. My love is yours. My blood, my body, my songs, you own them all. I live and die at your command, fair queen.”

“Then live,” Dany said, “and fight for me tonight.”

“That would not be wise, my queen.” Ser Jorah gave Daario a cold, hard stare. “Keep this one here under guard until the battle’s fought and won.”

She considered a moment, then shook her head. “If he can give us the Stormcrows, surprise is certain.”

“And if he betrays you, surprise is lost.”

~

Ser Jorah Mormont lingered. “Your Grace,” he said, too bluntly, “that was a mistake. We know nothing of this man—”

“We know that he is a great fighter.”

“A great talker, you mean.”

“He brings us the Stormcrows.” And he has blue eyes.

“Five hundred sellswords of uncertain loyalty.”

“All loyalties are uncertain in such times as these,” Dany reminded him. And I shall be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love.

“Daenerys, I am thrice your age,” Ser Jorah said. “I have seen how false men are. Very few are worthy of trust, and Daario Naharis is not one of them. Even his beard wears false colors.”

That angered her. “Whilst you have an honest beard, is that what you are telling me? You are the only man I should ever trust?”

He stiffened. “I did not say that.”

“You say it every day. Pyat Pree’s a liar, Xaro’s a schemer, Belwas a braggart, Arstan an assassin ... do you think I’m still some virgin girl, that I cannot hear the words behind the words?”

“Your Grace—”

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

Mormont had flushed red when she first began, but by the time Dany was done his face was pale again. He stood still as stone. “If my queen commands,” he said, curt and cold.

Dany was warm enough for both of them. “She does,” she said. “She commands. Now go see to your Unsullied, ser. You have a battle to fight and win.”

When he was gone, Dany threw herself down on her pillows beside her dragons. She had not meant to be so sharp with Ser Jorah, but his endless suspicion had finally woken her dragon.

He will forgive me, she told herself. I am his liege. Dany found herself wondering whether he was right about Daario. She felt very lonely all of a sudden. Mirri Maz Duur had promised that she would never bear a living child. House Targaryen will end with me. That made her sad. “You must be my children,” she told the dragons, “my three fierce children. Arstan says dragons live longer than men, so you will go on after I am dead.”

 ASOS Daenerys III

Afterward she called her bloodriders to her cabin, with Ser Jorah. They were the only ones she truly trusted.

[...] Ser Jorah soon joined her by the rail. He is never far, Dany thought. He knows my moods too well.

“Khaleesi. You ought to be asleep. Tomorrow will be hot and hard, I promise you. You’ll need your strength.”


“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.”


Ser Jorah had no answer. He only smiled, and touched her hair, so lightly. It was enough.

 ASOS Daenerys II

“They might be adequate to my needs,” Dany answered. It had been Ser Jorah’s suggestion that she speak only Dothraki and the Common Tongue while in Astapor. My bear is more clever than he looks.

~

Ser Jorah Mormont she had left aboard Balerion to guard her people and her dragons.

~

She made herself smile. “I have my own bear on Balerion,” she told the translator, “and he may well eat me if I do not return to him.”

“See,” said Kraznys when her words were translated. “It is not the woman who decides, it is this man she runs to. As ever!”

~

“Then leave this place before your heart turns to brick as well. Sail this very night, on the evening tide.”

Would that I could, thought Dany. “When I leave Astapor it must be with an army, Ser Jorah says.”

“Ser Jorah was a slaver himself, Your Grace,” the old man reminded her. “There are sellswords in Pentos and Myr and Tyrosh you can hire. A man who kills for coin has no honor, but at least they are no slaves. Find your army there, I beg you.”

~

He has a good face, and great strength to him, Dany thought. She could not understand why Ser Jorah mistrusted the old man so. Could he be jealous that I have found another man to talk to? Unbidden, her thoughts went back to the night on Balerion when the exile knight had kissed her. He should never have done that. He is thrice my age, and of too low a birth for me, and I never gave him leave. No true knight would ever kiss a queen without her leave. She had taken care never to be alone with Ser Jorah after that, keeping her handmaids with her aboard ship, and sometimes her bloodriders. He wants to kiss me again, I see it in his eyes.

What Dany wanted she could not begin to say, but Jorah’s kiss had woken something in her, something that been sleeping since Khal Drogo died. Lying abed in her narrow bunk, she found herself wondering how it would be to have a man squeezed in beside her in place of her handmaid, and the thought was more exciting than it should have been. Sometimes she would close her eyes and dream of him, but it was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of; her lover was always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow.

~

Ser Jorah Mormont stood waiting for her. “Your Grace,” he said, bowing his head. “The slavers have come and gone. Three of them, with a dozen scribes and as many slaves to lift and fetch. They crawled over every foot of our holds and made note of all we had.” He walked her aft. “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.” If you were my true knight, you would never have kissed me, or looked at my breasts the way you did, or ...

“As Your Grace commands. I shall tell Captain Groleo to make ready to sail on the evening tide, for some sty less vile.”

“No,” said Dany. Groleo watched them from the forecastle, and his crew was watching too. Whitebeard, her bloodriders, Jhiqui, every one had stopped what they were doing at the sound of the slap. “I want to sail now, not on the tide, I want to sail far and fast and never look back. But I can’t, can I? There are eight thousand brick eunuchs for sale, and I must find some way to buy them.” And with that she left him, and went below.

~

There was a soft step behind her. “Khaleesi.” His voice. “Might I speak frankly?”

Dany did not turn. She could not bear to look at him just now. If she did, she might well slap him again. Or cry. Or kiss him. And never know which was right and which was wrong and which was madness. “Say what you will, ser.”

“When Aegon the Dragon stepped ashore in Westeros, the kings of Vale and Rock and Reach did not rush to hand him their crowns. If you mean to sit his Iron Throne, you must win it as he did, with steel and dragonfire. And that will mean blood on your hands before the thing is done.”

Blood and fire, thought Dany. The words of House Targaryen. She had known them all her life. “The blood of my enemies I will shed gladly. The blood of innocents is another matter. Eight thousand Unsullied they would offer me. Eight thousand dead babes. Eight thousand strangled dogs.”

“Your Grace,” said Jorah Mormont, “I saw King’s Landing after the Sack. Babes were butchered that day as well, and old men, and children at play. More women were raped than you can count. There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him. Yet I have never heard of these Unsullied raping, nor putting a city to the sword, nor even plundering, save at the express command of those who lead them. Brick they may be, as you say, but if you buy them henceforth the only dogs they’ll kill are those you want dead. And you do have some dogs you want dead, as I recall.”

The Usurper’s dogs. “Yes.” Dany gazed off at the soft colored lights and let the cool salt breeze caress her. “You speak of sacking cities. Answer me this, ser—why have the Dothraki never sacked this city?” She pointed. “Look at the walls. You can see where they’ve begun to crumble. There, and there. Do you see any guards on those towers? I don’t. Are they hiding, ser? I saw these sons of the harpy today, all their proud highborn warriors. They dressed in linen skirts, and the fiercest thing about them was their hair. Even a modest khalasar could crack this Astapor like a nut and spill out the rotted meat inside. So tell me, why is that ugly harpy not sitting beside the godsway in Vaes Dothrak among the other stolen gods?”

“You have a dragon’s eye, Khaleesi, that’s plain to see.”

“I wanted an answer, not a compliment.”

“There are two reasons. Astapor’s brave defenders are so much chaff, it’s true. Old names and fat purses who dress up as Ghiscari scourges to pretend they still rule a vast empire. Every one is a high officer. On feastdays they fight mock wars in the pits to demonstrate what brilliant commanders they are, but it’s the eunuchs who do the dying. All the same, any enemy wanting to sack Astapor would have to know that they’d be facing Unsullied. The slavers would turn out the whole garrison in the city’s defense. The Dothraki have not ridden against Unsullied since they left their braids at the gates of Qohor.”

“And the second reason?” Dany asked.

“Who would attack Astapor?” Ser Jorah asked. “Meereen and Yunkai are rivals but not enemies, the Doom destroyed Valyria, the folk of the eastern hinterlands are all Ghiscari, and beyond the hills lies Lhazar. The Lamb Men, as your Dothraki call them, a notably unwarlike people.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “but north of the slave cities is the Dothraki sea, and two dozen mighty khals who like nothing more than sacking cities and carrying off their people into slavery.”

“Carrying them off where? What good are slaves once you’ve killed the slavers? Valyria is no more, Qarth lies beyond the red waste, and the Nine Free Cities are thousands of leagues to the west. And you may be sure the sons of the harpy give lavishly to every passing khal, just as the magisters do in Pentos and Norvos and Myr. They know that if they feast the horselords and give them gifts, they will soon ride on. It’s cheaper than fighting, and a deal more certain.”

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.

“Khaleesi?” Ser Jorah prompted, when she had been silent for a long time. He touched her elbow lightly.

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

“I remember, Daenerys.”

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

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

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

“My queen,” the big man said slowly, “all you say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle, he lost the war, he lost the kingdom, and he lost his life. His blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the Iron Throne. Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.”

 ASOS Daenerys I

Yet even so, it was noted that none of the pit dragons ever reached the size of their ancestors. The maesters say it was because of the walls around them, and the great dome above their heads.”

“If walls could keep us small, peasants would all be tiny and kings as large as giants,” said Ser Jorah. “I’ve seen huge men born in hovels, and dwarfs who dwelt in castles.”

“Men are men,” Whitebeard replied. “Dragons are dragons.”

Ser Jorah snorted his disdain. “How profound.” The exile knight had no love for the old man, he’d made that plain from the first.

~

“A warrior without peer ... those are fine words, Your Grace, but words win no battles.”

“Swords win battles,” Ser Jorah said bluntly. “And Prince Rhaegar knew how to use one.”


~

“...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.”

~

Ser Jorah watched with a frown on his blunt honest face. Mormont was big and burly, strong of jaw and thick of shoulder. Not a handsome man by any means, but as true a friend as Dany had ever known. “You would be wise to take that old man’s words well salted,” he told her when Whitebeard was out of earshot.

~

“Sit, good ser, and tell me what is troubling you.”

“Three things.” Ser Jorah sat. “Strong Belwas. This Arstan Whitebeard. And Illyrio Mopatis, who sent them.”

Again? Dany pulled the coverlet higher and tugged one end over her shoulder. “And why is that?”

“The warlocks in Qarth told you that you would be betrayed three times,” the exile knight reminded her, as Viserion and Rhaegal began to snap and claw at each other.

“Once for blood and once for gold and once for love.” Dany was not like to forget. “Mirri Maz Duur was the first.”

“Which means two traitors yet remain ... and now these two appear. I find that troubling, yes. Never forget, Robert offered a lordship to the man who slays you.”

Dany leaned forward and yanked Viserion’s tail, to pull him off his green brother. Her blanket fell away from her chest as she moved. She grabbed it hastily and covered herself again. “The Usurper is dead,” she said.

“But his son rules in his place.” Ser Jorah lifted his gaze, and his dark eyes met her own. “A dutiful son pays his father’s debts. Even blood debts.”

“This boy Joffrey might want me dead ... if he recalls that I’m alive. What has that to do with Belwas and Arstan Whitebeard? The old man does not even wear a sword. You’ve seen that.”

“Aye. And I have seen how deftly he handles that staff of his. Recall how he killed that manticore in Qarth? It might as easily have been your throat he crushed.”

“Might have been, but was not,” she pointed out. “It was a stinging manticore meant to slay me. He saved my life.”

“Khaleesi, has it occurred to you that Whitebeard and Belwas might have been in league with the assassin? It might all have been a ploy to win your trust.”

Her sudden laughter made Drogon hiss, and sent Viserion flapping to his perch above the porthole. “The ploy worked well.”

The exile knight did not return her smile. “These are Illyrio’s ships, Illyrio’s captains, Illyrio’s sailors ... and Strong Belwas and Arstan are his men as well, not yours.”

“Magister Illyrio has protected me in the past. Strong Belwas says that he wept when he heard my brother was dead.”

“Yes,” said Mormont, “but did he weep for Viserys, or for the plans he had made with him?”

“His plans need not change. Magister Illyrio is a friend to House Targaryen, and wealthy ...”

“He was not born wealthy. In the world as I have seen it, no man grows rich by kindness. The warlocks said the second treason would be for gold. What does Illyrio Mopatis love more than gold?”

“His skin.” Across the cabin Drogon stirred restlessly, steam rising from his snout. “Mirri Maz Duur betrayed me. I burned her for it.”

“Mirri Maz Duur was in your power. In Pentos, you shall be in Illyrio’s power. It is not the same. I know the magister as well as you. He is a devious man, and clever—”

“I need clever men about me if I am to win the Iron Throne.”

Ser Jorah snorted. “That wineseller who tried to poison you was a clever man as well. Clever men hatch ambitious schemes.”

Dany drew her legs up beneath the blanket. “You will protect me. You, and my bloodriders.”

“Four men? Khaleesi, you believe you know Illyrio Mopatis, very well. Yet you insist on surrounding yourself with men you do not know, like this puffed-up eunuch and the world’s oldest squire. Take a lesson from Pyat Pree and Xaro Xhoan Daxos.”

He means well, Dany reminded herself. He does all he does for love. “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?”

His jaw set stubbornly. “Your path is dangerous, I will not deny that. But if you blindly trust in every liar and schemer who crosses it, you will end as your brothers did.”

His obstinacy made her angry. He treats me like some child. “Strong Belwas could not scheme his way to breakfast. And what lies has Arstan Whitebeard told me?”

“He is not what he pretends to be. He speaks to you more boldly than any squire would dare.”

“He spoke frankly at my command. He knew my brother.”

“A great many men knew your brother. Your Grace, in Westeros the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard sits on the small council, and serves the king with his wits as well as his steel. If I am the first of your Queensguard, I pray you, hear me out. I have a plan to put to you.”

“What plan? Tell me.”


“Illyrio Mopatis wants you back in Pentos, under his roof. Very well, go to him ... but in your own time, and not alone. Let us see how loyal and obedient these new subjects of yours truly are. Command Groleo to change course for Slaver’s Bay.”

Dany was not certain she liked the sound of that at all. Everything she’d ever heard of the flesh marts in the great slave cities of Yunkai, Meereen, and Astapor was dire and frightening. “What is there for me in Slaver’s Bay?”

“An army,” said Ser Jorah. “If Strong Belwas is so much to your liking you can buy hundreds more like him out of the fighting pits of Meereen ... but it is Astapor I’d set my sails for. In Astapor you can buy Unsullied.”

“The slaves in the spiked bronze hats?” Dany had seen Unsullied guards in the Free Cities, posted at the gates of magisters, archons, and dynasts. “Why should I want Unsullied? They don’t even ride horses, and most of them are fat.”

“The Unsullied you may have seen in Pentos and Myr were household guards. That’s soft service, and eunuchs tend to plumpness in any case. Food is the only vice allowed them. To judge all Unsullied by a few old household slaves is like judging all squires by Arstan Whitebeard, Your Grace. Do you know the tale of the Three Thousand of Qohor?”

“No.” The coverlet slipped off Dany’s shoulder, and she tugged it back into place.

“It was four hundred years ago or more, when the Dothraki first rode out of the east, sacking and burning every town and city in their path. The khal who led them was named Temmo. His khalasar was not so big as Drogo’s, but it was big enough. Fifty thousand, at the least. Half of them braided warriors with bells ringing in their hair.

“The Qohorik knew he was coming. They strengthened their walls, doubled the size of their own guard, and hired two free companies besides, the Bright Banners and the Second Sons. And almost as an afterthought, they sent a man to Astapor to buy three thousand Unsullied. It was a long march back to Qohor, however, and as they approached they saw the smoke and dust and heard the distant din of battle.

“By the time the Unsullied reached the city the sun had set. Crows and wolves were feasting beneath the walls on what remained of the Qohorik heavy horse. The Bright Banners and Second Sons had fled, as sellswords are wont to do in the face of hopeless odds. With dark falling, the Dothraki had retired to their own camps to drink and dance and feast, but none doubted that they would return on the morrow to smash the city gates, storm the walls, and rape, loot, and slave as they pleased.

“But when dawn broke and Temmo and his bloodriders led their khalasar out of camp, they found three thousand Unsullied drawn up before the gates with the Black Goat standard flying over their heads. So small a force could easily have been flanked, but you know Dothraki. These were men on foot, and men on foot are fit only to be ridden down.

“The Dothraki charged. The Unsullied locked their shields, lowered their spears, and stood firm. Against twenty thousand screamers with bells in their hair, they stood firm.

“Eighteen times the Dothraki charged, and broke themselves on those shields and spears like waves on a rocky shore. Thrice Temmo sent his archers wheeling past and arrows fell like rain upon the Three Thousand, but the Unsullied merely lifted their shields above their heads until the squall had passed. In the end only six hundred of them remained ... but more than twelve thousand Dothraki lay dead upon that field, including Khal Temmo, his bloodriders, his kos, and all his sons. On the morning of the fourth day, the new khal led the survivors past the city gates in a stately procession. One by one, each man cut off his braid and threw it down before the feet of the Three Thousand.

“Since that day, the city guard of Qohor has been made up solely of Unsullied, every one of whom carries a tall spear from which hangs a braid of human hair.

“That is what you will find in Astapor, Your Grace. Put ashore there, and continue on to Pentos overland. It will take longer, yes ... but when you break bread with Magister Illyrio, you will have a thousand swords behind you, not just four.”

There is wisdom in this, yes, Dany thought, but ... “How am I to buy a thousand slave soldiers? All I have of value is the crown the Tourmaline Brotherhood gave me.”

“Dragons will be as great a wonder in Astapor as they were in Qarth. It may be that the slavers will shower you with gifts, as the Qartheen did. If not ... these ships carry more than your Dothraki and their horses. They took on trade goods at Qarth, I’ve been through the holds and seen for myself. Bolts of silk and bales of tiger skin, amber and jade carvings, saffron, myrrh ... slaves are cheap, Your Grace. Tiger skins are costly.”

“Those are Illyrio’s tiger skins,” she objected.
“And Illyrio is a friend to House Targaryen.”
“All the more reason not to steal his goods.”
“What use are wealthy friends if they will not put their wealth at your disposal, my queen? If Magister Illyrio would deny you, he is only Xaro Xhoan Daxos with four chins. And if he is sincere in his devotion to your cause, he will not begrudge you three shiploads of trade goods. What better use for his tiger skins than to buy you the beginnings of an army?”

That’s true. Dany felt a rising excitement. “There will be dangers on such a long march ...”

“There are dangers at sea as well. Corsairs and pirates hunt the southern route, and north of Valyria the Smoking Sea is demon- haunted. The next storm could sink or scatter us, a kraken could pull us under ... or we might find ourselves becalmed again, and die of thirst as we wait for the wind to rise. A march will have different dangers, my queen, but none greater.”

“What if Captain Groleo refuses to change course, though? And Arstan, Strong Belwas, what will they do?”

Ser Jorah stood. “Perhaps it’s time you found that out.”

“Yes,” she decided. “I’ll do it!” Dany threw back the coverlets and hopped from the bunk. “I’ll see the captain at once, command him to set course for Astapor.” She bent over her chest, threw open the lid, and seized the first garment to hand, a pair of loose sandsilk trousers. “Hand me my medallion belt,” she commanded Jorah as she pulled the sandsilk up over her hips. “And my vest—” she started to say, turning. Ser Jorah slid his arms around her.
“Oh,” was all Dany had time to say as he pulled her close and pressed his lips down on hers. He smelled of sweat and salt and leather, and the iron studs on his jerkin dug into her naked breasts as he crushed her hard against him. One hand held her by the shoulder while the other slid down her spine to the small of her back, and her mouth opened for his tongue, though she never told it to. His beard is scratchy, she thought, but his mouth is sweet. The Dothraki wore no beards, only long mustaches, and only Khal Drogo had ever kissed her before. He should not be doing this. I am his queen, not his woman.

It was a long kiss, though how long Dany could not have said. When it ended, Ser Jorah let go of her, and she took a quick step backward. “You ... you should not have ...”

“I should not have waited so long,” he finished for her. “I should have kissed you in Qarth, in Vaes Tolorru. I should have kissed you in the red waste, every night and every day. You were made to be kissed, often and well.” His eyes were on her breasts.

Dany covered them with her hands, before her nipples could betray her. “I ... that was not fitting. I am your queen.”

“My queen,” he said, “and the bravest, sweetest, and most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Daenerys—”

“Your Grace!”

“Your Grace,” he conceded, “the dragon has three heads, remember? You have wondered at that, ever since you heard it from the warlocks in the House of Dust. Well, here’s your meaning: Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhagar, ridden by Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya. The three-headed dragon of House Targaryen—three dragons, and three riders.”

“Yes,” said Dany, “but my brothers are dead.”

“Rhaenys and Visenya were Aegon’s wives as well as his sisters. You have no brothers, but you can take husbands. And I tell you truly, Daenerys, there is no man in all the world who will ever be half so true to you as me.”

 A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys V

Ser Jorah would sooner have tucked her inside her palanquin, safely hidden behind silken curtains, but she refused him. She had reclined too long on satin cushions, letting oxen bear her hither and yon. At least when she rode she felt as though she was getting somewhere.

~

But where am I to go? Ser Jorah proposed that they journey farther east, away from her enemies in the Seven Kingdoms. Her bloodriders would sooner have returned to their great grass sea, even if it meant braving the red waste again. Dany herself had toyed with the idea of settling in Vaes Tolorro until her dragons grew great and strong. But her heart was full of doubts. Each of these felt wrong, somehow ... and even when she decided where to go, the question of how she would get there remained troublesome.

~

“The dragon has three heads,” she sighed. “Do you know what that means, Jorah?”

“Your Grace? The sigil of House Targaryen is a three-headed dragon, red on black.”

“I know that. But there are no three-headed dragons.”

“The three heads were Aegon and his sisters.”

“Visenya and Rhaenys,” she recalled. “I am descended from Aegon and Rhaenys through their son Aenys and their grandson Jaehaerys.”

“Blue lips speak only lies, isn’t that what Xaro told you? Why do you care what the warlocks whispered? All they wanted was to suck the life from you, you know that now.”

“Perhaps,” she said reluctantly. “Yet the things I saw ...”
“A dead man in the prow of a ship, a blue rose, a banquet of blood ... what does any of it mean, Khaleesi? A mummer’s dragon, you said. What is a mummer’s dragon, pray?”
“A cloth dragon on poles,” Dany explained. “Mummers use them in their follies, to give the heroes something to fight.”

Ser Jorah frowned.

Dany could not let it go. “His is the song of ice and fire, my brother said. I’m certain it was my brother. Not Viserys, Rhaegar. He had a harp with silver strings.”

Ser Jorah’s frown deepened until his eyebrows came together. “Prince Rhaegar played such a harp,” he conceded. “You saw him?”

She nodded. “There was a woman in a bed with a babe at her breast. My brother said the babe was the prince that was promised and told her to name him Aegon.”

“Prince Aegon was Rhaegar’s heir by Elia of Dorne,” Ser Jorah said. “But if he was this prince that was promised, the promise was broken along with his skull when the Lannisters dashed his head against a wall.”

“I remember,” Dany said sadly. “They murdered Rhaegar’s daughter as well, the little princess. Rhaenys, she was named, like Aegon’s sister. There was no Visenya, but he said the dragon has three heads. What is the song of ice and fire?”

“It’s no song I’ve ever heard.”

“I went to the warlocks hoping for answers, but instead they’ve left me with a hundred new questions.”

 ACOK Daenerys IV

“What power can they have if they live in that?”

~

Ser Jorah Mormont gave the merchant prince a sour look. “Your Grace, remember Mirri Maz Duur.”

“I do,” Dany said, suddenly decided. “I remember that she had knowledge. And she was only a maegi.”

~

Ser Jorah Mormont knelt beside Dany in the cool green grass and put his arm around her shoulder.

 ACOK Daenerys III

Ser Jorah she had left behind today, to guard her other dragons; the exile knight had been opposed to this folly from the start. He distrusts everyone, she reflected, and perhaps for good reason.

~

Xaro’s flowery protestations of passion amused her, but his manner was at odds with his words. While Ser Jorah had scarcely been able to keep his eyes from her bare breast when he’d helped her into the palanquin, Xaro hardly deigned to notice it, even in these close confines.

~

Ser Jorah Mormont came to her as the sun was going down. “The Pureborn refused you?”

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

“You will get no help in this city, Khaleesi.” Ser Jorah took an onion between thumb and forefinger. “Each day I am more convinced of that than the day before. The Pureborn see no farther than the walls of Qarth, and Xaro ...”

“He asked me to marry him again.”

“Yes, and I know why.” When the knight frowned, his heavy black brows joined together above his deep-set eyes.

“He dreams of me, day and night.” She laughed.


“Forgive me, my queen, but it is your dragons he dreams of.”

“Xaro assures me that in Qarth, man and woman each retain their own property after they are wed. The dragons are mine.” She smiled as Drogon came hopping and flapping across the marble floor to crawl up on the cushion beside her.

“He tells it true as far as it goes, but there’s one thing he failed to mention. The Qartheen have a curious wedding custom, my queen. On the day of their union, a wife may ask a token of love from her husband. Whatsoever she desires of his worldly goods, he must grant. And he may ask the same of her. One thing only may be asked, but whatever is named may not be denied.”

“One thing,” she repeated. “And it may not be denied?”

“With one dragon, Xaro Xhoan Daxos would rule this city, but one ship will further our cause but little.”

Dany nibbled at an onion and reflected ruefully on the faithlessness of men. “We passed through the bazaar on our way back from the Hall of a Thousand Thrones,” she told Ser Jorah. “Quaithe was there.” She told him of the firemage and the fiery ladder, and what the woman in the red mask had told her.

“I would be glad to leave this city, if truth be told,” the knight said when she was done. “But not for Asshai.”

“Where, then?”

“East,” he said.

“I am half a world away from my kingdom even here. If I go any farther east I may never find my way home to Westeros.”

“If you go west, you risk your life.”

“House Targaryen has friends in the Free Cities,” she reminded him. “Truer friends than Xaro or the Pureborn.”

“If you mean Illyrio Mopatis, I wonder. For sufficient gold, Illyrio would sell you as quickly as he would a slave.”

“My brother and I were guests in Illyrio’s manse for half a year. If he meant to sell us, he could have done it then.”

“He did sell you,” Ser Jorah said. “To Khal Drogo.”

Dany flushed. He had the truth of it, but she did not like the sharpness with which he put it. “Illyrio protected us from the Usurper’s knives, and he believed in my brother’s cause.”

“Illyrio believes in no cause but Illyrio. Gluttons are greedy men as a rule, and magisters are devious. Illyrio Mopatis is both. What do you truly know of him?”

“I know that he gave me my dragon eggs.”

He snorted. “If he’d known they were like to hatch, he would have sat on them himself.”

That made her smile despite herself. “Oh, I have no doubt of that, ser. I know Illyrio better than you think. I was a child when I left his manse in Pentos to wed my sun-and-stars, but I was neither deaf nor blind. And I am no child now.”

“Even if Illyrio is the friend you think him,” the knight said stubbornly, “he is not powerful enough to enthrone you by himself, no more than he could your brother.”

“He is rich,” she said. “Not so rich as Xaro, perhaps, but rich enough to hire ships for me, and men as well.”

“Sellswords have their uses,” Ser Jorah admitted, “but you will not win your father’s throne with sweepings from the Free Cities. Nothing knits a broken realm together so quick as an invading army on its soil.”

“I am their rightful queen,” Dany protested.

“You are a stranger who means to land on their shores with an army of outlanders who cannot even speak the Common Tongue. The lords of Westeros do not know you, and have every reason to fear and mistrust you. You must win them over before you sail. A few at least.”

“And how am I to do that, if I go east as you counsel?”

He ate an olive and spit out the pit into his palm. “I do not know, Your Grace,” he admitted, “but I do know that the longer you remain in one place, the easier it will be for your enemies to find you. The name Targaryen still frightens them, so much so that they sent a man to murder you when they heard you were with child. What will they do when they learn of your dragons?”

 ACOK Daenerys II

My great bear, Dany thought. I am his queen, but I will always be his cub as well, and he will always guard me. It made her feel safe, but sad as well. She wished she could love him better than she did.

~

“Ser Jorah, find the docks and see what manner of ships lay at anchor. It has been half a year since I last heard tidings from the Seven Kingdoms.[”] [...]

The knight frowned. [...] “My place is here at your side.”

“Jhogo can guard me as well.[”] [...]

Reluctantly, the exile nodded. “As you say, my queen.”

~

“Khaleesi,” the knight said when they were alone, “I should not speak so freely of your plans, if I were you. This man will spread the tale wherever he goes now.”

“Let him,” she said. “Let the whole world know my purpose. The Usurper is dead, what does it matter?”

“Not every sailor’s tale is true,” Ser Jorah cautioned, “and even if Robert be truly dead, his son rules in his place. This changes nothing, truly.”

“This changes everything.”

~

“The high lords have always fought. Tell me who’s won and I’ll tell you what it means. Khaleesi, the Seven Kingdoms are not going to fall into your hands like so many ripe peaches. You will need a fleet, gold, armies, alliances—”

“All this I know.” She took his hands in hers and looked up into his dark suspicious eyes.

Sometimes he thinks of me as a child he must protect, and sometimes as a woman he would like to bed, but does he ever truly see me as his queen? “I am not the frightened girl you met in Pentos. I have counted only fifteen name days, true ... but I am as old as the crones in the dosh khaleen and as young as my dragons, Jorah. I have borne a child, burned a khal, and crossed the red waste and the Dothraki sea. Mine is the blood of the dragon.”

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

“I am not Viserys.”

“No,” he admitted. “There is more of Rhaegar in you, I think, but even Rhaegar could be slain. Robert proved that on the Trident, with no more than a warhammer. Even dragons can die.”

“Dragons die.” She stood on her toes to kiss him lightly on an unshaven cheek. “But so do dragonslayers.”

ACOK Daenerys I

The knight’s face was grey and exhausted. The wound he had taken to his hip the night he fought Khal Drogo’s bloodriders had never fully healed; she could see how he grimaced when he mounted his horse, and he seemed to slump in his saddle as they rode. “Perhaps we are doomed if we press on . . . but I know for a certainty that we are doomed if we turn back.”

Dany kissed him lightly on the cheek. It heartened her to see him smile. I must be strong for him as well, she thought grimly. A knight he may be, but I am the blood of the dragon.

~

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

Yes, she thought. Viserys, Khal Drogo, my son Rhaego, they are with me always. “Tell me the name of your ghost, Jorah. You know all of mine.”

His face grew very still. “Her name was Lynesse.” “Your wife?”

“My second wife.”

It pains him to speak of her, Dany saw, but she wanted to know the truth. “Is that all you would say of her?” The lion pelt slid off one shoulder and she tugged it back into place. “Was she beautiful?”

“Very beautiful.” Ser Jorah lifted his eyes from her shoulder to her face. “The first time I beheld her, I thought she was a goddess come to earth, the Maid herself made flesh. Her birth was far above my own. She was the youngest daughter of Lord Leyton Hightower of Oldtown. The White Bull who commanded your father’s Kingsguard was her great-uncle. The Hightowers are an ancient family, very rich and very proud.”

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

“That’s so,” he admitted.

“Did your fathers make the match?”

“No,” he said. “Our marriage . . . that makes a long tale and a dull one, Your Grace. I would not trouble you with it.”

“I have nowhere to go,” she said. “Please.”

“As my queen commands.” Ser Jorah frowned. “My home . . . you must understand that to understand the rest. Bear Island is beautiful, but remote. Imagine old gnarled oaks and tall pines, flowering thornbushes, grey stones bearded with moss, little creeks running icy down steep hillsides. The hall of the Mormonts is built of huge logs and surrounded by an earthen palisade. Aside from a few crofters, my people live along the coasts and fish the seas. The island lies far to the north, and our winters are more terrible than you can imagine, Khaleesi.”

“Still, the island suited me well enough, and I never lacked for women. I had my share of fishwives and crofter’s daughters, before and after I was wed. I married young, to a bride of my father’s choosing, a Glover of Deepwood Motte. Ten years we were wed, or near enough as makes no matter. She was a plain-faced woman, but not unkind. I suppose I came to love her after a fashion, though our relations were dutiful rather than passionate. Three times she miscarried while trying to give me an heir. The last time she never recovered. She died not long after.”

Dany put her hand on his and gave his fingers a squeeze. “I am sorry for you, truly.”

Ser Jorah nodded. “By then my father had taken the black, so I was Lord of Bear Island in my own right. I had no lack of marriage offers, but before I could reach a decision Lord Balon Greyjoy rose in rebellion against the Usurper, and Ned Stark called his banners to help his friend Robert. The final battle was on Pyke. When Robert’s stonethrowers opened a breach in King Balon’s wall, a priest from Myr was the first man through, but I was not far behind. For that I won my knighthood.”

“To celebrate his victory, Robert ordained that a tourney should be held outside Lannisport. It was there I saw Lynesse, a maid half my age. She had come up from Oldtown with her father to see her brothers joust. I could not take my eyes off her. In a fit of madness, I begged her favor to wear in the tourney, never dreaming she would grant my request, yet she did.”

“I fight as well as any man, Khaleesi, but I have never been a tourney knight. Yet with Lynesse’s favor knotted round my arm, I was a different man. I won joust after joust. Lord Jason Mallister fell before me, and Bronze Yohn Royce. Ser Ryman Frey, his brother Ser Hosteen, Lord Whent, Strongboar, even Ser Boros Blount of the Kingsguard, I unhorsed them all. In the last match, I broke nine lances against Jaime Lannister to no result, and King Robert gave me the champion’s laurel. I crowned Lynesse queen of love and beauty, and that very night went to her father and asked for her hand. I was drunk, as much on glory as on wine. By rights I should have gotten a contemptuous refusal, but Lord Leyton accepted my offer. We were married there in Lannisport, and for a fortnight I was the happiest man in the wide world.”

“Only a fortnight?” asked Dany. Even I was given more happiness than that, with Drogo who was my sun-and-stars.

“A fortnight was how long it took us to sail from Lannisport back to Bear Island. My home was a great disappointment to Lynesse. It was too cold, too damp, too far away, my castle no more than a wooden longhall. We had no masques, no mummer shows, no balls or fairs. Seasons might pass without a singer ever coming to play for us, and there’s not a goldsmith on the island. Even meals became a trial. My cook knew little beyond his roasts and stews, and Lynesse soon lost her taste for fish and venison.”

“I lived for her smiles, so I sent all the way to Oldtown for a new cook, and brought a harper from Lannisport. Goldsmiths, jewelers, dressmakers, whatever she wanted I found for her, but it was never enough. Bear Island is rich in bears and trees, and poor in aught else. I built a fine ship for her and we sailed to Lannisport and Oldtown for festivals and fairs, and once even to Braavos, where I borrowed heavily from the moneylenders. It was as a tourney champion that I had won her hand and heart, so I entered other tourneys for her sake, but the magic was gone. I never distinguished myself again, and each defeat meant the loss of another charger and another suit of jousting armor, which must needs be ransomed or replaced. The cost could not be borne. Finally I insisted we return home, but there matters soon grew even worse than before. I could no longer pay the cook and the harper, and Lynesse grew wild when I spoke of pawning her jewels.”

“The rest . . . I did things it shames me to speak of. For gold. So Lynesse might keep her jewels, her harper, and her cook. In the end it cost me all. When I heard that Eddard Stark was coming to Bear Island, I was so lost to honor that rather than stay and face his judgment, I took her with me into exile. Nothing mattered but our love, I told myself. We fled to Lys, where I sold my ship for gold to keep us.”

His voice was thick with grief, and Dany was reluctant to press him any further, yet she had to know how it ended. “Did she die there?” she asked him gently.

“Only to me,” he said. “In half a year my gold was gone, and I was obliged to take service as a sellsword. While I was fighting Braavosi on the Rhoyne, Lynesse moved into the manse of a merchant prince named Tregar Ormollen. They say she is his chief concubine now, and even his wife goes in fear of her.”

Dany was horrified. “Do you hate her?”

“Almost as much as I love her,” Ser Jorah answered. “Pray excuse me, my queen. I find I am very tired.”

She gave him leave to go, but as he was lifting the flap of her tent, she could not stop herself calling after him with one last question. “What did she look like, your Lady Lynesse?”

Ser Jorah smiled sadly. “Why, she looked a bit like you, Daenerys.” He bowed low. “Sleep well, my queen.”

Dany shivered, and pulled the lionskin tight about her. She looked like me. It explained much that she had not truly understood. He wants me, she realized. He loves me as he loved her, not as a knight loves his queen but as a man loves a woman. She tried to imagine herself in Ser Jorah’s arms, kissing him, pleasuring him, letting him enter her. It was no good. When she closed her eyes, his face kept changing into Drogo’s.

[...] She had heard the longing in Ser Jorah’s voice when he spoke of his Bear Island. He can never have me, but one day I can give him back his home and honor. That much I can do for him.

 A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys X

“Princess ...” he began.

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

“He was, my lady.”

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

“My ... queen,” Ser Jorah said, going to one knee. “My sword that was his is yours, Daenerys. And my heart as well, that never belonged to your brother. I am only a knight, and I have nothing to offer you but exile, but I beg you, hear me. Let Khal Drogo go. You shall not be alone. I promise you, no man shall take you to Vaes Dothrak unless you wish to go. You need not join the dosh khaleen. Come east with me. Yi Ti, Qarth, the Jade Sea, Asshai by the Shadow. We will see all the wonders yet unseen, and drink what wines the gods see fit to serve us. Please, Khaleesi. I know what you intend. Do not. Do not.”

“I must,” Dany told him. She touched his face, fondly, sadly. “You do not understand.”

“I understand that you loved him,” Ser Jorah said in a voice thick with despair. “I loved my lady wife once, yet I did not die with her. You are my queen, my sword is yours, but do not ask me to stand aside as you climb on Drogo’s pyre. I will not watch you burn.”

“Is that what you fear?” Dany kissed him lightly on his broad forehead. “I am not such a child as that, sweet ser.”

“You do not mean to die with him? You swear it, my queen?”

“I swear it,” she said in the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms that by rights were hers.

~

She nodded, as calmly as if she had not heard his answer, and turned to the last of her champions. “Ser Jorah Mormont,” she said, “first and greatest of my knights, I have no bride gift to give you, but I swear to you, one day you shall have from my hands a longsword like none the world has ever seen, dragon-forged and made of Valyrian steel. And I would ask for your oath as well.”

“You have it, my queen,” Ser Jorah said, kneeling to lay his sword at her feet. “I vow to serve you, to obey you, to die for you if need be.”

“Whatever may come?”

“Whatever may come.”

“I shall hold you to that oath. I pray you never regret the giving of it.” Dany lifted him to his feet. Stretching on her toes to reach his lips, she kissed the knight gently and said, “You are the first of my Queensguard.”

~

“Ser Jorah, take this maegi and bind her to the pyre.”

“To the ... my queen, no, hear me ...”

“Do as I say.” Still he hesitated, until her anger flared. “You swore to obey me, whatever might come. Rakharo, help him.”

~

Ser Jorah was shouting behind her, but he did not matter anymore, only the fire mattered. [...] She heard the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE?

~

When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon, Ser Jorah Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded by blackened logs and bits of glowing ember and the burnt bones of man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away ... yet she was unhurt.

The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at the right. Her arms cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals.

Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.

And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s.

 AGOT Daenerys IX

Ser Jorah Mormont lifted her in his arms and carried her back to her sleeping silks, while she struggled feebly against him. Over his shoulder she saw her three handmaids, Jhogo with his little wisp of mustache, and the flat broad face of Mirri Maz Duur. “I must,” she tried to tell them, “I have to ...”

“ ... sleep, Princess,” Ser Jorah said.

“No,” Dany said. “Please. Please.”

“Yes.” He covered her with silk, though she was burning. “Sleep and grow strong again, Khaleesi. Come back to us.”

~

“I want Ser Jorah,” she said, standing.

~

Ser Jorah and Mirri Maz Duur entered a few moments later, and found Dany standing over the other dragon’s eggs, the two still in their chest. It seemed to her that they felt as hot as the one she had slept with, which was passing strange. “Ser Jorah, come here,” she said. She took his hand and placed it on the black egg with the scarlet swirls. “What do you feel?”

“Shell, hard as rock.” The knight was wary. “Scales.”

“Heat?”

“No. Cold stone.” He took his hand away. “Princess, are you well? Should you be up, weak as you are?”

“Weak? I am strong, Jorah.” To please him, she reclined on a pile of cushions. “Tell me how my child died.”

“He never lived, my princess. The women say ...” He faltered, and Dany saw how the flesh hung loose on him, and the way he limped when he moved.

“Tell me. Tell me what the women say.”
He turned his face away. His eyes were haunted. “They say the child was ...”

She waited, but Ser Jorah could not say it. His face grew dark with shame. He looked half a corpse himself.

“Monstrous,” Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The knight was a powerful man, yet Dany understood in that moment that the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely more dangerous. “Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years.”

Darkness, Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind to devour her. If she looked back she was lost. “My son was alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into this tent,” she said. “I could feel him kicking, fighting to be born.”

“That may be as it may be,” answered Mirri Maz Duur, “yet the creature that came forth from your womb was as I said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi.”

“Only shadows,” Ser Jorah husked, but Dany could hear the doubt in his voice. “I saw, maegi. I saw you, alone, dancing with the shadows. “

“The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord,” Mirri said. “Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold them back.”

Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew. He had done what he did for love and loyalty, yet he had carried her into a place no living man should go and fed her baby to the darkness. He knew it too; the grey face, the hollow eyes, the limp. “The shadows have touched you too, Ser Jorah,” she told him. The knight made no reply. Dany turned to the godswife. “You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse.”

“No,” Mirri Maz Duur said. “That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price.”

Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. “The price was paid,” Dany said. “The horse, my child, Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and paid.” She rose from her cushions. “Where is Khal Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son’s life.”

“As you command, Khaleesi,” the old woman said. “Come, I will take you to him.” Dany was weaker than she knew. Ser Jorah slipped an arm around her and helped her stand. “Time enough for this later, my princess,” he said quietly.

“I would see him now, Ser Jorah.”

 AGOT Daenerys VIII

“Khaleesi,” he said, “the Andal is come, and begs leave to enter.”

“The Andal” was what the Dothraki called Ser Jorah. “Yes,” she said, rising clumsily, “send him in.” She trusted the knight. He would know what to do if anyone did.

Ser Jorah Mormont ducked through the door flap and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. In the fierce heat of the south, he wore loose trousers of mottled sandsilk and open-toed riding sandals that laced up to his knee. His scabbard hung from a twisted horsehair belt. Under a bleached white vest, he was bare-chested, skin reddened by the sun. “Talk goes from mouth to ear, all over the khalasar,” he said. “It is said Khal Drogo fell from his horse.”

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

The knight knelt beside her. He looked at Drogo long and hard, and then at Dany. “Send your maids away.”

Wordlessly, her throat tight with fear, Dany made a gesture. Irri herded the other girls from the tent.

When they were alone, Ser Jorah drew his dagger. Deftly, with a delicacy surprising in such a big man, he began to scrape away the black leaves and dried blue mud from Drogo’s chest. The plaster had caked hard as the mud walls of the Lamb Men, and like those walls it cracked easily. Ser Jorah broke the dry mud with his knife, pried the chunks from the flesh, peeled off the leaves one by one. A foul, sweet smell rose from the wound, so thick it almost choked her. The leaves were crusted with blood and pus, Drogo’s breast black and glistening with corruption.

“No,” Dany whispered as tears ran down her cheeks. “No, please, gods hear me, no.”

Khal Drogo thrashed, fighting some unseen enemy. Black blood ran slow and thick from his open wound.


“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 ...”

Ser Jorah gave a bitter laugh. “Khaleesi or queen, that command is beyond your power. Save your tears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We do not have time for grief. We must go, and quickly, before he dies.”

Dany was lost. “Go? Where should we go?”

“Asshai, I would say. It lies far to the south, at the end of the known world, yet men say it is a great port. We will find a ship to take us back to Pentos. It will be a hard journey, make no mistake. Do you trust your khas? Will they come with us?”

“Khal Drogo commanded them to keep me safe,” Dany replied uncertainly, “but if he dies ...” She touched the swell of her belly. “I don’t understand. Why should we flee? I am khaleesi. I carry Drogo’s heir. He will be khal after Drogo ...”

Ser Jorah frowned. “Princess, hear me. The Dothraki will not follow a suckling babe. Drogo’s strength was what they bowed to, and only that. When he is gone, Jhaqo and Pono and the other kos will fight for his place, and this khalasar will devour itself. The winner will want no more rivals. The boy will be taken from your breast the moment he is born. They will give him to the dogs ...”

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—”

Ser Jorah held her by the shoulders. “A bloodrider dies with his khal. You know that, child. They will take you to Vaes Dothrak, to the crones, that is the last duty they owe him in life ... when it is done, they will join Drogo in the night lands.”

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.”

~

“No? You say me no? Better you should pray that we do not stake you out beside your maegi. You did this, as much as the other.”

Ser Jorah stepped between them, loosening his longsword in its scabbard. “Rein in your tongue, bloodrider. The princess is still your khaleesi.”

~

She saw Ser Jorah Mormont, wearing mail and leather now, sweat beading on his broad, balding forehead. He pushed his way through the Dothraki to Dany’s side. When he saw the scarlet footprints her boots had left on the ground, the color seemed to drain from his face. “What have you done, you little fool?” he asked hoarsely.

“I had to save him.”

“We could have fled,” he said. “I would have seen you safe to Asshai, Princess. There was no need ...”

“Am I truly your princess?” she asked him.

“You know you are, gods save us both.”


“Then help me now.”


Ser Jorah grimaced. “Would that I knew how.”

~

An arm went under her waist, and then Ser Jorah was lifting her off her feet. His face was sticky with blood, and Dany saw that half his ear was gone. She convulsed in his arms as the pain took her again, and heard the knight shouting for her handmaids to help him.

[...] “Come here. Fetch the birthing women.”

“They will not come. They say she is accursed.”


“They’ll come or I’ll have their heads.”


 AGOT Daenerys VII

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.


[...] 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.”

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

[...] 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.

~

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.

 AGOT Daenerys VI

“My princess. How may I serve you?”

“You must talk to my lord husband,” Dany said. “Drogo says the stallion who mounts the world will have all the lands of the earth to rule, and no need to cross the poison water. He talks of leading his khalasar east after Rhaego is born, to plunder the lands around the Jade Sea.”

The knight looked thoughtful. “The khal has never seen the Seven Kingdoms,” he said. “They are nothing to him. If he thinks of them at all, no doubt he thinks of islands, a few small cities clinging to rocks in the manner of Lorath or Lys, surrounded by stormy seas. The riches of the east must seem a more tempting prospect.”

“But he must ride west,” Dany said, despairing. “Please, help me make him understand.” She had never seen the Seven Kingdoms either, no more than Drogo, yet she felt as though she knew them from all the tales her brother had told her. Viserys had promised her a thousand times that he would take her back one day, but he was dead now and his promises had died with him.

“The Dothraki do things in their own time, for their own reasons,” the knight answered. “Have patience, Princess. Do not make your brother’s mistake. We will go home, I promise you.”

Home? The word made her feel sad. Ser Jorah had his Bear Island, but what was home to her? A few tales, names recited as solemnly as the words of a prayer, the fading memory of a red door ... was Vaes Dothrak to be her home forever? When she looked at the crones of the dosh khaleen, was she looking at her future?

Ser Jorah must have seen the sadness on her face. “A great caravan arrived during the night, Khaleesi. Four hundred horses, from Pentos by way of Norvos and Qohor, under the command of Merchant Captain Byan Votyris. Illyrio may have sent a letter. Would you care to visit the Western Market?”

Dany stirred. “Yes,” she said. “I would like that.”

~

“If you would pardon me for a time, I will seek out the captain and see if he has letters for us.”

“Very well. I’ll help you find him.”

“There is no need for you to trouble yourself.” Ser Jorah glanced away impatiently. “Enjoy the market. I will rejoin you when my business is concluded.”

Curious, Dany thought as she watched him stride off through the throngs. She didn’t see why she should not go with him. Perhaps Ser Jorah meant to find a woman after he met with the merchant captain. Whores frequently traveled with the caravans, she knew, and some men were queerly shy about their couplings. She gave a shrug.

~

She did not realize that Ser Jorah had returned until she heard the knight say, “No.” His voice was strange, brusque. “Aggo, put down that cask.”

Aggo looked at Dany. She gave a hesitant nod. “Ser Jorah, is something wrong?”

“I have a thirst. Open it, wineseller.”

The merchant frowned. “The wine is for the khaleesi, not for the likes of you, ser.”

Ser Jorah moved closer to the stall. “If you don’t open it, I’ll crack it open with your head.” He carried no weapons here in the sacred city, save his hands—yet his hands were enough, big, hard, dangerous, his knuckles covered with coarse dark hairs. The wineseller hesitated a moment, then took up his hammer and knocked the plug from the cask.

“Pour,” Ser Jorah commanded. The four young warriors of Dany’s khas arrayed themselves behind him, frowning, watching with their dark, almond-shaped eyes.

“It would be a crime to drink this rich a wine without letting it breathe.” The wineseller had not put his hammer down.

Jhogo reached for the whip coiled at his belt, but Dany stopped him with a light touch on the arm. “Do as Ser Jorah says,” she said. People were stopping to watch.

The man gave her a quick, sullen glance. “As the princess commands.” He had to set aside his hammer to lift the cask. He filled two thimble-sized tasting cups, pouring so deftly he did not spill a drop.

Ser Jorah lifted a cup and sniffed at the wine, frowning.

“Sweet, isn’t it?” the wineseller said, smiling. “Can you smell the fruit, ser? The perfume of the Arbor. Taste it, my lord, and tell me it isn’t the finest, richest wine that’s ever touched your tongue.” Ser Jorah offered him the cup. “You taste it first.”

“Me?” The man laughed. “I am not worthy of this vintage, my lord. And it’s a poor wine merchant who drinks up his own wares.” His smile was amiable, yet she could see the sheen of sweat on his brow.

“You will drink,” Dany said, cold as ice. “Empty the cup, or I will tell them to hold you down while Ser Jorah pours the whole cask down your throat.”

The wineseller shrugged, reached for the cup ... and grabbed the cask instead, flinging it at her with both hands. Ser Jorah bulled into her, knocking her out of the way. The cask bounced off his shoulder and smashed open on the ground. Dany stumbled and lost her feet. “No,” she screamed, thrusting her hands out to break her fall ... and Doreah caught her by the arm and wrenched her backward, so she landed on her legs and not her belly.

The trader vaulted over the stall, darting between Aggo and Rakharo. Quaro reached for an arakh that was not there as the blond man slammed him aside. He raced down the aisle. Dany heard the snap of Jhogo’s whip, saw the leather lick out and coil around the wineseller’s leg. The man sprawled face first in the dirt.

A dozen caravan guards had come running. With them was the master himself, Merchant Captain Byan Votyris, a diminutive Norvoshi with skin like old leather and a bristling blue mustachio that swept up to his ears. He seemed to know what had happened without a word being spoken. “Take this one away to await the pleasure of the khal,” he commanded, gesturing at the man on the ground. Two guards hauled the wineseller to his feet. “His goods I gift to you as well, Princess,” the merchant captain went on. “Small token of regret, that one of mine would do this thing.”

Doreah and Jhiqui helped Dany back to her feet. The poisoned wine was leaking from the broken cask into the dirt. “How did you know?” she asked Ser Jorah, trembling. “How?”

“I did not know, Khaleesi, not until the man refused to drink, but once I read Magister Illyrio’s letter, I feared.” His dark eyes swept over the faces of the strangers in the market. “Come. Best not to talk of it here.”

 AGOT Daenerys V

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He is your brother,” Ser Jorah acknowledged.

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

~

Ser Jorah had made his way to Dany’s side. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Turn away, my princess, I beg you.”

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

 AGOT Daenerys IV

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.

~

“I pray that my sun-and-stars will not keep him waiting too long,” she told Ser Jorah when her brother was out of earshot.

The knight looked after Viserys doubtfully. “Your brother should have bided his time in Pentos. There is no place for him in a khalasar. Illyrio tried to warn him.”

“He will go as soon as he has his ten thousand. My lord husband promised a golden crown.”

Ser Jorah grunted. “Yes, Khaleesi, but ... the Dothraki look on these things differently than we do in the west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told him, but your brother does not listen. The horselords are no traders. Viserys thinks he sold you, and now he wants his price. Yet Khal Drogo would say he had you as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift in return, yes ... in his own time. You do not demand a gift, not of a khal. You do not demand anything of a khal.”

“It is not right to make him wait.” Dany did not know why she was defending her brother, yet she was. “Viserys says he could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten thousand Dothraki screamers.” Ser Jorah snorted. “Viserys could not sweep a stable with ten thousand brooms.”

Dany could not pretend to surprise at the disdain in his tone. “What ... what if it were not Viserys?” she asked. “If it were someone else who led them? Someone stronger? Could the Dothraki truly conquer the Seven Kingdoms?”

Ser Jorah’s face grew thoughtful as their horses trod together down the godsway. “When I first went into exile, I looked at the Dothraki and saw half-naked barbarians, as wild as their horses. If you had asked me then, Princess, I should have told you that a thousand good knights would have no trouble putting to flight a hundred times as many Dothraki.”

“But if I asked you now?”

“Now,” the knight said, “I am less certain. They are better riders than any knight, utterly fearless, and their bows outrange ours. In the Seven Kingdoms, most archers fight on foot, from behind a shieldwall or a barricade of sharpened stakes. The Dothraki fire from horseback, charging or retreating, it makes no matter, they are full as deadly ... and there are so many of them, my lady. Your lord husband alone counts forty thousand mounted warriors in his khalasar.”

“Is that truly so many?”

“Your brother Rhaegar brought as many men to the Trident,” Ser Jorah admitted, “but of that number, no more than a tenth were knights. The rest were archers, freeriders, and foot soldiers armed with spears and pikes. When Rhaegar fell, many threw down their weapons and fled the field. How long do you imagine such a rabble would stand against the charge of forty thousand screamers howling for blood? How well would boiled leather jerkins and mailed shirts protect them when the arrows fall like rain?”

“Not long,” she said, “not well.”

He nodded. “Mind you, Princess, if the lords of the Seven Kingdoms have the wit the gods gave a goose, it will never come to that. The riders have no taste for siegecraft. I doubt they could take even the weakest castle in the Seven Kingdoms, but if Robert Baratheon were fool enough to give them battle ...”

“Is he?” Dany asked. “A fool, I mean?”

Ser Jorah considered that for a moment. “Robert should have been born Dothraki,” he said at last. “Your khal would tell you that only a coward hides behind stone walls instead of facing his enemy with a blade in hand. The Usurper would agree. He is a strong man, brave ... and rash enough to meet a Dothraki horde in the open field. But the men around him, well, their pipers play a different tune. His brother Stannis, Lord Tywin Lannister, Eddard Stark ...” He spat.

“You hate this Lord Stark,” Dany said.

“He took from me all I loved, for the sake of a few lice-ridden poachers and his precious honor,” Ser Jorah said bitterly. From his tone, she could tell the loss still pained him. He changed the subject quickly. “There,” he announced, pointing. “Vaes Dothrak. The city of the horselords.” ~

“Your brother had part of the truth,” Ser Jorah admitted. “The Dothraki do not build. A thousand years ago, to make a house, they would dig a hole in the earth and cover it with a woven grass roof. The buildings you see were made by slaves brought here from lands they’ve plundered, and they built each after the fashion of their own peoples.” Most of the halls, even the largest, seemed deserted. “Where are the people who live here?” Dany asked. The bazaar had been full of running children and men shouting, but elsewhere she had seen only a few eunuchs going about their business.

“Only the crones of the dosh khaleen dwell permanently in the sacred city, them and their slaves and servants,” Ser Jorah replied, “yet Vaes Dothrak is large enough to house every man of every khalasar, should all the khals return to the Mother at once. The crones have prophesied that one day that will come to pass, and so Vaes Dothrak must be ready to embrace all its children.”

~

As each rider swung down from his saddle, he unbelted his arakh and handed it to a waiting slave, and any other weapons he carried as well. Even Khal Drogo himself was not exempt. Ser Jorah had explained that it was forbidden to carry a blade in Vaes Dothrak, or to shed a free man’s blood. Even warring khalasars put aside their feuds and shared meat and mead together when they were in sight of the Mother of Mountains. In this place, the crones of the dosh khaleen had decreed, all Dothraki were one blood, one khalasar, one herd.

 AGOT Daenerys III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. “Truth now. Would you want to see Viserys sit a throne?” Dany thought about that. “He would not be a very good king, would he?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wise child.” The knight smiled.

“I am no child,” she told him fiercely. Her heels pressed into the sides of her mount, rousing the silver to a gallop. Faster and faster she raced, leaving Jorah and Irri and the others far behind, the warm wind in her hair and the setting sun red on her face. By the time she reached the khalasar, it was dusk.

 AGOT Daenerys II

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

~

Ser Jorah Mormont apologized for his gift. “It is a small thing, my princess, but all a poor exile could afford,” he said as he laid a small stack of old books before her. They were histories and songs of the Seven Kingdoms, she saw, written in the Common Tongue. She thanked him with all her heart.

~

Dany sat there uncertain for a moment. No one had told her about this part. “What should I do?” she asked Illyrio.

It was Ser Jorah Mormont who answered. “Take the reins and ride. You need not go far.”

 AGOT Daenerys I

“Those three are Drogo’s bloodriders, there,” he said. “By the pillar is Khal Moro, with his son Rhogoro. The man with the green beard is brother to the Archon of Tyrosh, and the man behind him is Ser Jorah Mormont.”

The last name caught Daenerys. “A knight?”

“No less.” Illyrio smiled through his beard. “Anointed with the seven oils by the High Septon himself.”

“What is he doing here?” she blurted.

“The Usurper wanted his head,” Illyrio told them. “Some trifling affront. He sold some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver instead of giving them to the Night’s Watch. Absurd law. A man should be able to do as he likes with his own chattel.”

“I shall wish to speak with Ser Jorah before the night is done,” her brother said. Dany found herself looking at the knight curiously. He was an older man, past forty and balding, but still strong and fit. Instead of silks and cottons, he wore wool and leather. His tunic was a dark green, embroidered with the likeness of a black bear standing on two legs.

She was still looking at this strange man from the homeland she had never known when Magister Illyrio placed a moist hand on her bare shoulder.

[rookwood-rp]

               𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔  𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒗𝒆  𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎  𝑾𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑰𝑵𝑮  𝑴𝑶𝑹𝑬.

                           trigger warnings: rape, depression, violence.

Contrary to popular belief, she was not born in Rookwood. Although she knew the city as well as if not better than anyone who was, she didn’t always reside there. In fact, she wasn’t even American. Cora Marquelle was born in the countryside of Ireland to an Irish mother and an Italian father. Her maternal grandfather was a known criminal, a former member of The Irish Mob in New York City before he returned to his homeland in the mid-50s, striking out on his own with a handful of men and woman loyal to him. It was through his growing cartel that Cora’s mother met the man who would be her husband and the father of her children. Siobhan Ronan and Angelo Marquelle were smitten from the moment they met, and it was only through her father’s blessing that they were permitted to date. That date inevitably lead to another, and another after that, and eventually they were married. And then Cora was born.

From even before her arrival, Cora was spoiled. Her grandfather doted on her as his, at the time only, grandchild. She wanted for nothing and she grew up learning everything from him. Cillian Ronan was a dangerous man, but he was loyal. And he taught Cora to value loyalty above all. Mistakes were often made by the men and women in his employ, but if they learned from those mistakes, he was merciful. If they didn’t, well. There was a moment so distinctive that although she had been very young at the time, she still remembered it to this day. Sitting on her grandfather’s lap as one of his lackey’s begged for forgiveness. Her grandfather, stoic as he faced a rat in his ranks, had met her eye briefly - in that moment, he smiled. He winked at her, and tapped her on the nose, and then he told the boy ( for he was exactly that ) to get on his knees. Cora had watched, still too young to really understand, as her grandfather’s right hand held a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. It was brutal, but it was justified. Or that’s what Cora was told to believe. Loyalty, her grandfather had said.

She was three when her sister was born. UTP Marquelle was small, and quiet, but Cora took her responsibilities as big sister very seriously. It was with her that her protective instincts first kicked in. No one was allowed near her unless they were approved of first by Cora. Their parents had been happy to oblige. As they got older, Cora became more and more influenced by the life their parents and their grandfather lead. Their world was never something they intended to force on their children, but Cora dove in head first. It was in this world of organised crime that she first met UTP Lancaster, and when she first heard of Rookwood. The Lancaster’s as a family were one thing, the Lancaster’s as an organisation were another thing entirely. Cora’s family and the Lancaster’s were long time associates. The business they conducted was calculated and precise. It had to be, with an entire ocean between them. Cora inherited her mother’s eyes and accent, but as she got older, her father’s Italian blood began to take. She was beautiful then, and she is stunning now.

         She had learned to use her sensuality as a weapon as deadly as any knife or gun. But when she was seventeen, Cora was sexually assaulted. Almost everyone who knew Cora knew that her family were dangerous. That they were connected to the seedy underbelly of Ireland’s criminal establishment, and most everyone knew that she and her sister were deemed untouchable. Most everyone knew that. That night changed everything for Cora, who had often taken interest from anyone lightly. She knew what she wanted and if she didn’t want someone, then they would find out the hard way that Cora had already moved on. One boy had taken that rejection to heart. Cornering her one late afternoon, she had fought him valiantly but he was, at the end of the day, physically stronger. It was rough, and painful, and despite the way she had clawed at him in protest, he had finished inside her.         

Cora told no one for several weeks. She felt ashamed that she had allowed him to get the best of her. She felt dirty, and sick, and angry. She was so angry. During those weeks, Cora had been volatile. She had a vicious tongue and she used it against anyone who dared engage her. Even her sister. Even her grandfather. It was UTP Lancaster who got through to her, who allowed her to unleash her rage on him until she told him the truth of what had happened to her. Admitting it to him had felt cathartic, but it lead to her confessing a fear she had held deep inside, unable to acknowledge as she dealt with the aftermath of her assault. Cora was late. UTP, with Cora’s permission, confided in her grandfather. Two days later, a boy with still healing scars scratched across his left eye, was found floating in the bay outside Seafield.

She was almost eighteen when she gave birth to a baby girl. Cora held her daughter once, before making the difficult decision to give her up for adoption. It wasn’t because she didn’t have the means to care for her, because she did. But Cora had a deep seated fear of looking at her baby, and being reminded of Him. She didn’t want to resent her daughter, or blame her. However subconsciously it might have been. Adoption really was in everyone’s best interests. The baby’s, and hers.

When Cora had the baby, she experienced an unexpected and uncontrollable bout of post-natal depression. It, coupled with the experience of her assault, left her feeling almost numb. She was still an active member of her grandfather’s cartel, but she had lost any warmth she was known for. This caused concern within her family, and it was suggested that she spend time away from Ireland. Where else was she to go but to Rookwood? The Lancaster family welcomed her with open arms and she was surprised to find that the warmth she had lacked back home was slowly returning to her the longer she stayed. It helped, that she had UTP. Who knew everything. Who she didn’t have to hide from.

Dating UTP had been inevitable. Anyone who knew either of them had long thought they would one day end up together. They got married young, like Cora’s own parents before her, and Evelyn decided to stay in Rookwood after the wedding. UTP took over the Lancaster empire and with Cora at his side, it’s hard to imagine now a time when Cora wasn’t in Rookwood. They have three children together, When they were ultimately betrayed by UTP’s once right hand, Cora was especially upset. A year has passed since then and though they lost a handful of their numbers to the other side, the Lancaster’s are still in power. And Cora, who was taught by her grandfather to value loyalty above all else, is unforgiving.

CHARACTER INFORMATION

FULL NAME : Cora Lancaster neé Marquelle.

BIRTHDAY + AGE : November Nineteen + 50.

NEIGHBOURHOOD : LeClair Point.

OCCUPATION : Business Owner ( Lancaster Inc + Sinsations )

TRAITS : Resourceful, Seductive, Manipulative and Protective.

HEADCANONS

Cora owns Lancaster Inc in Rookwood CBD with her partner UTP LANCASTER. She is on several boards including the board of admissions for Rookwood U, where she graduated with a degree in criminal law. Cora also owns Sinsations, a burlesque club in Locke Lane, as a side business. She is very protective of her employees, especially the dancers, and is also quite strict. She has a no tolerance policy regarding harassment and assault, stemming from her own experience when she was a teenager.

Although the Lancaster legacy was established before Cora officially joined the family, she has a big part in the decisions made by the administration. UTP LANCASTER is the don, or boss. He is the head of the business, but Cora is the head of the family. He will often defer to her when it comes to making decisions that impact them personally, and their children.

Cora has an Irish accent. It is subtle now compared to when she first moved to America, but it becomes more prominent the more emotional she becomes. Che speaks English, Gaelic, Italian and some Spanish.

CORA LANCASTER is played by ADMIN REIGN

[thegreatestofheck]

🧵 i love the idea of you casting me in different shows and movies!!! can you do harry potter, obx (and if you’re down, the umbrella academy?) I love animals, seeing as i have three cats at home, not super sure what i want to do with my life yet. I got *below* average grades in school, which i now realize was because of my now diagnosed adhd so i’m working on it now. I love being with my friends and family, and traveling. i also work at a movie theater and consequentially, love watching movies!!

yes!! Love this!! thank you so much!

Harry Potter:

I’d say you were a half-blood but your magical parent didn’t really talk much about it, so you’re not fully aware of everything magical. As soon as you found out that you were allowed to bring a pet to Hogwarts, you grabbed hold of your house cat. Your mom said you couldn’t take the family cat (which made you really sad) but she promised to buy you a new kitten at Diagon Alley. 

The wand that bonded with you had a core of Unicorn Hair (faithful, loyal, hard to turn to the Dark Arts, consistent) with Alder Wood (indicates a helpful and friendly owner, loyal, mostly non-verbal magic). 

You get an orange tabby cat from to bring with you to Hogwarts and you give her the oh so loving name of Gus Gus (you had just watched Cinderella that day, so the name was fresh in your mind). 

Once on the Hogwarts Express, you were afraid that you weren’t going to make many friends, but you find yourself sitting in a compartment with two girls who were also first years. One, a red-haired girl with a splattering of freckles, and the other a girl with crazy glasses and snow white hair. 

Ginny, Luna, and Neville become your core group at Hogwarts. 

At the sorting ceremony, the Sorting Hat puts you into Hufflepuff. It was hard to be separated from your newfound friends, but the Hufflepuffs were kind and welcoming. They made you and Gus Gus feel at home. 

Your best and most favorite class was Muggle Studies, especially when the professor started talking about movies. Care for Magical Creatures comes in a close second. Other classes, however, were a bit harder for you to get the hang of. When Professor Sprout confronts you about your grades, she sets you up with one of the older Hufflepuff students, Cedric Diggory. He helps you in a gentle and kindly voice and never makes you feel like you’re falling behind. 

With his help, and the help of your other friends, your grades start to pick up. 

His death hits you like a train. 

Your happiest memory that you use to produce your Patronus is a memory you’re not even sure really happened. You’re sitting in the Courtyard with Ginny, Luna, and Neville. Ginny is ranting about Quidditch, Luna’s head resting in her lap as she reads the Quibbler. Neville is sitting next to you, Gus Gus purring quietly in his lap. And you’re just sitting there, soaking in the sun. 

Your Patronus is a Dragonfly, meaning a carefree, imaginative, joyful person with higher aspirations, even if you’re not sure what they are yet. You were confused at first as to how such a small thing could defend you against such powerful fear, but it works. 

You fought valiantly at the Battle of Hogwarts. This place was your home and these people, even the ones who picked fun at you or ignored you, were your family. And this was Cedric’s home too. Even after three years, you never forgot all that he had done for you and the fact that he died for Harry meant you were willing to die for him too. Thankfully, you didn’t. 

OBX: 

You don’t really start off as one of the Pogues. You worked at the only movie theater on your side of the island, so you saw them every now and again. Part of you was jealous of the friendship that they shared with one another, but another part of you was irritated every time they came around because the blond one always left trash everywhere. 

But there was one summer when they came in almost every single day, bringing a girl with them. You didn’t recognize her, which meant she wasn’t from the cut. By the time July rolled around, you knew all of them by name and they knew yours. 

It was the girl, Kie, as they called her, who first asked you to come with them to the party after your shift. You were taken aback at first, but you agreed eventually. You’d never been to one of the boneyard parties before so it was strange, but all four of them were there to make you feel as comfortable as possible. 

JJ and John B taught you the basics of beer pong, which you realized you were pretty good at. Pope was really good at distracting you when it felt a little overwhelming. Kie stood there and danced beside you, screaming out the lyrics to whatever song was playing. 

You weren’t really sure when it happened, but one minute you were spending your days doing little more than popping popcorn and cleaning theaters and the next you were spending all of your time off work fishing, dancing, surfing, or even just lounging with the Pogues. 

Kie told you everything there was to know about astrology. She even showed you the constellations as you lounged on the roof of the Wreck, the boys off to the side having a hacky sack competition. 

You and JJ love to watch campy movies together. You sneak him into the theater for free sometimes, especially when they’re playing a silent movie. The two of you sit in the back and make up the words as you go, laughing and spilling popcorn all over the place. 

John B was the one who really taught you how to surf. You had barely been able to swim before you joined their friend group, but with his help and patience, you were a quick master at it. 

When school started again, you confided in Pope that your grades weren’t where you wanted them to be so he agreed to give you extra help whenever you wanted. Study sessions became a common occurrence between the two of you. He was usually serious when it came to school, but he still somehow managed to make you laugh. 

With your new group of friends, it felt like your life had finally begun. 

TUA: 

Reginald Hargreeves wasn’t the only one who collected children born on October 1st, 1989. 

You were raised with four others who were born with powers, just like you. While The Umbrella Academy were trained to fight crime, you and your peers were more like lab rats. 

Your ability was, upon contact with an object or a person, you could see their past in flashes. It was very useful for finding people based on the objects they left behind, so when you were 13, the people who had raised you sold you off to the government as a kind of bloodhound. You spend the next decade or so hunting down the Most Wanted, until you run right into the Umbrella Academy’s very own vigilante, Diego Hargreeves. 

The two of bond over hunting bad guys and agree to become partners. All it takes is ditching the US government. Many of the agents got lazy with you on their team, so without their favorite bloodhound, finding you was difficult. By the time they figured out you were even gone, you and Diego were so far underground, they would never find you. 

As a crime fighting duo, the two of you hopped from city to city, locking away the criminal that plagued streets. 

After his dad died, you offered to go back home with him. You never really had a place to call home and even if his home life wasn’t so much fun, at least the Umbrella Academy was a place he could call home. He took your offer after a little bit of persuading. 

When it came to stopping the Apocalypse, being a bloodhound wasn’t really the most helpful of powers and Diego’s pissy little brother, Five, made that painfully obvious every chance he got. Luther didn’t like you very much, but you got the feeling he didn’t really like anybody. Klaus made you laugh, but he was also pretty strange. Diego seemed to have a special attachment to him, so you tried to make friends. Allison was kind to you, but standoffish. You liked Vanya the best. She was the most normal (but you never said that to her). 

After the Apocalypse was prevented, you all went out for a drink. You had a nice glass of orange juice and relished in the taste. The world almost ended, after all, and as that end neared, the only thing you found yourself missing was orange juice. 

ahhh I hope this was okay!! Umbrella Academy was kinda difficult, but I wanted to do you justice!! thank you so much for letting me do this for you. 

[cassidyastorxaviershaw]

Eli Runs Away.. Or Tries To!

Who: Eli Hummel and the Guards

When: 22nd August 2020

What: Eli tries to run away and the guards catch him. TW: Verbal and physical abuse

Where:  The gates, the grounds and Eli’s rooms

Eli couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like his world was crumbling around him and the only thing he knew, in that moment, was that he needed to get away from this place. Daniel had left him, Kai had left him and now he was alone. Yeah, he had Sawyer, Evan and Faith and the common sense part of his brain said he should go to one of them, but common sense had left him just like Kai did. 

His emotions were all over the place and that's why, in that moment, he decided to run. To get out of the institute and run. He needed to get away from this place, so he made his way to the gate. The guards would be problematic but he could sneak out - right?

As he approached, he saw eyes on him and he looked around at them before dropping his gaze to the floor and bolting, running as fast as his body could let him.

Eli could hear the sudden noise from the startled guards, and quickly became aware that they had taken pursuit. His heart hammered in his chest, and his mouth became dry, as he concentrated on running away from his pursuers. His sole focus became escaping this hell hole, and in that instant, adrenaline kicked in and pushed him forward.

Eli's senses heightened, and as he focused his efforts on his escape, he became acutely aware of the sharp sound of a twig snapping below someone's foot. He was getting out of breath, not as healthy as he once was and he was struggling to keep pace. The snapping twig and footsteps got louder and he started to panic, what if he didn’t get through the gate?

As he was approaching the thick metal, he had to take a moment to think how to deal with getting over it. He wouldn’t be able to get through as they weren’t going to open them for a submissive on his own. It was at that moment the guards got the upper hand. 

Out of nowhere, two of the guards, more brawn than brain, as Eli was grateful to note, swooped onto his much smaller stature, however, Eli was determined he was not going down without a fight this time! In that instant, he had a moment of clarity; they could try to break him and use their strength and brutally violent tactics, but he was Eli Hummel, and he was not gonna break!

He felt one of the guards try to pin his arms behind his back, and instinctively slammed his foot into his crotch. The guard yelped out in pain, releasing his grip on Eli, and as his companion stopped in his tracks to help the other guard, Eli took off like lightning.

Eli was making good pace but it was the large gate that proved to be his downfall and he felt a guard slam into him as he neared the gate, pushing him against the bars and making his face slam into the metal. He felt almost winded as hands clawed at him again, roughly grabbing his arm and forcing it behind his back, “No please!” he shouted out, “Please I gotta get outta here please!” he screamed as he struggled against the guard holding him still.

"I don't think so, twink," said the guard Eli had attacked. "Now if you had only played ball, maybe my friend and I would have been way nicer and more accommodating…" Eli's breath caught in his throat as the guard's calloused fingers started to stroke his cheek.. He listened in horror as the guard continued, "Yeah...we could have had some fun all three of us, but you had to make it difficult for yourself!" The guard spat out. "Now you're going back to your room heads will throw you in the dungeon, and you're gonna wish we had had our fun, as the rats might just make you a snack!"

With that, the two guards finally managed to overpower a kicking and screaming Eli, and although he fought valiantly against them, he was dragged back to his room, and shackled.

When the taunting, laughing guards eventually left, Eli finally broke, trying to pull the restraints away, but having no strength left to do so. He shut his eyes tightly trying to stop the tears that threatened to engulf him, from falling. He had tried so hard to stay strong, but enough was enough. He didn’t even try to tend to his bruised body and he ignored the trickle of blood that ran from the small cut on his lip, an injury he’d obtained in the scuffle. 

Eli felt so beaten, and broken, and he had almost made it. And...and now he just felt hopeless and full of despair, all over again… Why did everyone leave him? Was he just not lovable? Why did this always happen to him?