#* ── HOW AM I TO BE JUDGED ? / KHALEESI.

[codenameantarctica]

Daenerys vs Aegon

So, after reading a bit into comments and theories about Young Griff/Aegon - which I certainly should not have done because many of those are really appalling – it seems that basically Dany is a total Queen for the same things for which Aegon gets mocked and abused. LOL!

And that’s when comparing them is completely nonsensical anyway.

It’s measuring up »Character A«, that we saw very little of and have no insight (POV) into, to »Character B«, that we have hundreds of pages on (both 3rd Person and POV) – and then judge »Character A« on the grounds of »Character B«.

From the tiny bits we saw of Aegon, it’s not even possible to create a reliable characterization – not if you’re not just trying to shove bias into the gaps as it suits you and execute some wishful condemnation.

For example, one of the accusations towards Aegon that I read quite commonly is that he is arrogant. Not that I would even see that between the lines – but that’s where I am as positively biased towards him as others are negatively biased towards him. Yet apart from that, Dany has a whole lot of scenes – every time she acts as a Khaleesi or Queen in particular – where she is arrogant or at least tries to be. Furthermore, she constantly goes on about all her titles, about being the blood of the dragon, and demands her people to cross the world with her to get her the throne she believes to be hers. That she is fearing and doubting and insecure, we only know from her POV – and the only reason why we do not know about Aegon’s inner monologue is that we did not see any yet. That, however, does not mean that he is a plain, empty caricature who is all that little bit of Tyrion- and JonCon-POV and nothing more. GRRM does not create plain caricature characters – so it’s very unlikely that there is not very much more to his character than the little we saw.

Another accusation often read is that he is naive and inexperienced – and for this, he is compared to Dany, Jon or Robb. But they WERE exactly that: Naive and inexperienced. They grew from it, but they have been with us for a very long time. We saw them grow from being little more than a child to the characters they are today, or to their demise. But Aegon has been sheltered away until basically today. He studied the world, but he has no experience with people. He, just like the others, will either grow or find his demise. Robb was hugely naive throughout his whole campaign, he was just lucky for a while. He headed out to safe, then avenge his father, and it got turned into a wanna-be-king-megalomania. Dany was a scared, little mouse until she found the strength to grow. Jon was as entitled as a bastard could be and pretty arrogant at that until Donal Noye and the rest of the Night’s Watch set his head right. Or take Renly who proved to be stubborn and naive beyond anything when his entire justification for wanting to supplant his older brother was: “people like me more than Stannis“.

Aegon has no tale like that YET. He has been on a boat, hidden away, sheltered. He is just starting out into the world. So comparing him to where Jon and Dany are today, or where Renly and Robb were before they ended, is really absurd. No matter how far the rest of the story is advanced, he is still at the beginning.

Now, please don’t get me wrong: Dany is a wholesome, fascinating character. She has her flaws and strengths because she is not just a caricature. But exactly that is what makes the way Aegon is treated so unfair.

And regardless if he is Aegon or only Young Griff, he is a boy of ~16 who has not seen much of the world. Yes, Daenerys is younger, but she has also been through a lot of shit already – which is not Aegon’s fault, nor is it his fault, that he is inexperienced.

Yes, he assumes that Daenerys will marry him – but so does Daenerys! When she thinks about the son of her older brother at one time, she believes that, had the boy lived, she would have married him because it would have been natural. Targaryens did that sort of thing. Daenerys grew up with that knowledge, just as Aegon did. The idea, that Dany might have a different idea on the matter, makes Aegon react angrily, though it’s not clear whether he is angry that he has been treated like he is a stupid child by Tyrion, whether he feels offended by the idea that Dany might not accept his hand in marriage – or whether he is completely shocked by the idea that all the stuff he has been fed his whole life might not work out as smoothly. It is so easy to read »spoiled brat« into that, but this is only Tyrion’s POV – and Tyrion was in a very bleak mood at that time. We see Aegon being friendly and gentle, laughing and joking, smart and a good student, helping and even saving Tyrion – yet it is that one moment at the Cyvasse Board that people use to judge his character – though that moment was so much more soul wrenching to him that just him losing the game.

All in all, judging Aegon on the same grounds as judging Daenerys makes absolutely no sense. Nothing of this is his doing, either. He is a young boy who is still trying to find his bearings in a world that probably consists only of lies. He might be just a pawn in a play, or he might be the last dragon, and then he is the rightful heir – no matter if Daenerys likes that or not.

[babyboy-cody]

ch. 01 | finding out

summary: after feeling so different for the past week, you decided to go to the doctor in order to find out what was actually wrong with you. the cause of you feeling this way was something you weren’t expecting.

warnings: depictions of early signs of pregnancy, clueless grayson, mentions of sean, implications of smut, mentions of abortion

quick note: okay so this is my first ever grayson series, so hopefully i make you guys proud. some of the pregnancy signs are things that some people don’t go through, so i wanted to make it as realistic as possible. any feedback would be great! <3

word count: 2.6k

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Waking up early in the morning, you never expected to feel like shit. From the position you were laying in, your tender breasts were pressed into the bed, causing you the slightest pain. You groaned and winced as you went to turn. Just from moving, you felt nauseous and dizzy, the blinding light from the sun pouring into the room caused you to squint. Grayson wasn’t in bed beside you as usual. He always woke up at the ass crack of dawn to start his morning routines of breakfast, exercising for two hours, and shower. The rest of his day is spent doing activities, such as woodworking/building, spending time with you, long-boarding, or exercising some more.

A wave of cramps suddenly hit you, causing you to muffle your long moan into your pillow. You tucked your body into the fetal position, tucking your hand under your sweatpants to press down on your lower stomach, hoping that the pressure would ease the aggravating pain. For the past week, you’ve been constantly getting cramps. The breast tenderness happened only a day later. Premature cramps are the usual sign of starting your period. What confuses you is why you woke up with no blood staining your underwear or pants.

Sluggishly grabbing your phone from under your pillow, you opened up your usual period app. The last time you had gotten your period was exactly the same day as last month. Your eyebrows furrow when you see that you should’ve started your period exactly two weeks ago. You hastily sit up, immediately shutting your eyes as a wave of nausea hit you like a tsunami. There was brief commotion coming from the kitchen, followed by Grayson yelling, “Ethaaannn!” You faintly heard Ethan’s boisterous laugh, which only amped up his younger brother’s annoyance.

You swallowed the forming saliva at the back of your mouth. You suddenly felt so exhausted, even though you had a whole ten hour rests with no interruptions or disruptions. Swinging your legs to the side of the bed, you slowly got up, shutting your eyes to avoid feeling dizzy so fast. You desperately craved Grayson’s warm skin against yours in order to make you feel better, especially when his strong arms were wrapped around you, holding you nice and tight against him. As though the universe heard your thoughts, Grayson enters the bedroom, a comfy hoodie adorning his upper body as gray sweats adorn his lower half. He looks so comfy and warm and soft with his messy hair and growing bed and bright smile.

“Look who’s finally awake!” He announced and spread his arms wide, running over to playfully (and gently) tackle you into the bed.

“Gray, Gray, baby, be gentle,” you quickly told him, hands grabbing onto his arm as the room suddenly spun. “I’m not feeling too good today.”

He immediately sat up, using one hand to push his long hair from his face as the other slowly sits you up. His eyes were full of worry as they scan you up and down. You smiled tiredly and gently stroked his jaw, loving the feeling of his scruff on your palm.

“What’ve you been feeling?” He was quick to ask you, desperately wanting to know why you’ve been feeling sick and what could’ve caused it. “Do you think it’s cause E was sick last week?”

“I mean, maybe,” you shrugged. “I’ve been getting cramps and my boobs have been hurting as usual before I get my period.”

“So you’re starting you’re period?” He questioned, thinking that could be the reason.

“I don’t think so, babe. I’m getting symptoms I’ve never gotten before and it’s worrying me,” you quietly told him, your voice holding such worry that he’s never heard before. “I’m so exhausted and dizzy and I can’t even stand without feeling like I’m gonna pass out.” You rubbed your hands over your face, groaning at the uncomfortable churning in your stomach as you suddenly thought about eating. “I can’t even think about food without feeling like I’m gonna throw up everywhere.”

“Baby, you need to make an appointment for the doctor or the GYN to see what’s going on. You don’t know if this could be something serious,” Grayson anxiously tells you, his large hands cupping your cheeks to make eye contact with you, his thumbs lightly stroking your warm skin back and forth.

“I will,” you held onto his wrists. “I promise.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

After your serious talk with Grayson yesterday, you made an appointment to go to the gynecologist the very next day. Nerves were bubbling in the pit of your stomach, causing you to use the bathroom four times in the past hour. Ethan and Kristina were worried as well, unsure of what to do or say to make you feel at ease and less anxious. If what’s causing your sickness something terminal, they knew that Grayson would quite literally go insane. You were his person. Grayson was a believer of soulmates, and he knew deep in his heart and soul that you were his.

This morning, it was eerily quite. The air was awkward and tense with no one knowing how to break the ice. Grayson’s jaw was clenched and he watched your every move carefully. You were feeling a little better, only eating in small quantities and being forced to drink lots of water (by Grayson). Your appointment wasn’t until 2 in the afternoon, so you had plenty of time to do your morning routine and talk to Grayson. He insisted on staying in the bathroom when you shower and do your skin care.

“Gray, I’m not dying,” you joked lightly.

“Don’t fucking joke like that!” He raised his voice, glaring up at you as he sat on the edge of the top, elbows on his knees with his fingers interlocked. “That’s not fucking funny.” There was anger in his tone, and you realized how insensitive it was of you.

You knelt down in front of him, unlocked his hands and slithering more between his spread knees. He doesn’t look at you as he looks down at the ground between your own knees. “Hey,” you whisper, hands on his broad shoulders, lightly shaking them. “Look at me, please.” When he does, you see the slightest of tears along his waterline. Your heart breaks when his face scrunches up in agony and his eyes shut, his hands immediately covering his face to press the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Grayson…”

He sniffles into his hands, shaking his head frantically. “I can’t lose you,” he weeped so softly, his voice muffled behind the barrier of his hands. “I can’t fuckin’ lose you the same way I lost my dad. I-I just can’t.” You let him pour out his emotions, all the while holding onto his shoulders and gently pushing his hands away from his face to wipe away his warm tears. The area around his eyes and cheeks were tinged red, his beautiful eyes now turning puffy. “You don’t understand h-how broken I’d be without you, Y/N. It’s like… a piece of me might die.”

“Baby,” you whispered brokenly, shaking your head as you hurriedly pull him into your chest. His head buries itself in the crook of your neck. “I am so so sorry for making that joke, alright? Hey, look at me.” You lift his head up, wiping more of his tears with your thumbs. “I promise you, from the bottom of my heart, that everything is okay.” At the sound of your soft whisper, he lets out a quiet and shaky sigh. The thought of now hearing your voice anymore physically hurts his heart. He hesitatingly nods, desperately wanting to believe your words. But looking into your eyes this very moment, seeing the determination and confidence in your face, he has no other choice but to believe you.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Sitting on the exam table in the cold room that slightly smells of hand sanitizer and wood, you didn’t know what else to think. Your thoughts were a jumbled mess as they tried to unravel itself to form a coherent sentence in your head. Grayson wanted to come in with you, but you had told him to stay in the car, out of fear of him hearing dreadful news. You closed your eyes and breathed in and out deeply, trying to calm the storm that’s beginning to make itself known. What you didn’t hearing was the door opening and the OB-GYN, Dr. Khaleesi, stepping in. She was a lovely Indian woman who was older than you by 20 years. You’ve been coming to her for a year and a half now for your usual STD checkups or any worries you had with your uterus. She was the sweetest woman you’ve come to known and you never felt judged by her.

“Everything alright, Y/N?” She asks as she shuts the door, leaving you both in privacy. She holds the clipboard to her side and sits onto the rolling stool to slide herself closer to you.

“Just nervous,” you laughed awkwardly.

“Well, it’s just me,” she tells you softly, her accent sounding so elegant as she gently pats your knee. “Now, it says on the appointment form that you’re hear for a checkup regarding your period.”

“Yes, um, I’m late on my period - about two weeks now. But I’ve been feeling a lot of cramps and breast tenderness and all the symptoms of starting my period. And I don’t know why,” you sighed and picked at your nails, not sure how to keep still.

“Alright, well, I’m going to be asking you a few simple questions and I want you to answer as honestly as possible,” Dr. Khaleesi tells you. “What day was your last period?”

“The 6th of May.”

“How long does menstrual cycle typically last?”

“Six to seven days, give or take.”

“And are you sexually active?”

You blushed as you thought about Grayson. You hadn’t forgotten the romantic picnic dinner he had set up in the backyard with a large projector hung up. Sitting there under the stars with him, being in such a close proximity to that man always made you feel so nervous. But having his hands on you, his lips on yours, his large and muscular body between your thighs, it made it all worth it. You most certainly didn’t forget how many times he made you orgasm in under an hour. You were thankful that Ethan and Kristina had gone to their own date night for a few hours.

“Y/N?” Dr. Khaleesi’s voice broke you free from your thoughts, causing you to clear your throat out of embarrassment.

“Y-Yes, I’m sexually active,” you softly responded.

Dr. Khaleesi nods and checks off the small YES box beside the question. “And how often do you engage in sexual intercourse?”

“Um, about three to four times a week.” You suddenly burst out into laughter at the surprised look on her face. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she laughs as well. “At least one of us is getting some action, huh?” She laughs again when you cover your face, muffling your small groan. “Back to the questions. When was the last time you were sexually active?”

“I’d say last week, but I’ve been feeling these symptoms for the past two weeks now,” you hesitatingly told her, secretly not wanting to know the cause in order to avoid the dread and heartbreak if something was terminal.

“And what symptoms have you been having?” She asked you, now looking at your expression rather than the clipboard in her hands.

“Um,” you looked up in thought, “Nausea, cramps, breast tenderness, sudden feeling of exhaustion, loss of appetite, and I’ve been peeing a lot more.”

Dr. Khaleesi nods silently, her sudden silence makes you feel incredibly uneasy. You swallow down and exhale a shaky and audible sigh. She gives you a reassuring smile. “Do you mind if I exam your stomach?”

“N-No,” you quietly said and laid back on the cushioned exam table. “Go ahead, please.”

And after hearing your consent, Dr. Khaleesi pulled on some blue latex gloves and hovers her hands over your stomach. You pull up your shirt and pull the cracked skin of your bottom lip with your teeth. She gently presses down in different areas of your stomach, periodically asking, “Does this cause any pain? Discomfort?” And each time, you shook your head. As she was getting to the end of the exam, you went over every single possibility. What if it’s a tumor? What if you’re pregnant? Could it be cancer? Is it internal bleeding? Somehow, you couldn’t find a reason for each possibility to happen. You had no family members with a history of chronic illnesses. And you and Grayson always used protection, never birth control because of the harmful effects to your body. When Dr. Khaleesi was finished with the brief exam, she sighs softly and lays a hand on your shoulder.

“I know why you’re feeling like this, Y/N. And before I tell you, I want you to know that I am here if you ever need advice on how to do this, okay?” She tells you in a reassuring and motherly tone.

“Just tell me,” you whispered, voice cracking as you strong to keep a strong front. But with every second, it slowly disappeared, revealing a vulnerable and terrified woman in front of the doctor. “Please…”

Dr. Khaleesi sighed quietly and licked her red lipstick stained lips. “You’re… pregnant. Presumably one month pregnant.”

If you were standing, you were sure you would’ve dropped to your knees. Your mouth dropped open, trying desperately to form words, but all that came out was a weak squeak. Tears lined your waterline as you shook your head in disbelief.

“N-No, that’s… that’s fucking impossible,” you frantically said, shaking your head even more as you hastily stood up and walked over to the other side of the room. Your hands went to your hair as you paced back and forth. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my, God,” you whispered to yourself, muffling a sob with the back of your hand. “I.. he’s been talking ab-about having kids for-for so long and…” your voice shook between every word. “We’re both so young!”

“We have options, Y/N,” Dr. Khaleesi gently told you as to not scare you if she rose her voice to speak over yours. “There’s abortion-”

“No!” You shouted. “That… That is out of the question. I-I need to talk to him. I need to see where his head is at first, and-and then I can talk to you about… options,” you whispered the last word. You are pro-choice, but you know deep in your heart that you couldn’t terminate this pregnancy. If Grayson thought the opposite, you’re not sure what would happen next.

“Would you like me to schedule your next appointment in one week?” Dr. Khaleesi quietly asks you as she notices the mental battle you’re currently having. “That way you have plenty of time to discuss what you both think, okay?”

You hesitatingly nod and look over at her with an expression that nearly broke her gentle heart. “I-I’m scared, Daksha.”

At the sound of her name exiting your lips, she immediately crosses over and pulls you into a hug. She understands that this may be unprofessional to her bosses and what other patients may see as inappropriate, but she would never let a terrified woman feel alone.

“You are going to be okay, child,” she tells you quietly, one hand wrapped around your shoulders as the other lightly pats the back of your head. “Whatever you decide, I will help you along the way, okay? Do not forget that.”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

CURRENT TAGLIST

@etherealdols @certainaesthetic

[groovypalacewobblereagle]

Dany antis:

We have to understand that Mirri was devastated over her town and the abuse she suffered. To empathize. She’s a “hero” therefore, for killing a BABY.

We do NOT have to understand that Daenerys was devastated over the loss of her husband and child. She does not deserve empathy despite her losses. She’s “evil” for killing a grown woman who killed a baby.

We have to understand the culture of wealthy grown educated men who have subjected human beings to slavery for hundreds of years.

Oh, but they weren’t alive for hundreds of years! We can’t hold that against them!

But we also can’t deny them the benefit of the excuse that they’ve done this for hundreds of years.

We do NOT have to understand the culture of a teenage girl who is a Khaleesi of the Dothraki, who kills the wine seller for trying to kill her and her baby.

Because she killed him painfully. We don’t care that Varys suggested killing her with the tears of Lys, and remember that the victim dies an agonizing death. We don’t think about the morals of a painful death when the intended victim is Daenerys.

The same applies to when she crucified the slavers. We’re going to insist she did it indiscriminately, even though we know she didn’t kill a single woman who would have had less power, or child who would be entirely innocent, nor did she kill random civilians, they were all nobles. All slavers. But there are innocent slavers! Innocent slavers are definitely a thing.

The people who make laws that are not up to modern standards, like Daenerys, are evil.

But the people who follow those laws, like Ned beheading a man for running away from the dead, or Jon who beheaded a man for refusing to follow an order, or Robb who threatened to hang a man if he didn’t join the war against the Lannisters, aren’t.

Daenerys may have warned the slavers she would show no mercy if they didn’t free the slaves and pay them reparations, but she should have given them a trial even though they own the system.

It’s true they were all slavers, but if she was punishing them for being slavers, she should have killed all of them. The fact she didn’t kill all of them shows it wasn’t about justice, so she’s evil.

But she was also wrong for wanting to kill all of them, and Jorah talked her out of it. The fact he had to talk her out of it shows she’s evil.

And then when Daario tried to talk her into slaughtering them Red Wedding style, and she refused, that’s also proof she’s evil because Daario represents her evil nature.

We can empathize with the slavers! Because we might have done the same thing! We all like to think we’d stand against slavery, but if it’s our culture we might not. And we might stand by while our friends torture 163 children to death to spite an abolitionist.

We say we empathize with the slaves, too, but it’s more we sympathize with them. We understand that they are victims. We don’t see ourselves in their place. We don’t empathize with the anger the parents of those children felt. They follow Dany blindly. They don’t understand choice. That’s why they follow her.

What we CANNOT empathize with (because we know we would NEVER) is a teenage girl who walked along a road lined with the corpses of children who were tortured to death to spite her. We know a GOOD ruler would be stalwart in the face of such horror and hold a trial. Because even though the slavers own all the systems in existence in that city, there’s no way a trial could have caused the death of lesser evil instead of greater. Trials are foolproof!

She should have killed them all or tried to have every one of them examined by witnesses who are profoundly biased. We cannot empathize with that.

Dany’s attachment to the Dothraki shows her savagery. The Dothraki are rapists and slavers and she lusted after her husband when he made that speech and so it doesn’t matter how she tried to fight rapists later. They are all terrible. The Khals are monsters and she loved one, so that shows she’s a monster.

Also, she’s evil for killing the Khals.

She was wrong for sacking Astapor and Yunkai but not staying to rule them. She made it worse because poverty is as bad as slavery and the freed slaves are not able to build their own society, and she should have known that. She was wrong for not staying and ruling them.

She was also wrong for staying in Meereen and ruling it because that makes her a colonizer.

She agrees to allow adults to sell themselves into temporary slavery, and that’s wrong, because voluntary indentured servitude is as bad as generational chattel slavery-except when it’s in Westeros! The rulers in Westeros are rightful, but Daenerys was trying to enslave them by having them bend the knee! She was using the privilege of her father’s name, and it’s different when the Starks do it.

Dragons are evil. They serve no good purpose and she’s evil because she has dragons.

Also, Jon should have a dragon.

When Arya met the Lannister soldiers, and Ed Sheeran, that was to show how she realized that they are not all bad. This shows that sometimes enemies are good. This will show that we should empathize with enemies. That Dany is bad because she doesn’t even though she agrees to help the Starks, whose father supported the man who murdered her brother, and was not disturbed by the murder of her niece and nephew. Who would have killed a baby, had he known Jon was her nephew. Who would have killed her.

This does not apply to Daenerys and her armies, of course. The North was one hundred percent right to treat her with hostility.

Daenerys considered killing Tyrion when she met him! This shows that she is willing to kill people just because they are related to enemies! She’s evil!

Even though she named Tyrion her Hand. Even though she agreed to aid the North with no strings attached once she saw the army of the dead. Even though she accepted Varys into her service when he’d tried to have her murdered. Varys being part of the plan to sell a teenage girl into sexual slavery was not evil because she turned that to her advantage.

Dany was wrong for even considering killing Tyrion despite the fact that she didn’t and ultimately named him her Hand.

She was wrong for killing the Tarlys even though they were oathbreakers who killed their own friends and attacked their liege’s home. Even though the punishment for oath breaking is death. Even though they refused to bend the knee in exchange for keeping their lives, lands and titles, which is standard procedure in Westeros. Even though they refused the Wall, where Tarly sent his eldest son.

She didn’t kill them for oathbreaking or murdering her allies. She killed them for not bending the knee! Even though she only attacked them after they did that, and she did not harm Jon when he refused to bend the knee, she allowed him to mine her dragonglass, and offered to provide men and resources to help.

Sam was not wrong for hating Daenerys for killing his father, even though he was an oathbreaker, an abuser, and threatened to kill Sam. Even though he said that nothing would give him more pleasure than telling Sam’s mother that her son died. Even though Sam knew of Dany’s great deeds from Aemon. It’s understandable that he would still mourn his father. Even if his father was a monster, we have to empathize with his anger.

YET Daenerys is dead wrong for calling out Jaime for murdering her father. Her father was a monster! How dare she feel anything about his murder! She had no right to object to Jaime’s presence at Winterfell, even though he tried to kill her on the battlefield and said straight out said he wasn’t sorry for all he’d done and would do it again to protect his family.

She was wrong for restoring the family name of the man who killed her brother and cheered the brutal murders of her niece and nephew. Because she only legitimized Gendry for personal gain, even though he could have done the opposite of joining her, and tried to take the throne himself.

She is wrong if she is good to the family of her enemies because she is self serving, and she is wrong if she’s not good to them because it’s not their fault.

The Starks are not wrong for judging Daenerys by her father’s actions even though she came to help save them. Sansa is not wrong for wanting to evict children from their homes because their families were traitors.

When the Starks are suspicious of the family members of those who’ve harmed them, it’s fair. They are being smart.

When Daenerys is suspicious of the family members of those who’ve harmed her, it’s proof of her being paranoid like her father.

When Sansa told Jon that the free folk should join their fight against Ramsay, that they owed it to him because he’d saved their lives, that was smart!

When she told Arya “you should be on your knees, thanking me,” she had every right to assert her accomplishments.

YET, Daenerys was very entitled to want the North to fight Cersei with her in exchange for her helping them defeat the army of the dead, even though Cersei was their enemy too, and she sent them a letter saying “come bend the knee or face the fate of all traitors.”

It was not wrong of Jon to tell the North he bent the knee to save them, even though she said she’d help before he bent the knee.

It’s Dany’s fault the Night King got a dragon even though the wight hunt was Tyrion’s idea and Daenerys did not like it. Even though Jon told her, “I don’t need your permission. I am a king.”

Dany held Jon prisoner even though he had to stay to mine the dragonglass and he stated that he did not need her permission to leave. That’s what being a prisoner means, right?

Daenerys went mad because her family was fraught with incest. This does not imply that Jon will go mad, because his mother was not a Targaryen (even though his mother’s parents were related). Generations of inbreeding unequivocally mean madness, but the ramifications of those generations are undone if one guy at the end of the line produces a child with a woman whose parents were also related. That’s how genetics work, right?

Daenerys is a colonizer. Even though she didn’t have any goal other than destroying the slave trade in Essos. She only did that for selfish reasons even though Yunkai trains bed slaves and neither Meereen nor Yunkai added to her military might. Even though she never forced her religion or language on them. Even though she renounced power over the cities when she left, so that the people could choose their own leaders.

The Starks were never colonizers! Even though the earliest Starks were First Men, who committed genocide against the Children of the Forest. The First Men called themselves the First Men, they did not acknowledge the humanity of the Children. Therefore, the Children were not human.

The First Men destroyed the Children. The Starks built a Wall to separate the dead from the living, but left thousands of living and Children of the Forest at the other side of it. The Starks destroyed the other families, established power over the area, established their religion and language as the official religion and language. The Starks became the Kings of Winter by bringing to heel, and sometimes extinguishing, other families. That’s fine because the Starks are good. That’s not colonizing! The Starks were always good! They killed the warg king and his sons and beasts and then married his daughters. That’s not rape, that’s marriage!

The Targaryens who adapted the Westerosi religion and language and did not in any way repress other religions or languages, were the oppressors.

Dany hardly did anything in the Long Night. Her armies and dragons did not thin out the dead army, making it possible for Arya to kill the Night King. Two dragons can only do so much against an army of 100k. Even though Dany’s army also was over 100K.

YET, she burned MILLIONS in KL (even though the population of KL is under a million and even though I just said she could not have possibly taken out much of the dead army.)

When Daenerys didn’t weep and wring her hands over her abusive brother’s death that was evidence of her turning “mad.” Even though he abused her, sold her, and pressed a sword to her belly and threatened to cut her baby out of her body.

When Sansa smiled as Ramsay screamed, being torn apart by dogs, that was not a sign of anything bad. He abused her!

When Daenerys crucified the slavers even though a trial would have yielded nothing, because they had owned the entire system, that was a sign of her being a villain.

But Varys wasn’t wrong for trying to poison her before she did anything wrong because he sensed what she would do! Instinct > Trials. Unless the “instinct” is Daenerys’. Then it’s paranoia, even when the people she suspects of plotting against her are plotting against her.

When Arya killed two men, baked them into a pie, fed them to their father, slit his throat, smiled faintly as he died, cut off his face, then killed every one of his bannermen, with no knowledge of whether those men had been there at the Red Wedding, or whether they’d spoken against it, that was not a sign of her being a villain. Because if it’s a Stark, we understand complicity.

Besides, Arya is not a ruler. Only rulers do harm. Not explorers! Explorers who believe “I’ll never know her, she’s not one of us”, have never done anything bad in all history. Happy Columbus Day, btw.

[lillianawayne99]

Fireborn Chapter Three

Pairing: Jon Snow & Oberyn Martell X OC

Genre: NSFW AU

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: smut, violence, fluff, blood, mixes the books and show, spoilers for seasons 6-8

Synopsis: Valaena Fireborn of House Targaryen has reached Westeros after spending her life in exile. While learning about her homeland and preparing for the war ahead, she meets two men who would change her life forever and learns of a threat to all humanity.

Previous Chapter // Fireborn // Masterlist

“I am not your little princess.”

Jon’s skin was rough with callouses and warm against mine. His hand was notably larger than mine, his fingers wrapped around my hand in a way that felt protective. I couldn’t help but wonder what he thought about how my hand felt in his. Did he like that my fingers were slimmer than his? What about my own callouses from years of holding a weapon? Was he expecting hands that were soft and smooth like a Lady’s are supposed to be?

“I won’t behave like a queen while I’m here.” I didn’t know how long we stood there before I broke the silence. Time felt slowed when all I could think about was the man before me.

“Thank you.” Jon’s voice was taught, but I couldn’t tell if it was because of my chest nearly pressing into his, his hand encompassing mine, what I’d told him, or something else. By the way he suddenly dropped my hand like I'd burned him, I’d guess it was the close quarters.

“Is there anything else you want to ask me?” I took a small step back to create some distance between us.

“The language you and your escort speak, is it Dornish?” Of course he came back to that when I gave him the chance to question me.

“Dothraki.” I’d already told him more than anyone else in this country knew about me and he took it well. Adding to it wouldn’t hurt, would it? “I suppose that only leaves you with more questions. My siblings are dead. Before he died, Viserys married me to Khal Drogo. He’s dead now too.”

“Khal’s are Dothraki horselords, right?” Jon didn’t offer me sympathy or pity I didn’t want. A tell tale sign he’s lost loved ones too.

“Yes. That's why Kovarro calls me Khaleesi.” Seven fucking hells why am I telling this man everything?

“You said you’re the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, that means?” The way he spoke without judging or interrogating me, asking questions out of pure curiosity, made him seem trustworthy.

“I united all of the Dothraki into a single horde. I hate to ask more favors of you, but I’d like to send a raven to my in-laws in Dorne. I’m hoping to form an alliance with them.” I doubted I’d have time to travel south to visit the Martells before my army and advisors reach Dragonstone in three moons.

“Of course, the ravenry is in the Maester’s Turret near the kitchens. I’d like to tell my sister you’re here. The Lady of Winterfell should know.” Gods this was turning into a big mess.

I only intended for King Jon Snow to know who I really am, and now he wanted his sister to know? I didn’t know the woman, I hadn’t even met her. How was I supposed to know if she wouldn't tell anyone? I was hoping word wouldn’t spread I was in the country before I was already on Dragonstone, but who knows if that would happen now.

“I don’t want word to spread that I’m here.” I reiterated my initial request, making sure he knew I didn’t want Lady Stark to know if she couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

“Don’t worry, she can keep a secret.” Jon’s conviction convinced me that she could be trusted.

I gave him a small nod in agreement. If I wanted an ally of him and trusted him for some unknown reason, I had to show him. I needed to earn his trust, and if that meant letting his sister know about me, so be it. I hoped I wasn’t wrong about him, or his trust in her.

He turned around and walked over to the door. Holding it open, he followed me out into the hallway where Kovarro was waiting. Jon left us to find our way around the castle while he went in search of his sister.

“How did it go?” Kovarro followed me through the halls of the Great Keep.

“Well, I think. He wasn’t angry, he just asked me a few questions.” I meandered through the building until I found my way out into the courtyard where men were sparring.

“What questions?” He was concerned, but he had his reasons.

“Why I’m in the North. What my intentions are.” Jon asked me other things as well, but Kovarro wouldn’t like it if I told him. He’d be more suspicious of our host. I should probably share my companion’s notions, but something about the man I confided in made me trust him.

“What did you tell him?” Kovarro was just as wary as normal. I couldn’t blame him for it, his job was to protect me.

“The truth.” I was vague on purpose. We were speaking in the Common Tongue. Anyone could hear us, and I didn’t want them to know what we were talking about.

The rest of our walk to the ravenry was silent apart from the sounds of the bustling castle. People were constantly walking by us, going about their daily lives. The dull roar of people talking and sparring could lull anyone into a sense of false security, but we weren’t anyone. We were traitors to the crown conspiring to overthrow the current monarch. If the wrong person found out, our heads would decorate the walls of the Red Keep.

It didn’t take long for us to reach the ravenry. The Maester helped me find a scroll, quill, and inkwell so I could write my message. He promised to send it off for me, but I wasn’t planning on letting him out of my sight. I needed to ensure he didn’t read it or forget to send it out. The Martells were the one house I could almost certainly count on to join my war against Tommen. They hated the Lannisters for reasons much deeper than my own.

Prince Martell,

I hope this letter reaches you in good health. After years in foreign lands, your sister-in-law is in Winterfell eagerly awaiting your response.

All my love, Allyria Martell

Hopefully, they could understand what I meant. If this letter fell into the wrong hands and was clearer, a Lannister force would certainly be sent North to root me out. I couldn’t give myself away by stating my real name, but Elia Martell married my older brother, Rhaegar, and I didn’t think Doran’s wife is named Allyria, if she’s alive. Add in the hint about Essos, and they should immediately know who sent the letter.

Maester Wolkan sent the letter out immediately after I sealed it. He didn’t try to read it or wait around to send it with Kovarro and I watching him carefully. Either he could sense that sending the message out immediately was of grave importance, or he was scared one of us would harm him if he tried anything. Both assumptions would be correct.

As soon as I saw the raven take flight towards the south, I took my leave of the Maester and found myself wandering towards the courtyard. The air filled with the sound of metal on metal, soft and loud grunts of men clashing their swords. Kovarro must have seen the longing on my face. Within moments after I realized where my feet were taking me, he had found an opening in the swathe of men sparring.

“We haven’t had a chance to practice in quite a while, Khaleesi.” A playful smirk tugged at his lips while he pulled his twin arakhs from his belt. “Care for a session?”

“You have no idea, zhey qoy qoyi.” My lips lifted into a smirk that mirrored his own.

I lifted my own arakhs from where they hooked onto the belt wrapped around my waist, holding them loosely at my sides. Kovarro made the first move, swiping lazily at my stomach with his right hand. I easily knocked his blade away from my dress. He tried to use my defense as a distraction and swiped at my throat with his left, but I bent backwards to avoid the blade.

A cold gust of wind caressed my face while his arakh passed by my face. I stood and stepped forward, frustrated that my dress prevented me from moving as freely as I liked while I swept both of my blades towards his chest. A harsh ring of metal colliding rang through the air when he brought his own blades up to block mine. We stood there relentlessly pressing our blades into each other, trying to push the other back.

My feet dug into the ground and my brow furrowed in concentration while I struggled against his strength. We were at a stalemate, but I couldn’t have that. I furiously pushed with all my strength and forced his weapons away from each other. Taking advantage of the opening, I swung at his face and stomach at the same time, but he managed to block the attack.

“Something the matter, Khaleesi?” Kovarro taunted how uncomfortable I looked.

“I hate these fucking dresses!” The words slipped from my mouth before I had time to process them. I supposed I had the adrenaline from the fight to thank for that.

The frustration of fighting in a skirt and corset finally filled me, pushing me to charge Kovarro with all my strength. He wasn’t expecting the sudden motion. His momentary shock allowed me to hook my right arakh in his and yank it out of his hands. In the same fluid motion, I brought my other arakh up to his neck.

I didn’t have time to process the look of admiration in his eyes due to the raucous laughter coming from my right. Putting my arakhs back onto my hips, I looked over to see a tall, bearded man with red hair and bright blue eyes dressed in furs holding his chest while he laughed. My gaze stretched up to the ramparts above the man laughing to see none other than Jon Snow watching me with surprise. Did he think my weapons and calluses were for show?

“You fight better than most men, little shadowcat.” The bearded man had a strange accent I couldn’t place. It was similar to Jon’s Northern accent, but distinctly different.

“Little shadowcat?” I raised an eyebrow at the man’s nickname for me.

“Little shadowcat.” He mirrored me by raising his own eyebrow and stalked towards me.

“Who are you?” I fought the urge to look back at Kovarro. He didn’t know who this man was either and would most likely just give me a small shrug of confusion.

“Tormund Giantsbane.” He stretched a hand out towards me. I’d never met a wildling, but based on the furs he was wearing, I’d wager a guess that he was one. What were wildlings doing south of the Wall, and as guests of the King?

“Allyria Martell.” I took his outstretched hand.

A soft grunt escaped my lips when he took my hand and pulled me into him, my free hand flying to his chest to steady myself. What the hell was this man playing at? Did he know nothing about Westerosi customs and that the family name I gave him is that of a noble house? Despite his glaring lack of manners, he was irrefutably attractive in a savage kind of way. Not that I was complaining, Westerosi consider the Dothraki to be savages and their culture is mine now.

“You dress like a Lady, but you don’t fight like one.” His voice was full of reverence despite the words that should have been mocking me.

“Are you saying Ladies can’t be warriors?” I tried to step away from him, but he had managed to place a hand on my back without me noticing and had me trapped against him. Based on the smirk on his face, he was enjoying this much more than I was, especially since I wasn’t enjoying it at all. I’d only ever let one man hold me like this, and I wasn’t intending to change that.

“I would never.” The look of feigned offence on his face almost made me smile. Almost. He let go of my hand and reached up to gently pull my braid around to rest on my shoulder. “Kissed by fire.”

“Only in the sunlight.” I came to my senses and wriggled out of his grasp, slapping his hand away from my hair. “Get off me.”

My bells in my hair chimed when I moved my hair back behind me and stepped around the bearded wildling. Jon was no longer on the ramparts watching, so I made my way to the Great Hall. I needed to bathe, and I didn’t know who else to ask about having a bath drawn. I could draw my own bath, but I didn’t know where to get the water. The safest course of action is to ask the man in charge, hopefully he wasn’t too busy for me.

When I was mere feet away from the door to the Great Hall, a woman clad in a dark red cloak left the building in a hurry. Her eyes were downcast, focusing on the ground before her feet. I wanted to know what was wrong with her, but it wasn’t my place to ask such questions.

The mood in the Great Hall was tense when I entered. Jon stood behind the table at the head of the room and an older man missing part of his fingers on one hand was standing near him.

“What can I help you with, My Lady?” Jon was in a sour mood, I had bothered him at a bad time.

“I need to draw a bath, and I didn’t know who else to ask.” I slowly approached Jon, standing on the other side of the table.

My arms instinctively wrapped around my chest to protect myself from the cold in the room. The heat from sparring with Kovarro had left me, and the chill in the air had seeped through my dress into my bones for the first time since I arrived. I was used to the heat of Essos, not this biting cold.

“I’ll have a servant draw a bath in your room.” The lack of emotion in his voice didn’t go unnoticed.

“Thank you, Your Grace.” I nodded towards him politely and made my way around the table to leave through the doors he had shown me earlier, not wanting to overstay my welcome and trouble him longer.

“Can you find your way?” He gently grasped my arm, stopping me just as I passed by the table.

“I remember well enough.” My body turned toward him and my head lifted to gaze up at him without me telling it what to do. His lips were turned down, like they always were, but he didn’t look as tense as when I walked in.

“Are you cold, My Lady?” The question caused me to glance down to see that I had started to shiver.

“I haven’t gotten used to the chill yet, Your Grace.” When I looked back up, his brown eyes were filled with concern.

“Here.” Jon picked his thick fur coat up off the large table and wrapped it around my shoulders. The moment the fur rested on my shoulders, my body started to warm. The cloak smelled like him, and it was oddly comforting.

“Thank you. I should get going.” I didn’t want to ruin the small moment we shared, but I could tell he had more pressing matters to deal with than me wanting to wash off the sweat and grime from the day.

“Of course.” He adjusted the cloak so it wrapped around me snugly, then let me go with a wistful gaze.

Next Chapter

Reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated!

© LillianaWayne - all rights reserved. Do not copy, modify, repost, or share on other platforms without my express, written permission.

[runeterrankhaleesi]

Hey, Khaleesi! Remember that alternate Ruination link? So here, for @theruinednymph and all who don't understand Polish, I give a translation of the script to English :)

Here's the (more or less accurately) translated version of Marvecc's Ruination. I'm giving you the closest thing to what he said but in English. Sorry for inevitable inconsistencies, typos and misspellings 😅

It is commonly known that for quite some time I've been complaining about the Ruination, I shamelessly admit. But I think nothing I said was unjustified. When the Ruination came to an end, I had sort of a bad hangover. I noticed wasted potential. "So make a better event. If you're so smart!" So uh… let's try!

I may not have plentiful resources as Riot Games do, I am no graphic designer or animator but I know a bit of game lore so I've decided to take it one step further. I've decided to fix the Ruination. It will be a huge test for me, because some day, in five, ten, fifteen or twenty years I'd like to create my own world. My own universe. That's why today you yourselves will judge if in any way, knowing the lore of some world, I am fit for this task.

Welcome dear viewers, I am Marvecc, and today I will be telling you how, in my opinion, the plot of the Ruination should've looked like, or how I would create it.

Let's assume some basics in the making of the plot. Let's leave the cinematic from the season's beginning because it was fantastic, let's be real, and let's leave the regional structure. It's clear that a very important changing element was the characters' journey in a way that everyone could find themselves in their favorite region. Well, maybe not everyone because not all regions had been presented, but the majority of them. So without further ado, let's move onto my machinations.

As we know, the cinematic ended on a ship with the sight of Senna and Lucian, and in my opinion the champions should've immediately headed for Bilgewater it was there Lucian had allies in the fight against Harrowing and it is there the plot of the game "Ruined King" begins. We reach the harbor, Lucian and Senna meet with Miss Fortune, shed light on the situation and she decides it's time to head to the Temple of Nagakabuross on the hill, asking the high priestess of the Kraken - Illaoi - for help. The four of them meet at an inn, discussing the end of the world and the apocalypse of the undead. Everyone is wondering how to stop Viego. What to do to save the world from destruction. It turns out that our conversation was unintentionally being listened to by Yummi - yes, exactly. Yummi - who quietly has been sitting in a corner in the shadow and eavesdropping on what our champions were talking about. Lucian and Mf obviously laugh the cat off, but she had taken notice of the unease of humans and all creatures while travelling, caused by the sudden attack of the Mist. When those attacks had taken place, she was in Freljord with her friend Braum and they'd witnessed the Mist and its abominations slaughter the inhabitants of one of the Freljordian villages. Braum jumped into the frey, trying to protect the people but he was anguished when he realised that he's, sadly, powerless.

Caring deeply for his homeland, he asked his friend Yummi to try and gather some information. And she did. After a while of sitting on a table, she leaped onto the Book, vanished and jumped out of a portal moments later with Braum in tow. You know, it makes sense, they're both friends and Braum understands that now the biggest threat for the Freljord is Viego. Our characters debate on how to stop him. It turns out however, that they don't really have any plan. They don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. How are they supposed to face the might of the undead, having so little force at their disposal? Now, if the power of Nagakabuross and Illaoi, who despise the dead, is some sort of a natural counterpart to the undead, our group heads to the Temple of the Bearded Lady. Illaoi decides it is there they would find the solution.

And curiously enough, Buhru Sentinel awaits them there with Gwen who met him while searching for Senna whom she'd sensed because Viego didn't take the whole fragment of Isolde's soul, which we know from "the Ruination", as she herself also possesses a fragment. Buhru Sentinel has a similar role. He's, somewhat, an introduction, tells us he'd fixed the connection between the base in Bilgewater and the one in Ixtal - of course I'm talking about the Sentinels' bases. His role is of a man who travels with us, a sage of sorts, who stays behind and repairs the links in bases.

Well then. We've been to Bilgewater and we have the means to travel to Ixtal. You may be thinking "Marvecc, okay, but the event started in Demacia". Mind you. I'm making up my own version. Also, Demacia lies, you know, on the opposite side of the known Runeterra and honestly the Mist comes from Shadow Isles, so we constantly, not paying mind to the danger of it, travel to those regions. In the original Ruination, the role of the Mist had been terribly diminished to a substance which just searches for Isolde. I would make it so that we fear the Mist. We fear Viego's army and we flee from east to west, not go to random locations. And obviously we don't go to Shadow Isles just like that in the end where a huge army if undead resides which for some reason can't see us and doesn't murder us on sight.. Of course, just so you know. The Mist can materialise in various places thanks to Vex, as it was shown in the cinematic but a path from Shadow Isles - escape from the Mist - seems more logical to me than braving overtaken regions.

Anyway, Buhru Sentinel also tells us that he knew about our arrival and had sent Rookie to greet us or welcome us to Bilgewater. He wasn't supposed to reveal anything to Senna and Lucian, because Buhru found out about a Sentinel who abandoned his post and didn't really respect Sentinel's rules - you surely know I mean Akshan - and wanted to check what are the intentions of Senna and Lucian.

At the same time in the scriptures of the first Sentinels, Buhru has found information about an ancient prophecy, foretelling the great return of the King of the Dead and his defeat. Now, just a head's up, because I wrote a prophecy:

Darkness of his heart will swallow the world

Nations and countries will not bend the knee

It is not his goal

It is her goal

Obsession of feeling, love is all that matters

No matter how, it only matters when

The dreary King of the Dead beside his Queen

They shall change the future world

Darkness only darkness can defeat

Love can be beaten by vengeance

And Heavens can fell Death itself.

I don't know what it's like, this was my first prophecy, I hope it's not abysmal, but it will be important later on.

Anyway, our whole group debates on how to defeat Viego and it turns out that they don't have a better chance than to rely on the prophecy. The Sentinels don't know how to trap Viego, how to stop him. So far, they only know that he can be slowed down, with relic weapons for instance but not just with them. But eventually, the old Buhru Sentinel interprets that it won't change a thing. For this reason, our group decides to follow the prophecy and travel to Targon, where, as it is stated, Heavens can fell Death itself.

And that's how our adventure begins, where without chances or resources, Sentinels aren't trying to stop Viego from finding the fetters of his wife, but attempt to follow an ancient prophecy of the Sentinels of Light. Let's add something extra from me. A lore accurate expansion to the cinematic about the Ruination. In the cinematic, the locations of Noxus, Demacia and Ionia weren't an accident, in my version that is. Let's add Freljord as well, because we know that something like this has happened there too but it didn't make it to the cinematic. All those places in my opinion were important to Viego. Why he's so powerful also wasn't really explained by Riot Games. I have a good idea for this. Sure, partially thanks to Vex he could cause a global Ruination, but to me a magical aid of a teenage Yordle is a bit too little.

In Demacia, Viego discovered a piece of his wife, the same in Freljord. When it comes to Ionia, he knows that the land is too magically powerful to allow him to freely take over Runeterra and search for Isolde, when Ionia with its primordial magic can challenge him. This is why, in the cinematic, the Ruined King first wanted to weaken Karma, the land itself and its Spirit, while in Noxus he wanted to check something out. He wanted to discover the dark secrets of the Immortal Bastion. Here, let's remember that Yummi is still with us, and let's assume she knew that Vex fled from Bandle City, met Viego and Yummi figured it out when she encountered the Mist, as she sensed Yordle magic within it. She explained to the group that the combination of the King of the Dead and Yordle magic is.. very powerful. That's why our characters decide on a plan consisting of three elements. First is strictly about the game "Ruined King". Illaoi, Braum and Miss Fortune want to head to Shadow Isles as a distraction, to focus Viego's attention on themselves and buy more time. Yummi goes to the Bandle City to mobilize and convince Yordles to help the creatures of the Physical Realm. And this was the second part. For the third part, Senna, Gwen and Lucian set out to Targon. And here our party splits up.

As we prepare for the journey in "Ruined King" we're attacked by Pyke, which makes sense. MF, as a captain, is on his list. Due to the preparations for the sail, nobody notices anything, nobody notices Pyke. But! MF is saved at the last moment only by a strong tornado which knocks the assassin back. It turns out it's Ahri and Yasuo. The tornado gives Illaoi a chance to subdue Pyke with the power of the Goddess. He's a bit brainwashed and decides to assist in the quest. You know, it would explain his odd behavior. The group thanks for the help and asks who the unknown newcomers are - which are Ahri and Yasuo. Ahri explains that she's looking for a craftsman by the name of Melo, which is accurate with her lore, and Yasuo is her bodyguard, which is accurate as well. During the game "Ruined King" we gather resources for the journey, prepare our crew and collect information as Ahri and Yasuo, to find out that the aforementioned craftsman had headed - for reasons unknown - to Shadow Isles. Because of that. Ahri decides to join the expedition but she and Yasuo don't know - Illaoi, MF or Braum (who's very upset about it) haven't told them - the true goal of the quest, a mission with no return. A mission to delay the march of Viego or at least busy him.

I didn't make up what the craftsman's fate could've been because I didn't write that much about it, I just created the basics. We set to Shadow Isles and - not to make an entire plot to "Ruined King", because it's not the goal of this video - our task is to activate the pillars with the defense mechanism of the Blessed Isles, which could lead to the imprisonment of Viego and the Black Mist. You know, like in the cinematic with Thresh. The overall plot of the game would be about it. But this we would find out from the old Keeper on Shadow Isles. From that moment, our party struggles against the abominations of the Mist, Ahri and Yasuo find out about the true goal of the expedition, Ahri gets to know the truth behind her origins and the craftsman, she develops mutual feelings for Yasuo, only for their mission to fail in the end.

The finale is this: Hecarim stands in the way of Braum when he attempts to activate a pillar, Illaoi - using the Goddess' power - begins winning the fight with Viego (initially she was only supposed to stop him). However, she has used so much of her strength that her influence on Pyke weakened enough for him to snap out of it and take her with him to the depths. Viego - having no better opponent - takes control of MF, Pyke, and on the battlefield remain only Braum duelling Hecarim in the distance, and Viego, MF, Pyke - and of course a lot of creatures of the Mist, nothing new - versus Yasuo and Ahri. Suddenly, on Shadow Isles appears Yummi who hastily exclaims that she will save her friends. Unfortunately, Yasuo realises that the cat won't make it on time. He tells her to save Ahri and Braum, while he alone faces Viego, saying - imagine Yasuo's voice - "Time for me to atone for my sins". With a tornado, Yasuo repels the Mistwraiths as Ahri strikes Viego with all her force, which doesn't do him much harm but disorients him enough for Yummi to take wounded Braum, return for Ahri and the last thing we see in the game is Viego running Yasuo through with his blade. And may I remind you, at that time we didn't know yet that being impaled by Viego causes Ruination. That's why the game ends with a scene in which we are certain that Yasuo dies - because "Ruined King" was supposed to come out before the event. Additionally our characters leave to god-knows-where and Illaoi, from what we know, is also dead. A whole lot of cliffhangers.

That's it for the first part regarding "Ruined King". And considering that the game by Riot Forge was going to come out before the event, instead of the cinematic in Demacia, I would release a cinematic which shows Yasuo's ultimate sacrifice, Ahri and Braum on some neutral background, being approached by a stranger. A tiny stranger with a hammer. And the last look at Shadow Isles, Ruined MF, Pyke and Hecarim. And Hecarim asks Viego: "My liege, what now?" And he replies: "Everything is going according to plan."

Let's leave Yummi's plot for now. Let's now move onto the story from the client. Senna, Lucian, Gwen and Buhru Sentinel, who will be our Wayfinder, a person who repairs the links between quarters, head to the base in Ixtal, which happened to be hidden but lies close to an Ixtalian outpost. Of course, Buhru Sentinel - who, for short, we will be just calling Buhru - stays to fix the portal but characters are taken hostage during a scouting mission. Everyone here thinks they are spies from Piltover, which, lorewise, would be correct. In secrecy to talk with us, comes Qiyana intrigued by our presence, to check what the Sentinels do as she isn't so quick to wrongfully judge them. Senna explains that the Black Mist is approaching and they need to take all measures to fight it. Qiyana goes to Yuntal to give them the story of captured Sentinels. No one approves that she talked to them at all and she is about to be punished but the news of the Black Mist and the undead come from the east borders of Ixtal. Yuntal decides it's not the time to dwell on what Qiyana did, protecting the country from the Mist is their priority now. Ixtal's authorities order for as many citizens as possible to be moved to their archology, to have all masters of the elements stand against the Black Mist. Of course, nobody bothered with releasing Sentinels, because why would they? Qiyana, knowing that this fight is pointless, frees Sentinels, committing treason in the eyes of Ixtal's people and flees with them to Sentinel quarters where Hecarim catches up but is ultimately fended off. Buhru managed to make the connection with the base in Piltover. Before heading out, Sentinels find armor and relic stone in Ixtal quarters and allow Qyiana to upgrade her blade with relic stones, put the armor on and join the ranks of Sentinels of Light. Though, her devotion isn't entirely sincere. She knows that if she's the one to defeat Viego, she will have the right argument to seize the rule over Ixtal. Region's finale goes like this: Viego arrives, talks to Hecarim who tells him the news that the Sentinels have a plan to stop him. The last look is at the capital of Ixtal - Ixaocan - and its siege. As we know, Yuntal - the masters of the elements - are very powerful but have thousands upon thousands of foes to go against.

Let's move on to Piltover. The Mist has also reached it but something stopped it from breaching the city. Senna and Gwen, alone in the quarters, discover the closeness between one another, through the fragments of Viego's wife. Senna suspects everything before Gwen does and tells her that Viego did say that Isolde is his world, and this will be his main plan, which Senna knew earlier already but I won't spoil the ending.

In the base in Piltover we encounter Dess and Adda, of course. Those characters I would 100% leave because they have been very nicely done. Senna tells them of Viego's true plan. Dess and Adda mention a long-nonfunctioning device called Zindel's Incognium, which is able to find every person on Runeterra. Making use of the lack of the Mist in the city, the Sentinels go to Heimerdinger who is the only person capable of uncovering the secrets of the device's function. Heimer initially complains about not having time, about having enough of his own things to do but the professor is ultimately convinced by Gwen's positive attitude and pleas. He repairs the device, and it is revealed that Isolde's fetters are still in Demacia, Freljord and Shurima. The party thanks Heimerdinger for assistance and returns to the quarters. Meanwhile, it turns out Viego also knew about the device from one of the souls from Piltover and headed for the city. And, of course, here initially, during the first wave of the Black Mist, Viego was doing reconnaissance. A scouting of the terrain. But he didn't know, didn't find the locations of all fragments of Isolde. Because, honestly, from what I remember it wasn't specified why Viego and the Mist follow Isolde. Okay, we know that it does and that it's linked to Viego's despair but the despair in itself knows where all the pieces of Viego's wife's soul are? I think if it was made in the way that Viego doesn't have full knowledge about Isolde and the location of her soul's fragments it would've been more interesting. Either way, Viego goes to Piltover. And there at the entrance he meets Janna, and discovers it was her using her powers to defend Piltover and Zaun from the Mist at all costs. You know, Mist, and Janna is the Goddess of the Wind. For 20 days she's been keeping the Mist at bay but exhausted, she was no match for Viego who quickly defeated her. However, because Janna is after all a Goddess and not some poorly dressed lady who is just standing and calling tornadoes, with the last bits of her strength she makes an escape. Although Viego is strong, it's not like other champions are trembling in their boots before him at all times. Viego steps into Piltover, finds the device and bumps into Ziggs who left Zaun to see what's happening. And he notices that Heimerdinger repaired the machine and, being his former student - after being Ruined by Viego - betrays the secrets of the location of the fetters. Ziggs, naturally, gets "Ruined" skin. On the other hand, Heimerdinger brings along Vi and Caitlyn to the base to assure safe return and aid. Both Caitlyn and Vi decide to stay in Piltover to try and stop Viego alongside Adda and Dess but once he discovered the placement of his wife, he'd long made his escape and began his search. The Mistwraiths however, remained. At the end we see Thresh who goes around - like in the normal event - gathers power and collects souls from the Mist. Here, Buhru exclaims that the portal is too weak to take everyone to the same place. But it can take us to two places. Either to the base in Noxus, to find out what Viego wanted to discover there, or ti Shurima. The party breaks apart. Senna, Qiyana and Rookie go to Noxus, while Lucian, Gwen and Buhru - to Shurima. We witness a touching farewell between Lucian and Senna, and canonically the Noxus is unlocked because that's where we head first.

We know that there aren't any fragments of Isolde's soul in Noxus but Senna decides to discover Viego's plans. We come across Darius, Draven and Samira who lead the investigation on this case. Why has the Mist suddenly appeared in Noxus? Draven immediately wants to fight the Sentinels but Darius holds him back, seeing that Sentinels mean no harm to Noxus, quite the opposite. They want to discover what the King's deal is. Turns out that Viego, desiring to become unbeatable, already empowered by Vex, seeks a way to make it impossible for anyone to face him in a duel. And to make sure no one and nothing stands in his way as he searches for his Queen. For this reason, the Ruined King descends into the depths of the Immortal Bastion. He finds the demon summoned by the Black Rose. Viego right away kills all members of the organisation and stands face to face with the demon.

Turns out the Black Rose and LeBlanc beckoned it to fight another monster, another demon. She even has a line in the card game: "One monster to end another".

But the demon is unable to leave the chamber it was summoned in. And so, Viego proposes a deal, to join forces with one another and together become invincible. Why is this particular demon so important for Viego? We know that it is as powerful as big is the sum of its allies and Viego has plenty of allies. Plenty of souls in the Mist. Plenty of the dead. Atakhan realised Viego's potential and agreed to his terms. The demon and the King of the Dead merge into one being. Viego's fingers elongate, his armor appears more ethereal and he's wearing the demon's helmet. Viego gets a skin "Demonic King Viego" or something like that. He leaves the Immortal Bastion and comes across the Sentinels. Seeing him, Draven jumps him, after a second ending up Ruined. Viego naturally laughs at this pathetic attempt and flees. The Ruined King becomes pretty much indestructible.

Darius exclaims that he needs to consult the Grand General, while Samira follows the Sentinels. In Noxus quarters she is given a relic pistol as well as upgrades to her blade. Unfortunately, our team has no clue how to get to Demacia, because as I said Buhru is in Shurima with Lucian. Here, Darius proposes a solution in the form of magically modified Drake Hounds, tame towards those who were assigned to them. The Hounds are made for incredibly fast travels and were supposed to be a special tool for spies and messengers. They only nees a. Couple hours of sleep, thanks to which the Sentinels in around a week would reach Demacia.

Here, we completely cut off from the plot of the Sentinels and Rookie. Instead, we impersonate one of Camavor's soldiers who accompanies Viego alongside many others in a journey to Ionia. There are no fetters there but considering this is the magically primordial land, it poses a threat to Viego's plans. The magic of Vastaysheirei - ancestors of the Vastaya - as well as the Vastaya themselves, and all forces and all champions can use the power of the Spirit Realm and challenge him but this won't be possible once Viego conquers and Ruins Ionia. He goes to the Everlasting Altar right away and duels Karma, for her to ultimately fall. The Spirit of the land was corrupted but the duel didn't last five minutes but rather long hours. Karma realised that the King of the Dead is coming for her much earlier too. Shen, Kennen and Akali answer her summons along with Kinkou Order. Irelia stands with them. The champions try to get through to the Everlasting Altar barred by the wraiths but once Viego seized control over Karma, the fight was turned around. Viego descends along with Karma who throws all fighters back with a flick of her hand. Irelia stands up first and to extinguish the Spirit of the land once and for all, Viego impales her, causing her Ruination. Here, we're avoiding an inconsistency - why Sentinel (Ruined in this story) Irelia could fight with her blades.

Viego, Karma and Irelia vanish into the Mist but the wraiths remain to kill the rest. As they're about to die, Yone arrives, who has sensed the presence of a powerful demon, one he'd never sensed before. He felt the bond with the King of the Dead and came to fight him. Yone rescues the group because his demonic blade of Azakana can cut through the wraiths, and the last to fall is our Camavorian soldier, ran through with a spiritual blade by Shen. Before passing, he heard Kennen say that he has a plan to save Ionia and the whole Runeterra.

Next, we move to Shurima. As I said, we have Lucian, Gwen and Buhru here. And just so you know, because Rookie - the person we associate with - is not here, we remain nobody. A passive spectator of the events. Like we have on Shadow Isles, because Rookie, the person we steer, is bot always necessary. Of course we meey Akshan in Shurima Sentinel outpost, he doesn't give a damn and his story is very similar to the one in the client. I wouldn't change it that much because the construction in my opinion was fine but I would split it into two separate segments.

First - similar to the one in the client. And second - in which Viego heading to Shurima, before he claims the fetter, meets Azir and his devoted soldiers along with Nasus who knew about the approaching calamity from Ixtal - honoring the old alliance of countries. Viego decided he doesn't have time for this, knocked everyone aside and moved onward to reach the fetter which he takes. He kills Lucian and takes Buhru but Akshan revives Lucian, while Gwen - by Lucian's orders - hid herself away in the Hallowed Mist. The group meets up with Azir and Nasus, introduce them into the subject, and the emperor sends his most powerful warrior to join the Sentinels and assist with fighting the dead. Azir stays and defends his land from the wraiths. Nasus is given a special weapon in the quarters and Azir gifts him with the golden armor of the elite. Nasus joins the Sentinels and because Targon is nearby, this part of the team heads there.

Let's come back to the first part of the group. Senna, Qyiana, Samira and Rookie reached Demacia. The Mist has already taken the majority of the known lands and reached the capital of the Kingdom as well. The team meets the Dauntless Vanguard by the entrance who don't want to let them in at first but after Senna explains - that this is the matter of life and death and everything going on around - the warriors call for their leader, Garen who quickly takes the Sentinels to the palace where Jarvan and Tianna Crownguard debate what to do next. How to stop the Mist and Hecarim who - according to a published story - was already in Demacia. As a reasonable ruler, Jarvan simply asks what the Sentinels need. Senna switches off for a moment, hearing a small voice of Isolde whispering, telling Senna to find her in the city. She says she wants to stop Viego, which would add up since she'd already warned Senna in one of the stories. After a while Jarvan asks again and Senna replies "We only need time to stop the advance of the Mist". Jarvan promises to give them as much time as  possible and sends Shyvana with them.

When the group leaves the palace, the Ruination is raging across the city. Unexpectedly, from a rooftop jumps down Vayne who says she'd been watching them and has parted with Poppy, and that she's ready to help the Sentinels. Senna - knowing where the base is - heads to the quarters and gives Vayne a weapon, accepting her among the Sentinels. As they leave, everyone spots a flock of wraiths and Camavorian dragons as well as Ruined Cadregrin mounted by Viego. Shyvana decides to battle him but becomes Ruined. The Sentinels flee, prompted by Jarvan and the rest saying that soldiers of Demacia will stop Viego but he grew.. bored after a short fight with Shyvana and followed the Sentinels tracking down his Mist leading them to Isolde's fragment. Taking it, Senna once again hears the voice of Viego's wife and the fragment merges with the one inside of her. Viego arrives and says it's impossible. Isolde doesn't want to return to him? What do you mean? What's that about?? While he's shocked by his wife's behavior, the animated colossus Galio grabs him, which gives the Sentinels some time.

Simultaneously, Poppy appears, telling Vayne that she's found what they'd been looking for. You know. The thing from the cinematic. The Sentinels ask about it, Poppy explains there's no time for that. The champions quickly escape, enter some tenement, dead down into the basement where lies the tile engraved with the symbol of the Sentinels of Light. Poppy says it has taken a lot of time to discover all this and put all the clues together. Senna steps onto the stone, activating a passage in a wall where a secret portal to one of the bases was hidden. The entire group goes out into the unknown. Exactly! Into the unknown. We have no idea what's happening to them. I love such cliffhangers. I think it would be an interesting turn of events.

Once again, we're not Rookie and our plot guy is another Ruined soldier of Camavor. Viego heads to Freljord with Vex where they seek the last inanimate fetter. Not much is happening in the Freljord and Viego passes through one, two, three villages. The Ruined King doesn't fight anyone, he doesn't mean to Ruin anyone, he doesn't particularly care about taking the Freljord. He does nothing but search for the fetter. Vex absolutely dislikes it, asks Viego why he's becoming such a lamer, to which the King orders her to be silent. Vex asks again, again and again what's this about until he loses patience. He strikes her and she lands a good couple of meters further away. Viego floats up - with the demon's aid he can naturally - to the young Yordle and tells her she was just a pawn in his game. She was to empower him so that he could spread the Mist all across Runeterra in search of his wife. Vex is surprised that Viego is so prosaic and he strikes her again, once more causing her to fly quite a distance. The Shadow of course stands up to Viego but it has no chance - it is thrown back as well. Viego leans over Vex, calling her naive and says that after all, she can't undo the spell given to him, that he fulfilled his goal and has no regard for her.

Vex runs away in tears with Shadow's aid, saying "This isn't over yet". Viego finds the last fragment but suddenly he bumps into Thresh. The King asks if he tracked down the rest of the living fetters. He doesn't realise that Thresh is changing, because the Chain Warden tries - thanks to the newfound strength - to manipulate his looks as he did before. Exactly how it was in the novel. Thresh says he'd found Gwen in Targon and that's where the undead are heading but sadly.. he is unable to locate Senna.

We move onto the final region that is Targon. Here, Lucian, Gwen, Nasus, Akshan - you know, the entire party from Shurima - reach the base at the foot of Mount Targon. The group locks themselves inside to reconsider their next move. What happened to Senna, is she going to send them some information as to what they'd found in Noxus, what was Viego looking for? To Lucian all that mattered was that his wife had not returned. Nevertheless, the Sentinels decide to stop for the night at the base to rest up and regain strength. In the morning everyone is woken up by the arrival of Senna, Samira and the rest of the party. Lucian hugs his wife, asking what was happening, how she's back. And she is about to reveal to Lucian and others what happened when suddenly they hear someone calling from outside. "Sentinels of Light! You are surrounded! Come out with dignity and without tricks as our goal is one and the same!"

It turns out that before the base wait armies of Solari and Lunari with Diana, Leona and Atreus on the lead. Everyone is shocked by this sight. Leona comes up to the Sentinels, saying that the Heavens told them of a great threat looming. That the time of the world's union has come. This is why - by Leona's orders - the Solari stand side by side with the Lunari in the face of oncoming doom. While in Ionia, Diana heard the will of the Aspect to the Moon to make haste and return. In Targon she met Aphelios who is now in the army of the Lunari - naturally much smaller in comparison to the Solari - and he'd found Diana's weapon, kept it hidden, knowing that the First Light of the Moon would one day return. This is why Diana would have her blade here. Diana returned to Targon and there duelled Leona as the card game implies but both the Aspect of the Moon and the Sun ordered them to cease, unite against the approaching danger. Senna tells Leona of the ancient prophecy, it turns out that Leona knows it and tells the group to climb Mount Targon as soon as possible, as in the face of such a threat truly only Heavens can lend their aid. Solari and Lunari stay to delay the march of Viego.

At the beginning of the path we meet Taric who becomes our guide. Thanks to his powers and help the journey to the top is incredibly short. In the span of one day the Sentinels - thanks to the help of the Aspect of the Protector, which would be accurate with the lore - summit Mount Targon. Taric helps them bypass the Arbiter but at the top there's.. nothing. Gates to Astral Targon, the place where the Aspects reside remain closed. Sentinels go into a panic, what's happening, why is nothing here? And then.. the Mist reaches the peak. The last place of Runeterra not claimed by Viego. Sentinels lose hope but regardless, they are ready to fight. All Ruined champions step out of the Mist. MF, Pyke, Karma, Shyvana, Ziggs and even the old servants such as Hecarim. Yasuo, if you still remember him, and all others. Additionally, Ruined Atreus comes forth - not Pantheon, let's not be pretentious with resurrecting the Aspect of War. Viego exclaims that the vicious fight at the bottom still continues, that hehe underestimated Targon's strength but he managed to win a duel with Atreus, corrupt him and head with a part of his army to the peak. In desperation, Lucian steps forward and proposes Viego a deal. He can have his soul, he can have whatever he wants, as long as he lets Senna and the Sentinels live.

Viego simply laughs, with one swift motion killing Rookie. Lucian goes into a rage and attacks Viego, but barely in a second Viego laughs again and floats up, runs him through and to Senna's dismay Lucian is Ruined. Very pleased with himself, Viego orders his servants to kill the Sentinels. All Ruined champions charge at them. No hope, none. Here, I imagined a scene, like from the endgame. A portal appears out of which jumps Yummi. A positive little aspect, Gwen is happy to see her favorite cat. Yummi brushes dust off of her fur and nose with her paws and says: "You didn't think we forgot about you, did you?" And THEN. From the portal comes Yone wielding his red blade but the other that of a Sentinel and wearing Sentinel armor. Out comes Sentinel Kennen, Sentinel Tristana with her Gunners and Sentinel Teemo. Yes, Sentinel Teemo ·-·

In addition, Sentinel Poppy, Braum, Ahri and Lulu. It turns out that the second group travelled to Bandle City where Poppy and Kennen were secretly members of the Sentinels from the Spirit Realm, from the city of Yordles. That's why Kennen knew to take Yone to Bandle City and knew what to do next. Poppy too knew what to do in the case of Ruination. It's just a little Yordle twist, not to make the entire event too dark. I was also thinking about Corki because he's cinematically the best Yordle and the cinematics with Yordles in general are probably the best but I was afraid I'd overdo it.

Of course, Viego hasn't been expecting the enormous comeback, he orders to destroy the Sentinels. Some champions generally fight with the armies of wraiths but certain duels break out, like Yasuo/Yone where the elder brother strives to save the younger, Taric, as the Aspect's host and the mightiest warrior, stands against Atreus. In front of Senna stands Lucian who is defeated by her. But during this fight Senna sees Viego tearing out a fragment of Isolde from Gwen who soon collapses to the ground. Then, Senna hears a faint voice saying: "Now".

She drops her cannon, runs up to Viego and musters up her whole strength to draw in fragments of Isolde's soul. Viego, to put it shortly, looked at Senna, intending to end her life but in the same moment Taric - having already won with Ruined Atreus - jumps at Viego. Only he stood some chance. However, after a short struggle Viego manages to, not defeat per se, but knock Taric back. Meanwhile we see Teemo who addresses lieutenant Lulu "It is time". And Lulu, as a powerful sorceress - certainly more so than a teenage Yordle - reverses the spell which Vex bestowed upon Viego. In turn, Viego weakens, he senses it, but says that it changes nothing. Because, really, it does change nothing. The alliance of the demon and the King of the Dead is still much more powerful.

Even still, meanwhile, Senna connects all fragments of Isolde's soul in herself. Senna becomes Isolde. After a moment of transformation, Senna's appearance drastically changes. At first, she looks like a spectre. The fighting stops, everyone is astonished. Viego gazes at his beloved and says "My love, you have returned to me at last". Isolde comes up to Viego, embraces him and strokes his cheek. After a while though, out of the Mist she summons Thresh who approaches asking: "Yes, my lady?" Viego is disoriented and asks Isolde how she knows Thresh, and the Warden replies in his charismatic mannerism: "Well, your highness… I have always been loyal. But not to you." Then Thresh holds up a mask which he secretly obtained in Ixtal and hid from the eyes of all. How? If it was a soul fragment, he could easily lock it in his lantern and make it undetectable to Zindel's Incognium. Now, Thresh pulls the jade mask out from his lantern and tosses it to Isolde who absorbs the last fragment. And from a spectre she turns into a horrid monstrosity. Albeit.. with curves and features of a woman. We know Riot doesn't like to exaggerate. Isolde - or Senna - after the change says to Viego that the Ruler of the Dead can be only one.

In despair, Viego stands before his love, not really knowing what's going on but - not to make him a total noob easy to beat up - he decides "So be it". They cannot defeat him because he's too strong. To which, Thresh lifts his lantern and in the blink of an eye begins to absorb the power from the Mist. Remember the demon I mentioned? The more allies it has, the more powerful it is. I think it would be an interesting way to weaken Viego. You know, Thresh drains the Mist, the souls within it, simultaneously taking power of Viego and the demon. He takes pretty much everything. Even the demon. You still might think I made Viego a bit of a noob anyway because in the end he's still defeated but throughout the whole adventure I was trying to paint him as a guy you really should be afraid of. Who really does something to the Sentinels. Here however, he loses. In the end, Isolde using Senna's power drains the remnants of the Mist from Viego like in the cinematic. His servants stand stunned as he kneels in disbelief. Senna comes up to him and he asks her why she's done that.

Here we have a bit of a retrospection. Isolde tells him that despite his great love, the King treated her as his property, he was sickly jealous and Isolde thinks it was because of him she passed in agony. Because of the pain and misery, the gentle woman changed beyond recognition and wished only for vengeance as her shattered soul also suffered unspeakably. Isolde looks at Akshan and tells him to shoot Viego. He hesitates but she says it's the only way to reverse what Viego had done after his return. To reverse the Ruination of the entire Runeterra. To reverse his deeds. He almost shoots but looks at Isolde, asking how she knows this. And suddenly, she changes to resemble Senna more and with her voice she says she's always here. That she's an ally of Isoldeof. It's only to convince the Sentinels and gain their trust. Akshan takes a shot at Viego. He cannot die but the effects of the Ruination recede from champions as well as the Mist releases Runeterra. Additionally, Gwen creates a prison from Hallowed Mist for Viego. Why Gwen, you ask? Let me explain. Powerful magic of every fantasy world is love. In youth, Isolde pouring her feelings into the doll accidentally - she was no mage but certainly a strongly magical character - creates certain magical abilities which made sort of a sentient construct that afterwards, I mean now, without the soul fragment could exist on its own.

Lucian comes back to himself as well, we have a touching scene but this isn't the end. Terrified, Lucian runs up to Senna. He asks how all this could have happened, what they're going to do now that Senna has two souls. Senna looks at Lucian, a tear runs down her cheek and Thresh says: "It is time, my dear". Lucian turns to the wraith and is about to shoot from his pistol. But Senna stands before him. She turns to Thresh "He at least deserves an explanation". Thresh replies, alright but make it short. Senna reveals a great secret to everyone..

In Bilgewater, after learning of the prophecy she encountered Thresh while she went out to get some air. He already had absorbed some of the Mist and could assume human form. He approached Senna and asked her for the way but she didn't know and had no time to react as Thresh caught her with his chains, saying that if she starts screaming, he's going to kill everyone.. in Bilgewater. Senna promised to be calm, Thresh released her and told her how he hates Viego and if they work together, they can stop him. He explained that Sentinels without aid from the dead stand no chance against Viego. He reveals to Senna Viego's plans regarding Vex, the facts about the demon and Isolde. He adds that this is the only way for Lucian to survive. And here, in spite of herself, Senna decides to trust Thresh. She shares the prophecy, the plans of the Sentinels but together they come up with a secret plan of their own.

Thresh convinced that Sentinels's prophecies are worthless and the only way to defeat Viego is to use his weakness against him. Isolde, who - Thresh knows - wants revenge against Viego. And he promises to spare Lucian if Senna absorbs all fragments of Isolde who was unspeakably powerful due to the Ruination, which will cause Senna to have two souls, giving her enough strength to beat Viego. In the end though, the deal was simple. For Thresh's aid Senna promised him the soul of Isolde

Despite his hatred towards Thresh, Lucian understands, Senna explains she did this all to save their love but Thresh grows impatient. Senna takes a couple of steps away, once again changes to Isolde and Thresh begins to drain her soul. It takes a while, everyone is blinded by blue light which fades after a moment. And once it does, we see only Thresh. Without Senna. Thresh becomes even more powerful through the absorption of Isolde's soul. Everyone thought that Senna would remain with them. Disoriented Lucian furiously says that it was supposed to be just Isolde. To which Thresh replies: "Don't tell me that after all the trouble you have caused me I would stop tormenting her.. and you."

Laughing, Thresh knocks back everyone with his chain. With the might of thousands of souls, demon and corrupted by Ruination's paradox Isolde, no one present could be a match for him. Most of the Sentinels fall from the summit of Targon bit Yummi - thanks to her Book - saves all one by one and takes them to the bottom where Diana and Leona wait for them. At the peak there is only Taric. Here I will tell you how I pictured it in my head. Immense power of Thresh thrums in the air and his great plan was truly a masterpiece. Taric attempts to attack Thresh but the host of the Aspect of the Protector is also thrown off the peak. But here we have another twist.

Remember the prophecy? It would be nice if it was fulfilled. Grand, golden Astral Gate. Thresh stares stunned as from the sky descends a creature with blazing wings, donning armor of cosmic stone and wielding twin blades burning with astral fire. Kayle returns to Runeterra. She doesn't have her helmet and her eyes are filled with white energy revealing that she.. is an Aspect. Not just a host. But she herself became the Aspect of Justice. The mightiest champion currently residing on Runeterra. In a split of a second she flies up to Thresh and starts a duel. Still, with all the power he possesses, Thresh is certainly a worthy opponent. The fight between the Aspect and the new King of the Dead is murderous. Sentinels, Solari and Lunari gaze up at the skies, at the peak of Targon in awe, watching the shifting colors as Kale and Thresh battle one another. In any case, Thresh - unwilling to lose so soon and endanger his newfound power - says "This isn't over, Aspect", dissolves like mist in the air and retreats. Unmoved by this Kayle flies down to Lunari, Solari and the Sentinels, announcing that an end must be put to Thresh and his likes. 

And here we have a bittersweet ending. Yummi returns everyone to respective regions and Viego is moved to Shadow Isles where he's guarded by previously allied with the old Keeper Yorick, and yes, I know the Maiden wasn't here as a fetter but instead of changing the concept, in my Ruination I'd rather not turn it around by 180°. And Yorick, in truce with Kalista and Maokai, guards the King of the Dead and attempts restoration of the isles. The Shadow Isles are still dangerous and betrayed by Thresh Hecarim, Karthus and the likes want to free Viego and give Thresh a payback. We also find out that thanks to the power of her Goddess Illaoi survived and she stays to watch over Viego as well. Thresh on the other hand, no longer bound to Shadow Isles, travels across Runeterra and quietly, without drawing too much attention enlarges his collection of souls and tries to find a way to win with Kayle. All regions try to stand up after the Ruination. Qyiana tries to become the head of Ixtal, Nasus returns to Azir, Leona and Diana decide to bring peace to Targon together. Braum returns to Freljord, Yordles to Bandle City. Meanwhile, Lucian becomes a shadow of himself. Revenge consumes him in full. Vayne and Yone join him to find Thresh and defeat him. Samira and Draven go to Noxus, Irelia goes back with Karma but here I would expand Karma's plot. That she steps out and chooses solitude, unable to forgive herself. You know, all champions go more or less back to normal. I realise there are a bunch of inconsistencies here, more detail is required, dialogues etc. But making this scenario took me about 3 hours. And those unexplained parts should be clarified and if I was working at Riot Gamespolice, I would say before the event that things left unclear will be resolved in future stories. The event itself I would end with such a cinematic:

Vex, attacked and used by Viego, wandered around Ruined Noxus. Unsure what to do with herself she even considered returning toto Bandle City but she came across a man named Yanuk (Januk? Sorry, for the misspellings, I was writing it without a script xD). The very same who told Ezreal to retrieve the Uloa elixir. A special elixir which could revive a certain person. Ezreal however, tricked him. Vex didn't care what Yanuk had to say but he shouted that she looked like she wished for darkness. And he knows how to give it. Along with Shadow, Vex hearing the plan came back toto Yanuk with the Uloa elixir. Yanuk performs the right ritual which leads to a certain dark event. An ethereal gateway opens. And through it steps out none other than Mordekeiser who ends the cinematic with one sentence. Imagine I am saying this with Mordekeiser's voice. "I will show you… Ruination."

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

submitted by: @sophi-s

Holy shit, that was super long.

I haven't actually read it because I wanted to share this to everyone as soon as possible, but I WILL read it.

How long did this take you, darling? Three days?

But thank you for this incredible translation and thank you very much for your hardwork. I really appreciate you doing all this for us, thank you sophi-s.

[ashleyfanfic]

Prompts- angst #15 and/or #4

Angst... is not my thing. But here you go for #4  “Why are you lying to me?” This is canon. I imagine that our girl Dany would have sought him out before the crypts. The fact that she just passively let things like Jon walking away from her happen sort of pissed me off. So, here you go. How I think that parentage reveal should have happened. Well, one of the many ways I think it could have happen.  Thanks for the angsty as shit prompt! I don’t like angst.  This is unbetaed and all mistakes are mind that I will try to hang myself with later! :) *~* He startled as she wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. He must have tensed for she immediately released him and moved around to stand in front of him. “What’s the matter?”

He shook his head, but couldn’t meet her eyes. This was all too hard, too much. He loved her more than he thought he could love anyone. This news shouldn’t matter. None of it should matter but the way they feel about one another. “Jon,” she prompted and he licked his lips, afraid to ask his question fore he knew she would have more of her own. “Tell me what’s wrong,” her voice was soft, unsure. “We’ve been in Winterfell for days and you’ve been avoiding me. I just want to know why.” He stepped back from her and paced to the other side of the room. He needed distance from her. This wasn’t right. He couldn’t give in to how he felt for her. Not now. Not after he knew. But how did he tell her? She’d understand. He knew it. She would have to see that this couldn’t happen. But the hopeful look on her face, the way she wanted to believe that everything could be made right again, nearly broke him. “I’m sorry.” “Whatever for?” He looked down at his hands. “You’re my queen, but we can’t keep doing this between us.” Her face fell, then suddenly, her queenly mask was back on. “I see.” He shook his head. She didn’t know anything. He couldn’t tell her. It could hurt her. More than she was already hurting. “I’m sorry,” he said again. Her eyes met his, defiant and angry. “Could you extend me the courtesy of telling me why?” “It’s... become too complicated.” “Is this because of your sisters?” Not his sisters. His cousins. But how did he explain that to her? How did he tell her what he knew without it shattering her as it had him. “No,” he shook his head. “Your banner men?” “No.” “My council?” He shook his head again. He released an angry breath. “Jon Snow, tell me what it is?” He frowned. “I don’t think we’re a good fit.” She was silent at that and after only a moment, her eyes narrowed. “Why are you lying to me?” “I’m not lying,” he said as he looked away from her.  “Yes, you are,” she moved to stand in front of him, a breath away. Her scent was nearly overwhelming. The ache in his body was from longing to kiss her. “I expected a great many things when we got here. I expected hostility. I expected a certain amount of push back. Even possible rejection from your people. But I never expected that you would seek to hurt me. You’ve never lied to me, not even when it would have been convenient. As your queen, I demand you tell me the truth.” “You don’t want me to tell you,” he hissed. “You don’t want anyone to know.” “I think I can judge that for myself. Most of my life has been people making decisions for me. I will not allow the man I love to do the same, no matter how I feel about you. Tell me this truth you think I can’t handle.” He looked down at his hands. “Look at me,” she demanded. “I-I’m the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark,” he said the words in such a rush that he wasn’t certain he had said them all. She stared at him, blinking in the low candle light. She took a deep breath. “That’s it? That’s why you’re pulling away from me?” He didn’t know what to say about that. “You’re my aunt. We can’t... continue this.” She rolled her eyes. “If your the son of Rhaegar Targaryen,” she said quietly, “then that means you come from a long line of Targaryens who have no only wedded and bedded their family, but usually their siblings. This means nothing in terms of how I feel for you.” He tilted his head. “It doesn’t?” “Does is change how you want me?” He released a pent up breath. “It should,” he said softly and her expression changed.  She took a deep breath and unbuttoned her coat. He took a step back as he watched her begin unlacing her dress. “I suppose to some, it should. But I’m a Targaryen and have grown accustomed to the rules not applying to me.” She stepped toward him and he took a seat on the edge of the bed as he watched her shed her dress and corset. Her shift exposed one shoulder and she stepped closer. “I hatched dragons and walked through fire. I’m a dragon rider, the Khaleesi to the greatest Khalasar ever created and am the mother of dragons. I’ve broken every rule by merely existing, Jon Snow. And if you see to tell me that there is a rule that says that I have to give you up because my brother fucked your mother, then I’m afraid that’s not a rule I feel I should adhere to.” Her shift fell to the floor in front of him. She stepped between his legs and traced her fingers along his jaw. “You’re quite the rule breaker yourself. Befriended the Free Folk, bedded one of their women and fell in love with her. Allowed Wildlings south of the Wall.” She tossed his hauberk to the floor and began unlacing his jerkin. He looked down at her fingers, and how his hands gripped her fleshy hips. “You died, my love, yet here you stand. Alive and well.” She pushed the fabric off his shoulders with his help then lost his tunic. Her fingers danced over the largest scar over his heart. “What are rules to you and I when our very existence shows that we’re beyond them?” Her fingers slid down his stomach and to his laces. His breath was coming out in short pants and as he looked up into her eyes, he could see that she believed everything she said. “I will not beg you to be with me, Jon. But I will ask what the purpose would be? We came from opposite sides of the world, gained power separately, and managed to find each other. If anything, that tells me to cling to you harder.” She removed her hands from his body and stepped back. “But I will acquiesce if you say you can not be with me.” Rules. Was it a rule keeping him from her or was it his own fear? Fear that he wasn’t good enough for her, even knowing what he knows now? The feeling of being lesser than didn’t go away over night, but then she’d never actually treated him as if he was less than her. She might have called him my lord, but that was a power play. When it came time for her to address him as a king, she had.  And Gods, he loved her. If nothing else, that should be reason enough to break the rules. No one knew but them. And Sam. He could keep Sam quiet. He pulled her against him and brought her lips to his. She let him lead the kiss, giving him the power to decide. And his choice was her. Not that there could ever be another.  She broke the kiss and smiled up at him. “What about the rules?” “Fuck the rules,” he grumbled against her mouth as he took her in another heated kiss.   

PROMPT LIST

[winter-soldier-101]

Pure Blood line

This imagine has some missing parts and Viserys got Daenerys pregnant at the age of ten and when all this war goes on the reader is 18 and Daenerys is 28-29

I hope you do enjoy and please do not steal me work.

My name is (Y/N) Targaryen, my mother is Daenerys and my father is Viserys Targaryen, and this is how I came into this world.

"Viserys why did you do this, you can't marry off your sister now that she is with your child what were you thinking?" The man who was helping them asked.

"I was drunk and I wasn't thinking, how will I sell her to Khal Drogo now?" Viserys asked.

                   (Y/N)'S 8th Birthday

"I don't want to be his Queen, I want to go home" Daenerys says to Viserys.

"How do we get home then we need an army and ships to get home" Viserys says.

"What are we going to do about (Y/N)?" Daenerys asks Viserys.

"We will take her,she is your child and soon Khal Drogo will be her father, because I can't stand her crying and whining all day and night" Viserys says pulling Daenerys inside to get her things ready to leave.

"She's still a child Viserys she just wants her father with her sometimes" Daenerys says pulling her arm out of Viserys hand.

"Mommy is that you? What's going on, are we leaving?" (Y/N) ask her mother and her father.

"Are you coming with us to father?"(Y/N) asks Viserys.

Viserys looks down at (Y/N) and slaps her face," don't call me that" he says walking off.

                        The Wedding

(Y/N) sat next to her mother when she was given the dragon eggs as a gift (Y/N) picked one up and held it cole to her and kissed it. She did that to the other two as well.

Khal Drogo was not happy that Daenerys already had a child but he promised that he would love and protect (Y/N) like she was his own child.

"Mother I'm scared I don't want him here with us and I don't want him to hurt you or me anymore." (Y/N) says to Daenerys.

"He will not hurt us anymore, my love Khal Drogo will protect us from him" Daenerys says to (Y/N).

(Y/N) was happy when she found out her mother was going to have another baby, (Y/N) always wanted a baby brother or sister, but sadly she will never know her little brother, before everything went bad her father tried to kill her mother's baby then Khal Drogo kills Viserys, and now the man how (Y/N) wished was her father was now gone her mother had to give life for a life and now her brother and father are gone.

"Why are you going to do this mother" (Y/N) asked.

"I have to. I dreamt that if I put the dragon eggs with his body they will come to life, but I have to walk through the fire and you will join me in the fire my little dragon" Daenerys says to (Y/N) while hugging her.

           The Burning Of Khal Drogo

(Y/N) walked into the fire first and climbed up to her father's body, then her mother soon walked into the fire as well and we waited for the fire to burn out.

(Y/N) woke up with ash all over her body but now a woman and grown she looks just like her mother all three dragons crawled on (Y/N) or so she thought but not three dragons but six, three for her and three for her mother.

(Y/N) named her three dragons Rhaella, Baelor and Rhaego after her baby brother; her mother named her dragons Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal.

(Y/N) was ready to head home with  her mother and their army but they were offered a  gift, the gift was from Sir Jorah Mormont and the gift being Tyrion Lannister and when I first saw him I knew it was him, but why did he want to help us get the Iron Throne back from his family.

                        Going Home

DragonStone looked more like home then any of the other places they've lived, (Y/N) was ready to help her mother in any way her three dragons were all fully grown and ready do protect their mother and other siblings.

"Shall we begin" Daenerys says to (Y/N) and Tyrion.

"Mother what should we do? Do you want to summon Jon Snow?" (Y/N) asks her mother.

"We may need him and his men so yes I'm going to summon Jon Snow" Daenerys says to (Y/N).

DragonStone

(Y/N) landed Baelor in front of Jon Snow and as she makes her way off of him and walked beside Tyrion and the rest of the men and Missandei.

"How is she?" Jon asked Tyrion.

"This is (Y/N) Targaryen Queen Daenerys daughter" Tyrion says to Jon.

"I didn't know she had a daughter" Jon says to Tyrion.

"No one knows she was a secret well kept from everyone" Tyrion says while walking to (Y/N).

" You stand before Daenerys first of her name of House Targaryen,rightful heir of the Iron Throne,The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, Lady Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons" Missandei says to Jon Snow.

"This is Jon Snow, He's King in the North" Ser Davos says.

"Thank you for traveling so far my lord, I hope the seas were not too rough" Daenerys says to Jon.

"The winds were kind, your grace"Jon says to Daenerys.

"For give me your grace but Jon Snow is King so he is not a lord" Ser Davos says to Daenerys.

"Have you come here to bend the knee Jon Snow" Daenerys asks Jon.

"I have not come here to bend the knee your grace" Jon says to Daenerys.

"You've come all this way to break faith with House Targaryen," Daenerys says to Jon.

"Break faith your father burnt my grandfather and uncle alive he would ha-" Jon says but does not finish his sentence.

"My father was an evil man, on behalf of House Targaryen I ask your forgiveness for the crimes he committed against your family, and I ask you not to judge a daughter by sins of her father, our two houses were allies for centuries and those were the best centuries the seven kingdoms have ever known, centuries of peace and prosperity with a Targaryen sitting on the Iron Throne, and a Stark serving as warden of the North, I am one of the last living Targaryens Jon Snow honour the pledge your ancestor made to mine, bend the knee and I will name you warden of the North, together we will save this country from those who would destroy it" Daenerys says to Jon Snow.

"You're right, you're not guilty of your father's crimes and I'm not beholden to my ancestors' vows" Jon says to Daenerys.

"Then why are you here" Daenerys asks looking angry at Jon.

"Because I need your help and you need mine" Jon says to Daenerys.

"Did you see six full grown dragons flying over head when you arrived" (Y/N) says to Jon.

"I did" Jon says

"And did you see the Dothraki all of whom have sworn to kill for me and my daughter?" Daenerys says to Jon.

"They're hard to miss" Jon says.

"And still I need your help" Daenerys says.

"Not to defeat Cersei you could storm Kings Landing tomorrow and the city will fall, hell we almost took it and we didn't even have dragons" Ser Davos says.

"Almost" Tyrion says.

"But you haven't stormed Kings Landing, why not? The only reason I can see is that you don't want to kill thousands of innocent people. It's the fastest way to win the war but you won't do it which means at the very least you're better than Cersei" Jon says to Daenerys.

"Still that doesn't explain why I need your help" Daenerys says to Jon.

"Because right now you and I and Cersei and everyone else we're children playing at a game screaming that the rules aren't fair" Jon says.

"You told me you liked this man" Daenerys says to Tyrion.

"I do," Tyrion says to Daenerys.

"In the time since he's met me he's refused to call me queen he's refused to bow and now he's calling me a child" Daenerys says to Tyrion.

"I believe he's calling all of us children figure of speech" Tyrion says to Daenerys.

"Your grace everyone you know will die before winter is over if we don't defeat the enemy to the North" Jon says to Daenerys.

"As far as I can see you are the enemy to the North" Daenerys says to Jon.

"I am not your enemy, the dead are the enemy" Jon says.

"The dead is that another figure of speech?" Daenerys asks Jon.

"The army of the dead is on the march" Jon says.

"The army of the dead" Tyrion repeats Jon.

"You don't know me well my lord but do you think I'm a liar or a madman?" Jon asks Tyrion.

"No I don't you're either of those things" Tyrion says to Jon.

"The army of the dead is real, the white walkers are real the knight king is real. I've seen them, if they get past the wall and we're squabbling amongst ourselves we're finished," Jon says to Daenerys and Tyrion.

"I was born on DragonStone not that I can remember it we fled before Robert's assassins could find us, Robert was your father's best friend, now I wonder if your father knew his best friend sent assassins to murder a baby girl in her crib not that it maters now of course, I spent my life in foreign lands so many men have tried to kill me I don't remember all there names, I have been sold like a broodmare Ive been shamed and betrayed, raped and defiled do you know what keept me standing through all those years in exile faith not in any gods not in myths and legends in myself in Daenerys Targaryen the world hadn't seen a dragon in centuries until my children were born, the Dothraki hadn't crossed the sea any sea they did for me, I was bron to rule the Seven Kingdoms and I will" Daenerys says to Jon.

"You'll be ruling over a graveyard if we don't defeat the knight king" Jon says.

"The war against my sister has already begun. You can't expect us to halt hostilities and join you in fighting whatever it is you saw beyond the Wall" Tyrion says to Jon.

"You don't believe him I understand that it sound like nonsense but if destiny has brought Daenerys Targaryen back to our shores it has also made Jon Snow King in the North, you were the first to bring Dothraki to Westeros, he is the first to make allies of wildlings and North men he was named Lord Commander of the Night's watch he was named King of the North not because of his birthright he has no birthright he's a damn bastard all those hard sons of bitchs chose him as their leader because they believe in him all those things you don't believe in he faced those things he fought those things for the good of his people he risked his life for his people he took a knife to the heart for his people he gave his own li-, if we don't put aside enmities and bond together we will die and then it doesn't matter whose skeleton sits on the Iron Throne" Davos says to Daenerys and Tyrion.

"If it doesn't matter then you might as well bend then kneel swear your allegiance to Queen Daenerys to help her to defeat my sister and together our armys will protect the North" Tyrion says to Jon.

"There's no time for that there's no time for any of this while we stand here debating" Jon says.

"It takes no time to bend the knee pledge your sword to her cause" Tyrion says to Jon.

"And why would I do that I mean no offence your grace but I don't know you as far as I can tell your claim to the throne rests entirely on your father's name and my own father fought to overthrow the Mad King, the lords of the North placed their trust in me to lead them and I will continue to do so as well as I can" Jon says to Daenerys.

"That's fair it's also fair to point out that I'm the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms by declaring yourself King of the northernmost kingdom you are in open rebellion" Daenerys says to Jon.

Varys comes into the room and tells Daenerys some news that may not be so good.

"You must forgive my manners, you'll both be tired after your long journey, we'll have baths drawn for you and supper sent to your room's" Daenerys says to Jon and Davos.

                    The Loot Train Attack

"Mother what's going on?" (Y/N) asked her mother.

"The Lannister army just took HighGarden from us" Daenerys says to (Y/N).

"What are we going to do? Are we going to go after them now?" (Y/N) asks her mother.

"Yes, you and I and the Dothraki are going to attack them" Daenerys says to (Y/N).

(Y/N) looked at her mother and then at Baelor as they rode off to HighGarden.

"Dracarys" both (Y/N) and Daenerys yell.

                   

After the loot train attack

"I know what Cersei has told you that I've come to destroy your cities, burn down your homes murder you and orphan your children that's Cersei Lannister not me, I'm not here to murder, and all I want to destroy is the wheel that has rolled over rich and poor to the benifit of no one but the Cersei Lannisters of the world, I offer you a choice- bend the knee and join me. Together we will leave the world a better place then we found it or refuse and die" Daenerys says to the men that lived.

"Step forward my Lord, you will not kneel?" Daenerys asks the man.

"I already have a Queen" The man says.

"Yes Cersei Lannister is your Queen now but she just became your queen is that right?" (Y/N) asks the man.

Daenerys was angry the man would not bend the knee to her and will not follow her rule is she did let him take the black like Tyrion suggested she should do to him but wouldn't except her ruling if she did.

  "Mother perhaps we should make a lesson out of him for the other men to know that if they do not bend the knee now they wont be bending at all" (Y/N) sas to her mother.

"Tie him up let's go home" Daenerys says to her men.

                 Finding A White Walker

Jon Snow and some of his men have gone North of the Wall to find a White Walker to show what is coming for us if we don't defeat them first.

"Your grace a raven from the Wall" one of the men says to (Y/N) and Daenerys.

"We need your help, the dead have us trapped" (Y/N) reads out to her mother.

"We have to go help them now or they will die" (Y/N) says to her mother and Tyrion.

(Y/N) and her mother walked over to there dragons and began to get on them.

"You both can't leave the two most important people and can't go to the most dangerous place now they knew what would happen if they went that far North" Tyrion says to both Daenerys and (Y/N).

"What would you have us do stay and let them die, if we don't go and let them die the North will not trust us or even fight with us against your sister so we are going now! Valahd" (Y/N) says while telling her dragons to fly.

"Dracarys" (Y/N) and Daenerys both yell out to their dragons.

" Viserion" (Y/N) yells getting the dragon's attention.

(Y/N) jumped off of Baelor and landed on Viserions back and flew him out of the way form the spear that was coming at him, Jon told Daenerys to leave and she did (Y/N) made her way back onto Baelor's back and went back for Jon and she brought him back to the Wall but he was so cold almost frozen.

                        KingsLanding

(Y/N) and Daenerys land in the Dragon Pit and Baelor and Drogon both roar at the men standing there.

"We've been here for some time" Cersei says to both (Y/N) and Daenerys.

"My apologies" (Y/N) says to Cersei.

"We are a group of people who do not like one another as this recent diminstation has shown we have suffered at each others hands, we have lost people we've love at each others hands if all we wanted is more of the same there would be no need for this gathering we are entirely capable of waging war against each other without meeting face to face" Tyrion says to Cersei and the rest of the people at the meeting.

"So instead we should settle our differences and live together in harmony for the rest of our days" Cersei says to Tyrion.

"We all know that will never happen" Tyrion says.

"Then why are we here?" Cersei asks Tyrion.

"This isn't about living in harmony it"s just about living the same thing is coming for all of us the general you can't negotiate with an army that doesn't leave corpses behind on the battlefield Lord Tyrion tells me a million people live in this city they're about to become a million more soldiers in the army of the dead" Jon says to Cersei.

"I imagine for most of them it would be an improvement" Cersei says to Jon.

"This is serious I wouldn't be here if it weren't" Jon says to Cersei.

"I don't think it's serious at all. I think it's another bad joke if my brother Jaime has informed me correctly you're asking for a truce?" Cersei asks Jon.

"Yes that's all" (Y/N) sas to Cersei.

"That's all pull back my armys and stand down while you go on your monster hunt or while you solidify and expand your position hard for me to know which it is with my armies pulled back until you return and march on my capital with four times the men" Cersei says to Daenerys.

"Your capital will be safe until the northern threat is dealt with. You have my word" Daenerys says to Cersei.

"The word of a would be usurper" Cersei says to Daenerys.

"There is no conversation that will erase the last 50 years we have something to show you" Tyrion says to Cersei.

Sandor Clegane walks up the steps with a crate on his back, he makes his way to the middle of the Dragon Pit and sets the crate down and unlocks it but nothing comes out then Sandor knocks the crate over and out come the White Walker screaming it jumps up and runs straight to Cersei and tries to grab her, but Sandor pulls it back the Walker gets up and runs straight at Sandor but Sandor pulls his sword and cuts the Walker in half and it still tries to get him while crawling to him.

"We can destroy them by burning them and we can destroy them with dragonglass if we don't win this fight then that is the fate of every person in the world , there is only one war that matters the Great War and it is here" Jon says to Cersei.

"I didn't believe it until we saw them, we saw them all" (Y/N) says.

"How many?" Jaime asks.

"Hundred thousand at least" Daenerys says.

                        Winterfell

Winterell was so beautiful but it was too cold for (Y/N) and the dragons didn't like it.

Jon introduced us to his family and his sister wasn't too happy to see me or my mother.

"Wintefell is yours, your grace" Sansa says to Daenerys.

"I'm not the queen, the queen is my daughter (Y/N)" Daenerys says to Sansa.

"Mother what are you doing, you're the queen not me" (Y/N) says to Daenerys.

"No I'm going back to Meereen after the Great War is over and when the War with Cersei continues I will be right there with and so will your brothers and your children will be there for you to my little dragon" Daenerys says to (Y/N).

"Lady Sansa can we talk alone for a moment" (Y/N) asks Sansa.

"What is it you want to talk about your grace" Sansa says.

"I know you do not like me and you may think I want to take your home over and make you a lady but that is not what I want. I want you to be Queen of the North because I know the North will not kneel to another Targaryen but I do want us to help each other if we ever have a Great War like this ever again." (Y/N) says to Sansa.

Sansa is surprised that (Y/N) even offered her this choice and she was not going to say no Sansa knew that the North will not kneel to (Y/N) after the war is over but they won't have to, Sansa will rule the North like her ancestors did long ago. 

"Your giving my sister the North after the war is over?" Jon asks (Y/N).

"Yes I am I've seen the way the other lords and ladys look at her and I know she will make you and the rest of your family proud by being the first queen of the North and we will be allies and we will fight with each other if a war like this ever happens again" (Y/N) says to Jon

"How do you know this is true?" Daenerys asks Jon.

"Samwell read it in a maester wrote about it and he wed them in a secret ceremony and Bran saw it" Jon says to Daenerys.

"If this is true you are the last male heir of house Targaryen and that makes you the rightful heir to the Iron Throne." Daenerys says to Jon.

"I don't want it, I want to be by your side and I will stay there and I will follow you anywhere." Jon says holding Daenerys. 

"We have to tell (Y/N) this and you must tell her now" Daenerys says to Jon.

"Your grace" Jon says to (Y/N).

"Jon, I've told you that you can just call me by my name but what is it you need." (Y/N) says to Jon

"My name, my real name is Aegon Targaryen my mother was Lyanna Stark and my father was Rhaegar Targaryen" Jon says to (Y/N).

"That means your the rightful heir to the Iron Throne and not me" (Y/N) says to Jon.

"I have already told your mother and I do not want the Iron Throne you will be my queen I bent the knee to you and your mother and I will not break that vow" Jon says to

(Y/N).

"You must tell your sisters they have to know I want them to know so they know that they will not hate me or you for keeping this from them" (Y/N) says to Jon.

The bells rang meaning the dead have arrived and we must fight now.

(Y/N) helped burn the dead and she fought her way through them and killed many of the dead that was her family but most of all after it was over (Y/N) went to go look for her mother and found her on the floor holding Ser Jorah's lifeless body (Y/N) fell to her knees and ran to her mother and cried and she knew that she had to say goodbye to a man that raised her and was like her second father.

(Y/N) and the rest of her men go straight to KingsLanding and she is ready to take back the Iron Throne from the family that killed hers.

"Cersei you swear that you would send your men North but you did not do that why?" (Y/N) asks Cersei.

"I did it because I didn't want to lose any of my men so Icould kill you and the world would be better without you in it that's why I didn't send my men North and before you ask I will not bend the knee to you or anyone else." Cersei says to (Y/N)

"I (Y/N) of House Targaryen sentence you to die, if you have anything to say you may say it" (Y/N) says to Cersei.

Cersei stayed quiet and did not say one word to anyone.

"Dracarys" (Y/N) says to Baelor and Baelor sets Cersei"s body on fire.

(Y/N) say up covered in sweat and looked at her dragons it was just a dream they just defeated the Night King and were heading to DragonStone.

           DragonStone/KingsLanding

The Iron Fleet was there waiting for us to return but we knew they would be there and we burned them alive. They tried to kill my brothers and my children.

(Y/N) was not happy about this but as they made there way to KingsLanding Daenerys burned all the scorpions and they made there way to the RedKeep to take back the six kingdoms and as they got up to the RedKeep there stood Cersi's men and they through their swords down and bent the knee.

(Y/N) found out that Cersei and Jamie had run off to a far away place with the help of Tyrion, (Y/N) was hurt that he would do that but she soon understood why he did he cared for them both and did not want to see them dead.

"I know proclaim (Y/N) of House Targaryen first of her name Queen of the andals and the first men protector of the six Kingdoms long may she reign" Tyrion says while putting the crown on (Y/N)'s head.

(Y/N) was now Queen and her mother was in Meereen with Jon and her three brothers while (Y/N) found love with a Dothraki man she knew her mother would love him and she did and now (Y/N) sits on the Throne with her husband by her side and her child will soon sit on the Throne as well.

THE END

.

If you liked the story let me know and as always enjoy~~~A🖤

[exilekniight]

@stormbcrn​​​ asked:  ❛ good king. bad king. you judge too easily. you will learn. ❜

merlin 1998 prompts |  accepting

jorah looked to his queen and bit back a smile. my how far they’d come. “i see. you plan to teach me now? besides, khaleesi, i am your queensguard. it is my duty to judge others for you. how else am i to stop a potential threat?”

he seems satisfied with the answer; though, he will admit, even as a boy, he had been judgmental. not that he wanted to be! he simply... hadn’t been taught any other way. he was the sole heir of jeor mormont. that came with some pros and cons.

[aboveallarescuer]

Dany’s problems and actions in her conquest of the three cities

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

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take.

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

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend Dany's character in analysis or even conversations.

 *Well, at least all the passages that I could find.

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

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

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

To justify the existence of this list ... Well, look at the examples of this other list. They justify this one too, lol.

NOTE: This list was tricky to make compared to this one or this one. Originally, it was going to be divided into a list about the problems Dany is facing and another about the actions she took to solve them. However, unlike in ADWD, it is not as clear-and-cut in ASOS. 

Take, for example, ASOS Dany II, when Dany arrives in Astapor and negotiates with Kraznys the purchase of the Unsullied. It is easy to say that that's what she did, but there is no single passage that sums it up. Instead, there are lots of descriptions about the Plaza of Pride and exposition about Old Ghis and the Unsullied's training, with the latter being key to understanding why Dany decides to rebel. What do I add? I decided that more is better than less in this particular case.

ASOS Dany IV also informs a lot through dialogue - the assessment of Yunkai's military forces, Dany's meetings with the sellsword captains, Dany's military plan - and so it would be hard to parse out the problem itself from the solution she takes.

I did manage to separate Dany's problems and actions from the advice she receives, though that often overlaps as well.

This is a long-winded way of saying that this list will be bigger than it should for only covering six chapters.

Dany’s problems and the actions she took

ASOS Daenerys I

“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!”

 ASOS Daenerys II

“Tell the Westerosi whore to lower her eyes,” the slaver Kraznys mo Nakloz complained to the slave girl who spoke for him. “I deal in meat, not metal. The bronze is not for sale. Tell her to look at the soldiers. Even the dim purple eyes of a sunset savage can see how magnificent my creatures are, surely.”

Kraznys’s High Valyrian was twisted and thickened by the characteristic growl of Ghis, and flavored here and there with words of slaver argot. Dany understood him well enough, but she smiled and looked blankly at the slave girl, as if wondering what he might have said.

‘The Good Master Kraznys asks, are they not magnificent?” The girl spoke the Common Tongue well, for one who had never been to Westeros. No older than ten, she had the round flat face, dusky skin, and golden eyes of Naath. The Peaceful People, her folk were called. All agreed that they made the best slaves.

“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. “Tell me of their training.”

“The Westerosi woman is pleased with them, but speaks no praise, to keep the price down,” the translator told her master. “She wishes to know how they were trained.”

Kraznys mo Nakloz bobbed his head. He smelled as if he’d bathed in raspberries, this slaver, and his jutting red-black beard glistened with oil. He has larger breasts than I do, Dany reflected. She could see them through the thin sea-green silk of the gold- fringed tokar he wound about his body and over one shoulder. His left hand held the tokar in place as he walked, while his right clasped a short leather whip. “Are all Westerosi pigs so ignorant?” he complained. “All the world knows that the Unsullied are masters of spear and shield and shortsword.” He gave Dany a broad smile. “Tell her what she would know, slave, and be quick about it. The day is hot.”

That much at least is no lie. A matched pair of slave girls stood behind them, holding a striped silk awning over their heads, but even in the shade Dany felt light-headed, and Kraznys was perspiring freely. The Plaza of Pride had been baking in the sun since dawn. Even through the thickness of her sandals, she could feel the warmth of the red bricks underfoot. Waves of heat rose off them shimmering to make the stepped pyramids of Astapor around the plaza seem half a dream.

If the Unsullied felt the heat, however, they gave no hint of it. They could be made of brick themselves, the way they stand there. A thousand had been marched out of their barracks for her inspection; drawn up in ten ranks of one hundred before the fountain and its great bronze harpy, they stood stiffly at attention, their stony eyes fixed straight ahead. They wore nought but white linen clouts knotted about their loins, and conical bronze helms topped with a sharpened spike a foot tall. Kraznys had commanded them to lay down their spears and shields, and doff their swordbelts and quilted tunics, so the Queen of Westeros might better inspect the lean hardness of their bodies.

“They are chosen young, for size and speed and strength,” the slave told her. “They begin their training at five. Every day they train from dawn to dusk, until they have mastered the shortsword, the shield, and the three spears. The training is most rigorous, Your Grace. Only one boy in three survives it. This is well known. Among the Unsullied it is said that on the day they win their spiked cap, the worst is done with, for no duty that will ever fall to them could be as hard as their training.”

Kraznys mo Nakloz supposedly spoke no word of the Common Tongue, but he bobbed his head as he listened, and from time to time gave the slave girl a poke with the end of his lash. “Tell her that these have been standing here for a day and a night, with no food nor water. Tell her that they will stand until they drop if I should command it, and when nine hundred and ninety-nine have collapsed to die upon the bricks, the last will stand there still, and never move until his own death claims him. Such is their courage. Tell her that.”

“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan Whitebeard, when the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the end of his hardwood staff against the bricks, tap tap, as if to tell his displeasure. The old man had not wanted to sail to Astapor; nor did he favor buying this slave army. A queen should hear all sides before reaching a decision. That was why Dany had brought him with her to the Plaza of Pride, not to keep her safe. Her bloodriders would do that well enough. Ser Jorah Mormont she had left aboard Balerion to guard her people and her dragons. Much against her inclination, she had locked the dragons belowdecks. It was too dangerous to let them fly freely over the city; the world was all too full of men who would gladly kill them for no better reason than to name themselves dragonslayer.

“What did the smelly old man say?” the slaver demanded of his translator. When she told him, he smiled and said, “Inform the savages that we call this obedience. Others may be stronger or quicker or larger than the Unsullied. Some few may even equal their skill with sword and spear and shield. But nowhere between the seas will you ever find any more obedient.”

“Sheep are obedient,” said Arstan when the words had been translated. He had some Valyrian as well, though not so much as Dany, but like her he was feigning ignorance.

Kraznys mo Nakloz showed his big white teeth when that was rendered back to him. “A word from me and these sheep would spill his stinking old bowels on the bricks,” he said, “but do not say that. Tell them that these creatures are more dogs than sheep. Do they eat dogs or horse in these Seven Kingdoms?”

“They prefer pigs and cows, your worship.”

“Beef. Pfag. Food for unwashed savages.”

Ignoring them all, Dany walked slowly down the line of slave soldiers. The girls followed close behind with the silk awning, to keep her in the shade, but the thousand men before her enjoyed no such protection. More than half had the copper skins and almond eyes of Dothraki and Lhazerene, but she saw men of the Free Cities in the ranks as well, along with pale Qartheen, ebon-faced Summer Islanders, and others whose origins she could not guess. And some had skins of the same amber hue as Kraznys mo Nakloz, and the bristly red-black hair that marked the ancient folk of Ghis, who named themselves the harpy’s sons. They sell even their own kind. It should not have surprised her. The Dothraki did the same, when khalasar met khalasar in the sea of grass.

Some of the soldiers were tall and some were short. They ranged in age from fourteen to twenty, she judged. Their cheeks were smooth, and their eyes all the same, be they black or brown or blue or grey or amber. They are like one man, Dany thought, until she remembered that they were no men at all. The Unsullied were eunuchs, every one of them. “Why do you cut them?” she asked Kraznys through the slave girl. “Whole men are stronger than eunuchs, I have always heard.”

“A eunuch who is cut young will never have the brute strength of one of your Westerosi knights, this is true,” said Kraznys mo Nakloz when the question was put to him. “A bull is strong as well, but bulls die every day in the fighting pits. A girl of nine killed one not three days past in Jothiel’s Pit. The Unsullied have something better than strength, tell her. They have discipline. We fight in the fashion of the Old Empire, yes. They are the lockstep legions of Old Ghis come again, absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly without fear.”

Dany listened patiently to the translation.
“Even the bravest men fear death and maiming,” Arstan said when the girl was done.

Kraznys smiled again when he heard that. “Tell the old man that he smells of piss, and needs a stick to hold him up.”

“Truly, your worship?”

He poked her with his lash. “No, not truly, are you a girl or a goat, to ask such folly? Say that Unsullied are not men. Say that death means nothing to them, and maiming less than nothing.” He stopped before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there, bleeding. “Would you like another?” asked Kraznys.

“If it please your worship.”

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

Kraznys chuckled when he heard her words in Valyrian. “Tell this ignorant whore of a westerner that courage has nothing to do with it.”

“The Good Master says that was not courage, Your Grace.”

“Tell her to open those slut’s eyes of hers.”
“He begs you attend this carefully, Your Grace.”

Kraznys moved to the next eunuch in line, a towering youth with the blue eyes and flaxen hair of Lys. “Your sword,” he said. The eunuch knelt, unsheathed the blade, and offered it up hilt first. It was a shortsword, made more for stabbing than for slashing, but the edge looked razor-sharp. “Stand,” Kraznys commanded.

“Your worship.” The eunuch stood, and Kraznys mo Nakloz slid the sword slowly up his torso, leaving a thin red line across his belly and between his ribs. Then he jabbed the swordpoint in beneath a wide pink nipple and began to work it back and forth.

“What is he doing?” Dany demanded of the girl, as the blood ran down the man’s chest.

“Tell the cow to stop her bleating,” said Kraznys, without waiting for the translation. “This will do him no great harm. Men have no need of nipples, eunuchs even less so.” The nipple hung by a thread of skin. He slashed, and sent it tumbling to the bricks, leaving behind a round red eye copiously weeping blood. The eunuch did not move, until Kraznys offered him back his sword, hilt first. “Here, I’m done with you.”

“This one is pleased to have served you.”

Kraznys turned back to Dany. “They feel no pain, you see.”

“How can that be?” she demanded through the scribe.

“The wine of courage,” was the answer he gave her. “It is no true wine at all, but made from deadly nightshade, bloodfly larva, black lotus root, and many secret things. They drink it with every meal from the day they are cut, and with each passing year feel less and less. It makes them fearless in battle. Nor can they be tortured. Tell the savage her secrets are safe with the Unsullied. She may set them to guard her councils and even her bedchamber, and never a worry as to what they might overhear.

“In Yunkai and Meereen, eunuchs are often made by removing a boy’s testicles, but leaving the penis. Such a creature is infertile, yet often still capable of erection. Only trouble can come of this. We remove the penis as well, leaving nothing. The Unsullied are the purest creatures on the earth.” He gave Dany and Arstan another of his broad white smiles. “I have heard that in the Sunset Kingdoms men take solemn vows to keep chaste and father no children, but live only for their duty. Is it not so?”

“It is,” Arstan said, when the question was put. “There are many such orders. The maesters of the Citadel, the septons and septas who serve the Seven, the silent sisters of the dead, the Kingsguard and the Night’s Watch ...”

“Poor things,” growled the slaver, after the translation. “Men were not made to live thus. Their days are a torment of temptation, any fool must see, and no doubt most succumb to their baser selves. Not so our Unsullied. They are wed to their swords in a way that your Sworn Brothers cannot hope to match. No woman can ever tempt them, nor any man.”

His girl conveyed the essence of his speech, more politely. “There are other ways to tempt men, besides the flesh,” Arstan Whitebeard objected, when she was done.

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

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

“It is so, Your Grace.”

Kraznys stopped in front of a Ghiscari who might have been his taller fitter brother, and flicked his lash at a small bronze disk on the swordbelt at his feet. “There is his name. Ask the whore of Westeros whether she can read Ghiscari glyphs.” When Dany admitted that she could not, the slaver turned to the Unsullied. “What is your name?” he demanded.

“This one’s name is Red Flea, your worship.”

The girl repeated their exchange in the Common Tongue. “And yesterday, what was it?”

“Black Rat, your worship.”

“The day before?”

“Brown Flea, your worship.”

“Before that?”

“This one does not recall, your worship. Blue Toad, perhaps. Or Blue Worm.”

“Tell her all their names are such,” Kraznys commanded the girl. “It reminds them that by themselves they are vermin. The name disks are thrown in an empty cask at duty’s end, and each dawn plucked up again at random.”

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

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

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

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

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

When the translation was made for him, Kraznys mo Nakloz laughed aloud. “What a soft mewling fool this one is. Tell the whore of Westeros that the mark is for the child’s owner, not the mother. The Unsullied are not permitted to steal.” He tapped his whip against his leg. “Tell her that few ever fail that test. The dogs are harder for them, it must be said. We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs. It makes for a good strong lesson, we find.”

Arstan Whitebeard tapped the end of his staff on the bricks as he listened to that. Tap tap tap. Slow and steady. Tap tap tap. Dany saw him turn his eyes away, as if he could not bear to look at Kraznys any longer.

“The Good Master has said that these eunuchs cannot be tempted with coin or flesh,” Dany told the girl, “but if some enemy of mine should offer them freedom for betraying me ...”

“They would kill him out of hand and bring her his head, tell her that,” the slaver answered. “Other slaves may steal and hoard up silver in hopes of buying freedom, but an Unsullied would not take it if the little mare offered it as a gift. They have no life outside their duty. They are soldiers, and that is all.”

“It is soldiers I need,” Dany admitted.

“Tell her it is well she came to Astapor, then. Ask her how large an army she wishes to buy.”

“How many Unsullied do you have to sell?”

“Eight thousand fully trained and available at present. We sell them only by the unit, she should know. By the thousand or the century. Once we sold by the ten, as household guards, but that proved unsound. Ten is too few. They mingle with other slaves, even freemen, and forget who and what they are.” Kraznys waited for that to be rendered in the Common Tongue, and then continued. “This beggar queen must understand, such wonders do not come cheaply. In Yunkai and Meereen, slave swordsmen can be had for less than the price of their swords, but Unsullied are the finest foot in all the world, and each represents many years of training. Tell her they are like Valyrian steel, folded over and over and hammered for years on end, until they are stronger and more resilient than any metal on earth.”

“I know of Valyrian steel,” said Dany. “Ask the Good Master if the Unsullied have their own officers.”

“You must set your own officers over them. We train them to obey, not to think. If it is wits she wants, let her buy scribes.”

“And their gear?”

“Sword, shield, spear, sandals, and quilted tunic are included,” said Kraznys. “And the spiked caps, to be sure. They will wear such armor as you wish, but you must provide it.”

Dany could think of no other questions. She looked at Arstan. “You have lived long in the world, Whitebeard. Now that you have seen them, what do you say?”

“I say no, Your Grace,” the old man answered at once.


“Why?” she asked. “Speak freely.” Dany thought she knew what he would say, but she wanted the slave girl to hear, so Kraznys mo Nakloz might hear later.

“My queen,” said Arstan, “there have been no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House.”

“Yet I must have some army,” Dany said. “The boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking politely.”

“When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of Westeros will be with you,” Whitebeard promised. “Your brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love.”

“And my father?” Dany said.

The old man hesitated before saying, “King Aerys is also remembered. He gave the realm many years of peace. Your Grace, you have no need of slaves. Magister Illyrio can keep you safe while your dragons grow, and send secret envoys across the narrow sea on your behalf, to sound out the high lords for your cause.”

“Those same high lords who abandoned my father to the Kingslayer and bent the knee to Robert the Usurper?”

“Even those who bent their knees may yearn in their hearts for the return of the dragons.”

“May,” said Dany. That was such a slippery word, may. In any language. She turned back to Kraznys mo Nakloz and his slave girl. “I must consider carefully.”

The slaver shrugged. “Tell her to consider quickly. There are many other buyers. Only three days past I showed these same Unsullied to a corsair king who hopes to buy them all.”

“The corsair wanted only a hundred, your worship,” Dany heard the slave girl say.

He poked her with the end of the whip. “Corsairs are all liars. He’ll buy them all. Tell her that, girl.”

Dany knew she would take more than a hundred, if she took any at all. “Remind your Good Master of who I am. Remind him that I am Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, trueborn queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. My blood is the blood of Aegon the Conqueror, and of old Valyria before him.”

Yet her words did not move the plump perfumed slaver, even when rendered in his own ugly tongue. “Old Ghis ruled an empire when the Valyrians were still fucking sheep,” he growled at the poor little scribe, “and we are the sons of the harpy.” He gave a shrug. “My tongue is wasted wagging at women. East or west, it makes no matter, they cannot decide until they have been pampered and flattered and stuffed with sweetmeats. Well, if this is my fate, so be it. Tell the whore that if she requires a guide to our sweet city, Kraznys mo Nakloz will gladly serve her ... and service her as well, if she is more woman than she looks.”

“Good Master Kraznys would be most pleased to show you Astapor while you ponder, Your Grace,” the translator said.

“I will feed her jellied dog brains, and a fine rich stew of red octopus and unborn puppy.” He wiped his lips.

“Many delicious dishes can be had here, he says.”

“Tell her how pretty the pyramids are at night,” the slaver growled. “Tell her I will lick honey off her breasts, or allow her to lick honey off mine if she prefers.”

“Astapor is most beautiful at dusk, Your Grace,” said the slave girl. “The Good Masters light silk lanterns on every terrace, so all the pyramids glow with colored lights. Pleasure barges ply the Worm, playing soft music and calling at the little islands for food and wine and other delights.”

“Ask her if she wishes to view our fighting pits,” Kraznys added. “Douquor’s Pit has a fine folly scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy will be rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and she may wager on which the bear will eat first.”

Tap tap tap, Dany heard. Arstan Whitebeard’s face was still, but his staff beat out his rage. Tap tap tap. 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!”

“Thank the Good Master for his patient kindness,” Dany said, “and tell him that I will think on all I learned here.” She gave her arm to Arstan Whitebeard, to lead her back across the plaza to her litter. Aggo and Jhogo fell in to either side of them, walking with the bowlegged swagger all the horselords affected when forced to dismount and stride the earth like common mortals.

Dany climbed into her litter frowning, and beckoned Arstan to climb in beside her. A man as old as him should not be walking in such heat. She did not close the curtains as they got under way. With the sun beating down so fiercely on this city of red brick, every stray breeze was to be cherished, even if it did come with a swirl of fine red dust. Besides, I need to see.

Astapor was a queer city, even to the eyes of one who had walked within the House of Dust and bathed in the Womb of the World beneath the Mother of Mountains. All the streets were made of the same red brick that had paved the plaza. So too were the stepped pyramids, the deep-dug fighting pits with their rings of descending seats, the sulfurous fountains and gloomy wine caves, and the ancient walls that encircled them. So many bricks, she thought, and so old and crumbling. Their fine red dust was everywhere, dancing down the gutters at each gust of wind. Small wonder so many Astapori women veiled their faces; the brick dust stung the eyes worse than sand.

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

The streets had been largely deserted when they had set out from the port that morning, and scarcely seemed more crowded now. An elephant lumbered past with a latticework litter on its back. A naked boy with peeling skin sat in a dry brick gutter, picking his nose and staring sullenly at some ants in the street. He lifted his head at the sound of hooves, and gaped as a column of mounted guards trotted by in a cloud of red dust and brittle laughter. The copper disks sewn to their cloaks of yellow silk glittered like so many suns, but their tunics were embroidered linen, and below the waist they wore sandals and pleated linen skirts. Bareheaded, each man had teased and oiled and twisted his stiff red- black hair into some fantastic shape, horns and wings and blades and even grasping hands, so they looked like some troupe of demons escaped from the seventh hell. The naked boy watched them for a bit, along with Dany, but soon enough they were gone, and he went back to his ants, and a knuckle up his nose.

An old city, this, she reflected, but not so populous as it was in its glory, nor near so crowded as Qarth or Pentos or Lys.

Her litter came to a sudden halt at the cross street, to allow a coffle of slaves to shuffle across her path, urged along by the crack of an overseer’s lash. These were no Unsullied, Dany noted, but a more common sort of men, with pale brown skins and black hair. There were women among them, but no children. All were naked. Two Astapori rode behind them on white asses, a man in a red silk tokar and a veiled woman in sheer blue linen decorated with flakes of lapis lazuli. In her red-black hair she wore an ivory comb. The man laughed as he whispered to her, paying no more mind to Dany than to his slaves, nor the overseer with his twisted five-thonged lash, a squat broad Dothraki who had the harpy and chains tattooed proudly across his muscular chest.

 [...]Aggo helped Dany down from her litter. Strong Belwas was seated on a massive piling, eating a great haunch of brown roasted meat. “Dog,” he said happily when he saw Dany. “Good dog in Astapor, little queen. Eat?” He offered it with a greasy grin.

“That is kind of you, Belwas, but no.” Dany had eaten dog in other places, at other times, but just now all she could think of was the Unsullied and their stupid puppies. She swept past the huge eunuch and up the plank onto the deck of Balerion.

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.

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

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 III

“All?” The slave girl sounded wary. “Your Grace, did this one’s worthless ears mishear you?”

[...]“Your ears heard true,” said Dany. “I want to buy them all. Tell the Good Masters, if you will.”

She had chosen a Qartheen gown today. The deep violet silk brought out the purple of her eyes. The cut of it bared her left breast. While the Good Masters of Astapor conferred among themselves in low voices, Dany sipped tart persimmon wine from a tall silver flute. She could not quite make out all that they were saying, but she could hear the greed.

Each of the eight brokers was attended by two or three body slaves ... though one Grazdan, the eldest, had six. So as not to seem a beggar, Dany had brought her own attendants; Irri and Jhiqui in their sandsilk trousers and painted vests, old Whitebeard and mighty Belwas, her bloodriders. Ser Jorah stood behind her sweltering in his green surcoat with the black bear of Mormont embroidered upon it. The smell of his sweat was an earthy answer to the sweet perfumes that drenched the Astapori.

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

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

Kraznys turned back to his fellows. Once again they conferred among themselves. The translator had told Dany their names, but it was hard to keep them straight. Four of the men seemed to be named Grazdan, presumably after Grazdan the Great who had founded Old Ghis in the dawn of days. They all looked alike; thick fleshy men with amber skin, broad noses, dark eyes. Their wiry hair was black, or a dark red, or that queer mixture of red and black that was peculiar to Ghiscari. All wrapped themselves in tokars, a garment permitted only to freeborn men of Astapor.

It was the fringe on the tokar that proclaimed a man’s status, Dany had been told by Captain Groleo. In this cool green room atop the pyramid, two of the slavers wore tokars fringed in silver, five had gold fringes, and one, the oldest Grazdan, displayed a fringe of fat white pearls that clacked together softly when he shifted in his seat or moved an arm.

“We cannot sell half-trained boys,” one of the silver-fringe Grazdans was saying to the others.

“We can, if her gold is good,” said a fatter man whose fringe was gold.

“They are not Unsullied. They have not killed their sucklings. If they fail in the field, they will shame us. And even if we cut five thousand raw boys tomorrow, it would be ten years before they are fit for sale. What would we tell the next buyer who comes seeking Unsullied?”

“We will tell him that he must wait,” said the fat man. “Gold in my purse is better than gold in my future.”

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

It was Kraznys who finally announced their decision. “Tell her that the eight thousands she shall have, if her gold proves sufficient. And the six centuries, if she wishes. Tell her to come back in a year, and we will sell her another two thousand.”

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

The girl told them. The answer was still no.


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


“Double?” The fat one in the gold fringe all but drooled.

“This little whore is a fool, truly,” said Khaznys mo Nakloz. “Ask her for triple, I say. She is desperate enough to pay. Ask for ten times the price of every slave, yes.”

The tall Grazdan with the spiked beard spoke in the Common Tongue, though not so well as the slave girl. “Your Grace,” he growled, “Westeros is being wealthy, yes, but you are not being queen now. Perhaps will never being queen. Even Unsullied may be losing battles to savage steel knights of Seven Kingdoms. I am reminding, the Good Masters of Astapor are not selling flesh for promisings. Are you having gold and trading goods sufficient to be paying for all these eunuchs you are wanting?”

“You know the answer to that better than I, Good Master,” Dany replied. “Your men have gone through my ships and tallied every bead of amber and jar of saffron. How much do I have?”

“Sufficient to be buying one of thousands,” the Good Master said, with a contemptuous smile. “Yet you are paying double, you are saying. Five centuries, then, is all you buy.”

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

Dany waited for his words to be translated. “My crown is not for sale.” When Viserys sold their mother’s crown, the last joy had gone from him, leaving only rage. “Nor will I enslave my people, nor sell their goods and horses. But my ships you can have. The great cog Balerion and the galleys Vhagar and Meraxes.” She had warned Groleo and the other captains it might come to this, though they had protested the necessity of it furiously. “Three good ships should be worth more than a few paltry eunuchs.”

The fat Grazdan turned to the others. They conferred in low voices once again. “Two of the thousands,” the one with the spiked beard said when he turned back. “It is too much, but the Good Masters are being generous and your need is being great.”

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

There was the sound of indrawn breath from Jhiqui beside her. Kraznys smiled at his fellows. “Did I not tell you? Anything, she would give us.”

Whitebeard stared in shocked disbelief. His hand trembled where it grasped the staff. “No.” He went to one knee before her. “Your Grace, I beg you, win your throne with dragons, not slaves. You must not do this thing—”

“You must not presume to instruct me. Ser Jorah, remove Whitebeard from my presence.”

Mormont seized the old man roughly by an elbow, yanked him back to his feet, and marched him out onto the terrace.

“Tell the Good Masters I regret this interruption,” said Dany to the slave girl. “Tell them I await their answer.”

She knew the answer, though; she could see it in the glitter of their eyes and the smiles they tried so hard to hide. Astapor had thousands of eunuchs, and even more slave boys waiting to be cut, but there were only three living dragons in all the great wide world. And the Ghiscari lust for dragons. How could they not? Five times had Old Ghis contended with Valyria when the world was young, and five times gone down to bleak defeat. For the Freehold had dragons, and the Empire had none.

The oldest Grazdan stirred in his seat, and his pearls clacked together softly. “A dragon of our choice,” he said in a thin, hard voice. “The black one is largest and healthiest.”

“His name is Drogon.” She nodded.

“All your goods, save your crown and your queenly raiment, which we will allow you to keep. The three ships. And Drogon.”

“Done,” she said, in the Common Tongue.


“Done,” the old Grazdan answered in his thick Valyrian.

The others echoed that old man of the pearl fringe. “Done,” the slave girl translated, “and done, and done, eight times done.”

“The Unsullied will learn your savage tongue quick enough,” added Kraznys mo Nakloz, when all the arrangements had been made, “but until such time you will need a slave to speak to them. Take this one as our gift to you, a token of a bargain well struck.”

“I shall,” said Dany.

The slave girl rendered his words to her, and hers to him. If she had feelings about being given for a token, she took care not to let them show.

~

Dany fed her dragons as she always did, but found she had no appetite herself. She cried awhile, alone in her cabin, then dried her tears long enough for yet another argument with Groleo. “Magister Illyrio is not here,” she finally had to tell him, “and if he was, he could not sway me either. I need the Unsullied more than I need these ships, and I will hear no more about it.”

The anger burned the grief and fear from her, for a few hours at the least. Afterward she called her bloodriders to her cabin, with Ser Jorah. They were the only ones she truly trusted.

~

The red brick streets of Astapor were almost crowded this morning. Slaves and servants lined the ways, while the slavers and their women donned their tokars to look down from their stepped pyramids. They are not so different from Qartheen after all, she thought. They want a glimpse of dragons to tell their children of, and their children’s children. It made her wonder how many of them would ever have children.

~

“Here they are.” He looked at Missandei. “Tell her they are hers ... if she can pay.”

“She can,” the girl said.

Ser Jorah barked a command, and the trade goods were brought forward. Six bales of tiger skins, three hundred bolts of fine silk. Jars of saffron, jars of myrrh, jars of pepper and curry and cardamom, an onyx mask, twelve jade monkeys, casks of ink in red and black and green, a box of rare black amethysts, a box of pearls, a cask of pitted olives stuffed with maggots, a dozen casks of pickled cave fish, a great brass gong and a hammer to beat it with, seventeen ivory eyes, and a huge chest full of books written in tongues that Dany could not read. And more, and more, and more. Her people stacked it all before the slavers.

While the payment was being made, Kraznys mo Nakloz favored her with a few final words on the handling of her troops. “They are green as yet,” he said through Missandei. “Tell the whore of Westeros she would be wise to blood them early. There are many small cities between here and there, cities ripe for sacking. Whatever plunder she takes will be hers alone. Unsullied have no lust for gold or gems. And should she take captives, a few guards will suffice to march them back to Astapor. We’ll buy the healthy ones, and for a good price. And who knows? In ten years, some of the boys she sends us may be Unsullied in their turn. Thus all shall prosper.”

Finally there were no more trade goods to add to the pile. Her Dothraki mounted their horses once more, and Dany said, “This was all we could carry. The rest awaits you on the ships, a great quantity of amber and wine and black rice. And you have the ships themselves. So all that remains is ...”

“ ... the dragon,” finished the Grazdan with the spiked beard, who spoke the Common Tongue so thickly.

“And here he waits.” Ser Jorah and Belwas walked beside her to the litter, where Drogon and his brothers lay basking in the sun. Jhiqui unfastened one end of the chain, and handed it down to her. When she gave a yank, the black dragon raised his head, hissing, and unfolded wings of night and scarlet. Kraznys mo Nakloz smiled broadly as their shadow fell across him.

Dany handed the slaver the end of Drogon’s chain. In return he presented her with the whip. The handle was black dragonbone, elaborately carved and inlaid with gold. Nine long thin leather lashes trailed from it, each one tipped by a gilded claw. The gold pommel was a woman’s head, with pointed ivory teeth. “The harpy’s fingers,” Kraznys named the scourge.

Dany turned the whip in her hand. Such a light thing, to bear such weight. “Is it done, then? Do they belong to me?”

“It is done,” he agreed, giving the chain a sharp pull to bring Drogon down from the litter.

Dany mounted her silver. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She felt desperately afraid. Was this what my brother would have done? She wondered if Prince Rhaegar had been this anxious when he saw the Usurper’s host formed up across the Trident with all their banners floating on the wind.

She stood in her stirrups and raised the harpy’s fingers above her head for all the Unsullied to see. “IT IS DONE!” she cried at the top of her lungs. “YOU ARE MINE!” She gave the mare her heels and galloped along the first rank, holding the fingers high. “YOU ARE THE DRAGON’S NOW! YOU’RE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! IT IS DONE! IT IS DONE!”

She glimpsed old Grazdan turn his grey head sharply. He hears me speak Valyrian. The other slavers were not listening. They crowded around Kraznys and the dragon, shouting advice. Though the Astapori yanked and tugged, Drogon would not budge off the litter. Smoke rose grey from his open jaws, and his long neck curled and straightened as he snapped at the slaver’s face.

It is time to cross the Trident, Dany thought, as she wheeled and rode her silver back. Her bloodriders moved in close around her. “You are in difficulty,” she observed.

“He will not come,” Kraznys said.

“There is a reason. A dragon is no slave.” And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver’s face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard. The harpy’s fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. “Drogon,” she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. “Dracarys.”

The black dragon spread his wings and roared.

A lance of swirling dark flame took Kraznys full in the face. His eyes melted and ran down his cheeks, and the oil in his hair and beard burst so fiercely into fire that for an instant the slaver wore a burning crown twice as tall as his head. The sudden stench of charred meat overwhelmed even his perfume, and his wail seemed to drown all other sound.

Then the Plaza of Punishment blew apart into blood and chaos. The Good Masters were shrieking, stumbling, shoving one another aside and tripping over the fringes of their tokars in their haste. Drogon flew almost lazily at Kraznys, black wings beating. As he gave the slaver another taste of fire, Irri and Jhiqui unchained Viserion and Rhaegal, and suddenly there were three dragons in the air. When Dany turned to look, a third of Astapor’s proud demon-horned warriors were fighting to stay atop their terrified mounts, and another third were fleeing in a bright blaze of shiny copper. One man kept his saddle long enough to draw a sword, but Jhogo’s whip coiled about his neck and cut off his shout. Another lost a hand to Rakharo’s arakh and rode off reeling and spurting blood. Aggo sat calmly notching arrows to his bowstring and sending them at tokars. Silver, gold, or plain, he cared nothing for the fringe. Strong Belwas had his arakh out as well, and he spun it as he charged.

“Spears!” Dany heard one Astapori shout. It was Grazdan, old Grazdan in his tokar heavy with pearls. “Unsullied! Defend us, stop them, defend your masters! Spears! Swords!”

When Rakharo put an arrow through his mouth, the slaves holding his sedan chair broke and ran, dumping him unceremoniously on the ground. The old man crawled to the first rank of eunuchs, his blood pooling on the bricks. The Unsullied did not so much as look down to watch him die. Rank on rank on rank, they stood.

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

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

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

 ASOS Daenerys IV

Her Dothraki scouts had told her how it was, but Dany wanted to see for herself. Ser Jorah Mormont rode with her through a birchwood forest and up a slanting sandstone ridge. “Near enough,” he warned her at the crest.

Dany reined in her mare and looked across the fields, to where the Yunkish host lay athwart her path. Whitebeard had been teaching her how best to count the numbers of a foe. “Five thousand,” she said after a moment.

“I’d say so.”

~

“Are those slave soldiers they lead?”

“In large part. But not the equal of Unsullied. Yunkai is known for training bed slaves, not warriors.”

“What say you? Can we defeat this army?” “Easily,” Ser Jorah said.

“But not bloodlessly.” Blood aplenty had soaked into the bricks of Astapor the day that city fell, though little of it belonged to her or hers.

“We might win a battle here, but at such cost we cannot take the city.”

“That is ever a risk, Khaleesi. Astapor was complacent and vulnerable. Yunkai is forewarned.”

Dany considered. The slaver host seemed small compared to her own numbers, but the sellswords were ahorse. She’d ridden too long with Dothraki not to have a healthy respect for what mounted warriors could do to foot. The Unsullied could withstand their charge, but my freedmen will be slaughtered. “The slavers like to talk,” she said. “Send word that I will hear them this evening in my tent. And invite the captains of the sellsword companies to call on me as well. But not together. The Stormcrows at midday, the Second Sons two hours later.”

“As you wish,” Ser Jorah said. “But if they do not come—”

“They’ll come. They will be curious to see the dragons and hear what I might have to say, and the clever ones will see it for a chance to gauge my strength.” She wheeled her silver mare about. “I’ll await them in my pavilion.”

~

When she had commanded the Unsullied to choose officers from amongst themselves, Grey Worm had been their overwhelming choice for the highest rank. Dany had put Ser Jorah over him to train him for command, and the exile knight said that so far the young eunuch was hard but fair, quick to learn, tireless, and utterly unrelenting in his attention to detail.

~

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

~

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

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

~

Arstan Whitebeard stood outside the entrance of her tent, while Strong Belwas sat crosslegged on the grass nearby, eating a bowl of figs. On the march, the duty of guarding her fell upon their shoulders. She had made Jhogo, Aggo, and Rakharo her kos as well as her bloodriders, and just now she needed them more to command her Dothraki than to protect her person. Her khalasar was tiny, some thirty-odd mounted warriors, and most of them braidless boys and bentback old men. Yet they were all the horse she had, and she dared not go without them. The Unsullied might be the finest infantry in all the world, as Ser Jorah claimed, but she needed scouts and outriders as well.

~

“Yunkai will have war,” Dany told Whitebeard inside the pavilion.

~

Ser Jorah Mormont returned an hour later, accompanied by three captains of the Stormcrows. They wore black feathers on their polished helms, and claimed to be all equal in honor and authority. Dany studied them as Irri and Jhiqui poured the wine. Prendahl na Ghezn was a thickset Ghiscari with a broad face and dark hair going grey; Sallor the Bald had a twisting scar across his pale Qartheen cheek; and Daario Naharis was flamboyant even for a Tyroshi. His beard was cut into three prongs and dyed blue, the same color as his eyes and the curly hair that fell to his collar. His pointed mustachios were painted gold. His clothes were all shades of yellow; a foam of Myrish lace the color of butter spilled from his collar and cuffs, his doublet was sewn with brass medallions in the shape of dandelions, and ornamental goldwork crawled up his high leather boots to his thighs. Gloves of soft yellow suede were tucked into a belt of gilded rings, and his fingernails were enameled blue.

But it was Prendahl na Ghezn who spoke for the sellswords. “You would do well to take your rabble elsewhere,” he said. “You took Astapor by treachery, but Yunkai shall not fall so easily.”

“Five hundred of your Stormcrows against ten thousand of my Unsullied,” said Dany. “I am only a young girl and do not understand the ways of war, yet these odds seem poor to me.”

“The Stormcrows do not stand alone,” said Prendahl.

“Stormcrows do not stand at all. They fly, at the first sign of thunder. Perhaps you should be flying now. I have heard that sellswords are notoriously unfaithful. What will it avail you to be staunch, when the Second Sons change sides?”

“That will not happen,” Prendahl insisted, unmoved. “And if it did, it would not matter. The Second Sons are nothing. We fight beside the stalwart men of Yunkai.”

“You fight beside bed-boys armed with spears.” When she turned her head, the twin bells in her braid rang softly. “Once battle is joined, do not think to ask for quarter. Join me now, however, and you shall keep the gold the Yunkaii paid you and claim a share of the plunder besides, with greater rewards later when I come into my kingdom. Fight for the Wise Masters, and your wages will be death. Do you imagine that Yunkai will open its gates when my Unsullied are butchering you beneath the walls?”

“Woman, you bray like an ass, and make no more sense.”

“Woman?” She chuckled. “Is that meant to insult me? I would return the slap, if I took you for a man.” Dany met his stare. “I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, khaleesi to Drogo’s riders, and queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.”

“What you are,” said Prendahl na Ghezn, “is a horselord’s whore. When we break you, I will breed you to my stallion.”

Strong Belwas drew his arakh. “Strong Belwas will give his ugly tongue to the little queen, if she likes.”

“No, Belwas. I have given these men my safe conduct.” She smiled. “Tell me this—are the Stormcrows slave or free?”

“We are a brotherhood of free men,” Sallor declared.

“Good.” Dany stood. “Go back and tell your brothers what I said, then. It may be that some of them would sooner sup on gold and glory than on death. I shall want your answer on the morrow.”

The Stormcrow captains rose in unison. “Our answer is no,” said Prendahl na Ghezn. His fellows followed him out of the tent ... but Daario Naharis glanced back as he left, and inclined his head in polite farewell.

~

Two hours later the commander of the Second Sons arrived alone. He proved to be a towering Braavosi with pale green eyes and a bushy red-gold beard that reached nearly to his belt. His name was Mero, but he called himself the Titan’s Bastard.

Mero tossed down his wine straightaway, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and leered at Dany. “I believe I fucked your twin sister in a pleasure house back home. Or was it you?”

“I think not. I would remember a man of such magnificence, I have no doubt.”
“Yes, that is so. No woman has ever forgotten the Titan’s Bastard.” The Braavosi held out his cup to Jhiqui. “What say you take those clothes off and come sit on my lap? If you please me, I might bring the Second Sons over to your side.”

“If you bring the Second Sons over to my side, I might not have you gelded.”

The big man laughed. “Little girl, another woman once tried to geld me with her teeth. She has no teeth now, but my sword is as long and thick as ever. Shall I take it out and show you?”

“No need. After my eunuchs cut it off, I can examine it at my leisure.” Dany took a sip of wine. “It is true that I am only a young girl, and do not know the ways of war. Explain to me how you propose to defeat ten thousand Unsullied with your five hundred. Innocent as I am, these odds seem poor to me.”

“The Second Sons have faced worse odds and won.”

“The Second Sons have faced worse odds and run. At Qohor, when the Three Thousand made their stand. Or do you deny it?”

“That was many and more years ago, before the Second Sons were led by the Titan’s Bastard.”

“So it is from you they get their courage?” Dany turned to Ser Jorah. “When the battle is joined, kill this one first.”

The exile knight smiled. “Gladly, Your Grace.”

“Of course,” she said to Mero, “you could run again. We will not stop you. Take your Yunkish gold and go.”

“Had you ever seen the Titan of Braavos, foolish girl, you would know that it has no tail to turn.”

“Then stay, and fight for me.”

“You are worth fighting for, it is true,” the Braavosi said, “and I would gladly let you kiss my sword, if I were free. But I have taken Yunkai’s coin and pledged my holy word.”

“Coins can be returned,” she said. “I will pay you as much and more. I have other cities to conquer, and a whole kingdom awaiting me half a world away. Serve me faithfully, and the Second Sons need never seek hire again.”

The Braavosi tugged on his thick red beard. “As much and more, and perhaps a kiss besides, eh? Or more than a kiss? For a man as magnificent as me?”

“Perhaps.”
“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. “Think on what I’ve said tonight. Can I have your answer on the morrow?”

“You can.” The Titan’s Bastard grinned. “Can I have a flagon of this fine wine to take back to my captains?”

“You may have a tun. It is from the cellars of the Good Masters of Astapor, and I have wagons full of it.”

“Then give me a wagon. A token of your good regard.”

“You have a big thirst.”

“I am big all over. And I have many brothers. The Titan’s Bastard does not drink alone, Khaleesi.”

“A wagon it is, if you promise to drink to my health.”

“Done!” he boomed. “And done, and done! Three toasts we’ll drink you, and bring you an answer when the sun comes up.”

~

The man on the white camel named himself Grazdan mo Eraz. Lean and hard, he had a white smile such as Kraznys had worn until Drogon burned off his face. His hair was drawn up in a unicorn’s horn that jutted from his brow, and his tokar was fringed with golden Myrish lace. “Ancient and glorious is Yunkai, the queen of cities,” he said when Dany welcomed him to her tent. “Our walls are strong, our nobles proud and fierce, our common folk without fear. Ours is the blood of ancient Ghis, whose empire was old when Valyria was yet a squalling child. You were wise to sit and speak, Khaleesi. You shall find no easy conquest here.”

“Good. My Unsullied will relish a bit of a fight.” She looked to Grey Worm, who nodded.

Grazdan shrugged expansively. “If blood is what you wish, let it flow. I am told you have freed your eunuchs. Freedom means as much to an Unsullied as a hat to a haddock.” He smiled at Grey Worm, but the eunuch might have been made of stone. “Those who survive we shall enslave again, and use to retake Astapor from the rabble. We can make a slave of you as well, do not doubt it. There are pleasure houses in Lys and Tyrosh where men would pay handsomely to bed the last Targaryen.”

“It is good to see you know who I am,” said Dany mildly.

“I pride myself on my knowledge of the savage senseless west.” Grazdan spread his hands, a gesture of conciliation. “And yet, why should we speak thus harshly to one another? It is true that you committed savageries in Astapor, but we Yunkai’i are a most forgiving people. Your quarrel is not with us, Your Grace. Why squander your strength against our mighty walls when you will need every man to regain your father’s throne in far Westeros? Yunkai wishes you only well in that endeavor. And to prove the truth of that, I have brought you a gift.” He clapped his hands, and two of his escort came forward bearing a heavy cedar chest bound in bronze and gold. They set it at her feet. “Fifty thousand golden marks,” Grazdan said smoothly. “Yours, as a gesture of friendship from the Wise Masters of Yunkai. Gold given freely is better than plunder bought with blood, surely? So I say to you, Daenerys Targaryen, take this chest, and go.”

Dany pushed open the lid of the chest with a small slippered foot. It was full of gold coins, just as the envoy said. She grabbed a handful and let them run through her fingers. They shone brightly as they tumbled and fell; new minted, most of them, stamped with a stepped pyramid on one face and the harpy of Ghis on the other. “Very pretty. I wonder how many chests like this I shall find when I take your city?”

He chuckled. “None, for that you shall never do.”

“I have a gift for you as well.” She slammed the chest shut. “Three days. On the morning of the third day, send out your slaves. All of them. Every man, woman, and child shall be given a weapon, and as much food, clothing, coin, and goods as he or she can carry. These they shall be allowed to choose freely from among their masters’ possessions, as payment for their years of servitude. When all the slaves have departed, you will open your gates and allow my Unsullied to enter and search your city, to make certain none remain in bondage. If you do this, Yunkai will not be burned or plundered, and none of your people shall be molested. The Wise Masters will have the peace they desire, and will have proved themselves wise indeed. What say you?”

“I say, you are mad.”

“Am I?” Dany shrugged, and said, “Dracarys.”

The dragons answered. Rhaegal hissed and smoked, Viserion snapped, and Drogon spat swirling red-black flame. It touched the drape of Grazdan’s tokar, and the silk caught in half a heartbeat. Golden marks spilled across the carpets as the envoy stumbled over the chest, shouting curses and beating at his arm until Whitebeard flung a flagon of water over him to douse the flames. “You swore I should have safe conduct! “ the Yunkish envoy wailed.

“Do all the Yunkai’i whine so over a singed tokar? I shall buy you a new one ... if you deliver up your slaves within three days. Elsewise, Drogon shall give you a warmer kiss.” She wrinkled her nose. “You’ve soiled yourself. Take your gold and go, and see that the Wise Masters hear my message.”

Grazdan mo Eraz pointed a finger. “You shall rue this arrogance, whore. These little lizards will not keep you safe, I promise you. We will fill the air with arrows if they come within a league of Yunkai. Do you think it is so hard to kill a dragon?”

“Harder than to kill a slaver. Three days, Grazdan. Tell them. By the end of the third day, I will be in Yunkai, whether you open your gates for me or no.”

~

“Ser Jorah,” she said, “summon my bloodriders.” Dany seated herself on a mound of cushions to await them, her dragons all about her. When they were assembled, she said, “An hour past midnight should be time enough.”

“Yes, Khaleesi,” said Rakharo. “Time for what?”


“To mount our attack.”


Ser Jorah Mormont scowled. “You told the sellswords—”

“—that I wanted their answers on the morrow. I made no promises about tonight. The Stormcrows will be arguing about my offer. The Second Sons will be drunk on the wine I gave Mero. And the Yunkai’i believe they have three days. We will take them under cover of this darkness.”

“They will have scouts watching for us.”

“And in the dark, they will see hundreds of campfires burning,” said Dany. “If they see anything at all.”

“Khaleesi,” said Jhogo, “I will deal with these scouts. They are no riders, only slavers on horses.”

“Just so,” she agreed. “I think we should attack from three sides. Grey Worm, your Unsullied shall strike at them from right and left, while my kos lead my horse in wedge for a thrust through their center. Slave soldiers will never stand before mounted Dothraki.” She smiled. “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.”

Dany looked down at the sellsword again. He gave her such a smile that she flushed and turned away. “He won’t.”

“How can you know that?”

She pointed to the lumps of blackened flesh the dragons were consuming, bite by bloody bite. “I would call that proof of his sincerity. Daario Naharis, have your Stormcrows ready to strike the Yunkish rear when my attack begins. Can you get back safely?”

“If they stop me, I will say I have been scouting, and saw nothing.” The Tyroshi rose to his feet, bowed, and swept out.

~

A stillness settled over her camp when midnight came and went. Dany remained in her pavilion with her maids, while Arstan Whitebeard and Strong Belwas kept the guard. The waiting is the hardest part. To sit in her tent with idle hands while her battle was being fought without her made Dany feel half a child again.

~

The tent flap pushed open, and Ser Jorah Mormont entered. He was dusty, and spattered with blood, but otherwise none the worse for battle. The exile knight went to one knee before Dany and said, “Your Grace, I bring you victory. The Stormcrows turned their cloaks, the slaves broke, and the Second Sons were too drunk to fight, just as you said. Two hundred dead, Yunkai’i for the most part. Their slaves threw down their spears and ran, and their sellswords yielded. We have several thousand captives.”

“Our own losses?”


“A dozen. If that many.”

Only then did she allow herself to smile. “Rise, my good brave bear. Was Grazdan taken? Or the Titan’s Bastard?”

“Grazdan went to Yunkai to deliver your terms.” Ser Jorah got to his feet. “Mero fled, once he realized the Stormcrows had turned. I have men hunting him. He shouldn’t escape us long.”

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

~

The next day they marched the last three leagues to Yunkai. The city was built of yellow bricks instead of red; elsewise it was Astapor all over again, with the same crumbling walls and high stepped pyramids, and a great harpy mounted above its gates. The wall and towers swarmed with crossbowmen and slingers. Ser Jorah and Grey Worm deployed her men, Irri and Jhiqui raised her pavilion, and Dany sat down to wait.

On the morning of the third day, the city gates swung open and a line of slaves began to emerge. Dany mounted her silver to greet them. As they passed, little Missandei told them that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons.

 ASOS Daenerys V

Behind them, huge against the sky, could be seen the top of the Great Pyramid, a monstrous thing eight hundred feet tall with a towering bronze harpy at its top.

“The harpy is a craven thing,” Daario Naharis said when he saw it. “She has a woman’s heart and a chicken’s legs. Small wonder her sons hide behind their walls.”

But the hero did not hide. He rode out the city gates, armored in scales of copper and jet and mounted upon a white charger whose striped pink-and-white barding matched the silk cloak flowing from the hero’s shoulders. The lance he bore was fourteen feet long, swirled in pink and white, and his hair was shaped and teased and lacquered into two great curling ram’s horns. Back and forth he rode beneath the walls of multicolored bricks, challenging the besiegers to send a champion forth to meet him in single combat.

Her bloodriders were in such a fever to go meet him that they almost came to blows. “Blood of my blood,” Dany told them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly, no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts too.

“That was wisely done,” Ser Jorah said as they watched from the front of her pavilion. “Let the fool ride back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no harm.”

“He does,” Arstan Whitebeard insisted. “Wars are not won with swords and spears alone, ser. Two hosts of equal strength may come together, but one will break and run whilst the other stands. This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men and plants the seeds of doubt in ours.”

Ser Jorah snorted. “And if our champion were to lose, what sort of seed would that plant?”

“A man who fears battle wins no victories, ser.”

“We’re not speaking of battle. Meereen’s gates will not open if that fool falls. Why risk a life for naught?”

“For honor, I would say.”

“I have heard enough.” Dany did not need their squabbling on top of all the other troubles that plagued her. Meereen posed dangers far more serious than one pink-and-white hero shouting insults, and she could not let herself be distracted. Her host numbered more than eighty thousand after Yunkai, but fewer than a quarter of them were soldiers. The rest ... well, Ser Jorah called them mouths with feet, and soon they would be starving.

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

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

The pink-and-white hero taunted the besiegers for an hour, mocking their manhood, mothers, wives, and gods. Meereen’s defenders cheered him on from the city walls. “His name is Oznak zo Pahl,” Brown Ben Plumm told her when he arrived for the war council. [...]

They watched Oznak zo Pahl dismount his white charger, undo his robes, pull out his manhood, and direct a stream of urine in the general direction of the olive grove where Dany’s gold pavilion stood among the burnt trees. He was still pissing when Daario Naharis rode up, arakh in hand. “Shall I cut that off for you and stuff it down his mouth, Your Grace?” His tooth shone gold amidst the blue of his forked beard.

“It’s his city I want, not his meager manhood.” She was growing angry, however. If I ignore this any longer, my own people will think me weak. Yet who could she send? She needed Daario as much as she did her bloodriders. Without the flamboyant Tyroshi, she had no hold on the Stormcrows, many of whom had been followers of Prendahl na Ghezn and Sallor the Bald.

High on the walls of Meereen, the jeers had grown louder, and now hundreds of the defenders were taking their lead from the hero and pissing down through the ramparts to show their contempt for the besiegers. They are pissing on slaves, to show how little they fear us, she thought. They would never dare such a thing if it were a Dothraki khalasar outside their gates.

“This challenge must be met,” Arstan said again.

“It will be.” Dany said, as the hero tucked his penis away again. “Tell Strong Belwas I have need of him.”

[...] Oznak zo Pahl lowered his lance and charged.

Belwas stopped with legs spread wide. In one hand was his small round shield, in the other the curved arakh that Arstan tended with such care. His great brown stomach and sagging chest were bare above the yellow silk sash knotted about his waist, and he wore no armor but his studded leather vest, so absurdly small that it did not even cover his nipples. “We should have given him chainmail,” Dany said, suddenly anxious.

“Mail would only slow him,” said Ser Jorah. “They wear no armor in the fighting pits. It’s blood the crowds come to see.”

Dust flew from the hooves of the white charger. Oznak thundered toward Strong Belwas, his striped cloak streaming from his shoulders. The whole city of Meereen seemed to be screaming him on. The besiegers’ cheers seemed few and thin by comparison; her Unsullied stood in silent ranks, watching with stone faces. Belwas might have been made of stone as well. He stood in the horse’s path, his vest stretched tight across his broad back. Oznak’s lance was leveled at the center of his chest. Its bright steel point winked in the sunlight. He’s going to be impaled, she thought ... as the eunuch spun sideways. And quick as the blink of an eye the horseman was beyond him, wheeling, raising the lance. Belwas made no move to strike at him. The Meereenese on the walls screamed even louder. “What is he doing?” Dany demanded.

“Giving the mob a show,” Ser Jorah said.

Oznak brought the horse around Belwas in a wide circle, then dug in with his spurs and charged again. Again Belwas waited, then spun and knocked the point of the lance aside. She could hear the eunuch’s booming laughter echoing across the plain as the hero went past him. “The lance is too long,” Ser Jorah said. “All Belwas needs do is avoid the point. Instead of trying to spit him so prettily, the fool should ride right over him.”

Oznak zo Pahl charged a third time, and now Dany could see plainly that he was riding past Belwas, the way a Westerosi knight might ride at an opponent in a tilt, rather than at him, like a Dothraki riding down a foe. The flat level ground allowed the charger to get up a good speed, but it also made it easy for the eunuch to dodge the cumbersome fourteen-foot lance.

Meereen’s pink-and-white hero tried to anticipate this time, and swung his lance sideways at the last second to catch Strong Belwas when he dodged. But the eunuch had anticipated too, and this time he dropped down instead of spinning sideways. The lance passed harmlessly over his head. And suddenly Belwas was rolling, and bringing the razor-sharp arakh around in a silver arc. They heard the charger scream as the blade bit into his legs, and then the horse was falling, the hero tumbling from the saddle.

A sudden silence swept along the brick parapets of Meereen. Now it was Dany’s people who were screaming and cheering.

Oznak leapt clear of his horse and managed to draw his sword before Strong Belwas was on him. Steel sang against steel, too fast and furious for Dany to follow the blows. It could not have been a dozen heartbeats before Belwas’s chest was awash in blood from a slice below his breasts, and Oznak zo Pahl had an arakh planted right between his ram’s horns. 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.

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

The defenders on the walls began firing their crossbows at Belwas, but the bolts fell short or skittered harmlessly along the ground. The eunuch turned his back on the steel- tipped rain, lowered his trousers, squatted, and shat in the direction of the city. He wiped himself with Oznak’s striped cloak, and paused long enough to loot the hero’s corpse and put the dying horse out of his agony before trudging back to the olive grove.

~

Only then did she lead her captains and commanders inside her pavilion for their council.

“I must have this city,” she told them, sitting crosslegged on a pile of cushions, her dragons all about her. Irri and Jhiqui poured wine. “Her granaries are full to bursting. There are figs and dates and olives growing on the terraces of her pyramids, and casks of salt fish and smoked meat buried in her cellars.”

“And fat chests of gold, silver, and gemstones as well,” Daario reminded them. “Let us not forget the gemstones.”

“I’ve had a look at the landward walls, and I see no point of weakness,” said Ser Jorah Mormont. “Given time, we might be able to mine beneath a tower and make a breach, but what do we eat while we’re digging? Our stores are all but exhausted.”

“No weakness in the landward walls?” said Dany. Meereen stood on a jut of sand and stone where the slow brown Skahazadhan flowed into Slaver’s Bay. The city’s north wall ran along the riverbank, its west along the bay shore. “Does that mean we might attack from the river or the sea?”

“With three ships? We’ll want to have Captain Groleo take a good look at the wall along the river, but unless it’s crumbling that’s just a wetter way to die.”

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

“From wood, Your Grace,” Ser Jorah said. “The slavers have burnt every tree within twenty leagues of here. Without wood, we have no trebuchets to smash the walls, no ladders to go over them, no siege towers, no turtles, and no rams. We can storm the gates with axes, to be sure, but ...”

“Did you see them bronze heads above the gates?” asked Brown Ben Plumm. “Rows of harpy heads with open mouths? The Meereenese can squirt boiling oil out them mouths, and cook your axemen where they stand.”

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

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

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

Dany sighed. “I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey Worm. Perhaps we can starve the city out.”

Ser Jorah looked unhappy. “We’ll starve long before they do, Your Grace. There’s no
food here, nor fodder for our mules and horses. I do not like this river water either. Meereen shits into the Skahazadhan but draws its drinking water from deep wells. 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.”

“Slave or free, they are hungry and they’ll soon be sick. The city is better provisioned than we are, and can be resupplied by water. Your three ships are not enough to deny them access to both the river and the sea.”

“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.

“When cowards hide behind great walls, it is they who are defeated, Khaleesi,” Ko Jhogo said.

Her other bloodriders concurred. “Blood of my blood,” said Rakharo, “when cowards hide and burn the food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes. This is known.”

“It is known,” Jhiqui agreed, as she poured.

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

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

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

“I know a way.” Brown Ben Plumm stroked his speckled grey-and-white beard. “Sewers.” “Sewers? What do you mean?”

“Great brick sewers empty into the Skahazadhan, carrying the city’s wastes. They might be a way in, for a few. That was how I escaped Meereen, after Scarb lost his head.” Brown Ben made a face. “The smell has never left me. I dream of it some nights.”

Ser Jorah looked dubious. “Easier to go out than in, it would seem to me. These sewers empty into the river, you say? That would mean the mouths are right below the walls.”

“And closed with iron grates,” Brown Ben admitted, “though some have rusted through, else I would have drowned in shit. Once inside, it is a long foul climb in pitch-dark through a maze of brick where a man could lose himself forever. The filth is never lower than waist high, and can rise over your head from the stains I saw on the walls. There’s things down there too. Biggest rats you ever saw, and worse things. Nasty.”

Daario Naharis laughed. “As nasty as you, when you came crawling out? If any man were fool enough to try this, every slaver in Meereen would smell them the moment they emerged.”

Brown Ben shrugged. “Her Grace asked if there was a way in, so I told her ... but Ben Plumm isn’t going down in them sewers again, not for all the gold in the Seven Kingdoms. If there’s others want to try it, though, they’re welcome.”

Aggo, Jhogo, and Grey Worm all tried to speak at once, but Dany raised her hand for silence. “These sewers do not sound promising.” Grey Worm would lead his Unsullied down the sewers if she commanded it, she knew; her bloodriders would do no less. But none of them was suited to the task. The Dothraki were horsemen, and the strength of the Unsullied was their discipline on the battlefield. Can I send men to die in the dark on such a slender hope? “I must think on this some more. Return to your duties.”

~

South of the ordered realm of stakes, pits, drills, and bathing eunuchs lay the encampments of her freedmen, a far noisier and more chaotic place. Dany had armed the former slaves as best she could with weapons from Astapor and Yunkai, and Ser Jorah had organized the fighting men into four strong companies, yet she saw no one drilling here.

~

“There’s the treacherous sow,” he said. “I knew you’d come to get your feet kissed one day.” His head was bald as a melon, his nose red and peeling, but she knew that voice and those pale green eyes. “I’m going to start by cutting off your teats.” Dany was dimly aware of Missandei shouting for help. A freedman edged forward, but only a step. One quick slash, and he was on his knees, blood running down his face. Mero wiped his sword on his breeches. “Who’s next?”

“I am.” Arstan Whitebeard leapt from his horse and stood over her, the salt wind riffling through his snowy hair, both hands on his tall hardwood staff.

“Grandfather,” Mero said, “run off before I break your stick in two and bugger you with —”

The old man feinted with one end of the staff, pulled it back, and whipped the other end about faster than Dany would have believed. The Titan’s Bastard staggered back into the surf, spitting blood and broken teeth from the ruin of his mouth. Whitebeard put Dany behind him. Mero slashed at his face. The old man jerked back, cat-quick. The staff thumped Mero’s ribs, sending him reeling. Arstan splashed sideways, parried a looping cut, danced away from a second, checked a third mid-swing. The moves were so fast she could hardly follow. Missandei was pulling Dany to her feet when she heard a crack. She thought Arstan’s staff had snapped until she saw the jagged bone jutting from Mero’s calf. As he fell, the Titan’s Bastard twisted and lunged, sending his point straight at the old man’s chest. Whitebeard swept the blade aside almost contemptuously and smashed the other end of his staff against the big man’s temple. Mero went sprawling, blood bubbling from his mouth as the waves washed over him. A moment later the freedmen washed over him too, knives and stones and angry fists rising and falling in a frenzy.

Dany turned away, sickened. She was more frightened now than when it had been happening. He would have killed me.

“Your Grace.” Arstan knelt. “I am an old man, and shamed. He should never have gotten close enough to seize you. I was lax. I did not know him without his beard and hair.”

“No more than I did.” Dany took a deep breath to stop her shaking. Enemies everywhere. “Take me back to my tent. Please.”

~

“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.

 ASOS Daenerys VI

No one was calling her Daenerys the Conqueror yet, but perhaps they would. Aegon the Conqueror had won Westeros with three dragons, but she had taken Meereen with sewer rats and a wooden cock, in less than a day. Poor Groleo. He still grieved for his ship, she knew. If a war galley could ram another ship, why not a gate? That had been her thought when she commanded the captains to drive their ships ashore. Their masts had become her battering rams, and swarms of freedmen had torn their hulls apart to build mantlets, turtles, catapults, and ladders. The sellwords had given each ram a bawdy name, and it had been the mainmast of Meraxes—formerly Joso’s Prank—that had broken the eastern gate. Joso’s Cock, they called it. The fighting had raged bitter and bloody for most of a day and well into the night before the wood began to splinter and Meraxes’ iron figurehead, a laughing jester’s face, came crashing through.

Dany had wanted to lead the attack herself, but to a man her captains said that would be madness, and her captains never agreed on anything. Instead she remained in the rear, sitting atop her silver in a long shirt of mail. She heard the city fall from half a league away, though, when the defenders’ shouts of defiance changed to cries of fear. Her dragons had roared as one in that moment, filling the night with flame. The slaves are rising, she knew at once. My sewer rats have gnawed off their chains.

When the last resistance had been crushed by the Unsullied and the sack had run its course, Dany entered her city. The dead were heaped so high before the broken gate that it took her freedmen near an hour to make a path for her silver. Joso’s Cock and the great wooden turtle that had protected it, covered with horsehides, lay abandoned within. She rode past burned buildings and broken windows, through brick streets where the gutters were choked with the stiff and swollen dead. Cheering slaves lifted bloodstained hands to her as she went by, and called her “Mother.”

In the plaza before the Great Pyramid, the Meereenese huddled forlorn. The Great Masters had looked anything but great in the morning light. Stripped of their jewels and their fringed tokars, they were contemptible; a herd of old men with shriveled balls and spotted skin and young men with ridiculous hair. Their women were either soft and fleshy or as dry as old sticks, their face paint streaked by tears. “I want your leaders,” Dany told them. “Give them up, and the rest of you shall be spared.”

“How many?” one old woman had asked, sobbing. “How many must you have to spare us?”

“One hundred and sixty-three,” she answered.

She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood ...

Dany put the glass aside, frowning. It was just. It was. I did it for the children.

~

“Flies are the dead man’s revenge.” Daario smiled, and stroked the center prong of his beard. “Corpses breed maggots, and maggots breed flies.”

“We will rid ourselves of the corpses, then. Starting with those in the plaza below. Grey Worm, will you see to it?”

“The queen commands, these ones obey.”

“Best bring sacks as well as shovels, Worm,” Brown Ben counseled. “Well past ripe, those ones. Falling off those poles in bits and pieces, and crawling with ...”

“He knows. So do I.” Dany remembered the horror she had felt when she had seen the Plaza of Punishment in Astapor. I made a horror just as great, but surely they deserved it. Harsh justice is still justice.

“Your Grace,” said Missandei, “Ghiscari inter their honored dead in crypts below their manses. If you would boil the bones clean and return them to their kin, it would be a kindness.”

The widows will curse me all the same. “Let it be done.”

~

She stood. “When I sent you down into the sewers, part of me hoped I’d seen the last of you.[”] [...] “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. While Joso’s Cock and the other rams were battering the city gates and her archers were firing flights of flaming arrows over the walls, Dany had sent two hundred men along the river under cover of darkness to fire the hulks in the harbor. But that was only to hide their true purpose. As the flaming ships drew the eyes of the defenders on the walls, a few half- mad swimmers found the sewer mouths and pried loose a rusted iron grating. Ser Jorah, Ser Barristan, Strong Belwas, and twenty brave fools slipped beneath the brown water and up the brick tunnel, a mixed force of sellswords, Unsullied, and freedmen. Dany had told them to choose only men who had no families ... and preferably no sense of smell.

They had been lucky as well as brave. It had been a moon’s turn since the last good rain, and the sewers were only thigh-high. The oilcloth they’d wrapped around their torches kept them dry, so they had light. A few of the freedmen were frightened of the huge rats until Strong Belwas caught one and bit it in two. One man was killed by a great pale lizard that reared up out of the dark water to drag him off by the leg, but when next ripples were spied Ser Jorah butchered the beast with his blade. They took some wrong turnings, but once they found the surface Strong Belwas led them to the nearest fighting pit, where they surprised a few guards and struck the chains off the slaves. Within an hour, half the fighting slaves in Meereen had risen.

 ADWD Daenerys II

“[...] Will you hear my friends? There are seven of them as well.” He brought them forth one by one. “Here is Khrazz. Here Barsena Blackhair, ever valiant. Here Camarron of the Count and Goghor the Giant. This is the Spotted Cat, this Fearless Ithoke. Last, Belaquo Bonebreaker. They have come to add their voices to mine own, and ask Your Grace to let our fighting pits reopen.”

Dany knew his seven, by name if not by sight. All had been amongst the most famed of Meereen’s fighting slaves … and it had been the fighting slaves, freed from their shackles by her sewer rats, who led the uprising that won the city for her. She owed them a blood debt. “I will hear you,” she allowed.

  The advice she received

ASOS Daenerys I

“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.”

[...] “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.”

[...] “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.”

[...] “These are Illyrio’s ships, Illyrio’s captains, Illyrio’s sailors ... and Strong Belwas and Arstan are his men as well, not yours.”

[...] “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?”

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

[...] “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.”

[...] “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.”

[...] “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?”

[...] “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.”

 ASOS Daenerys II

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

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

~

“You have lived long in the world, Whitebeard. Now that you have seen them, what do you say?”

“I say no, Your Grace,” the old man answered at once.


“Why?” she asked. “Speak freely.” Dany thought she knew what he would say, but she wanted the slave girl to hear, so Kraznys mo Nakloz might hear later.

“My queen,” said Arstan, “there have been no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House.”

“Yet I must have some army,” Dany said. “The boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking politely.”

“When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of Westeros will be with you,” Whitebeard promised. “Your brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love.”

“And my father?” Dany said.

The old man hesitated before saying, “King Aerys is also remembered. He gave the realm many years of peace. Your Grace, you have no need of slaves. Magister Illyrio can keep you safe while your dragons grow, and send secret envoys across the narrow sea on your behalf, to sound out the high lords for your cause.”

“Those same high lords who abandoned my father to the Kingslayer and bent the knee to Robert the Usurper?”

“Even those who bent their knees may yearn in their hearts for the return of the dragons.”

“May,” said Dany.

~

“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.”

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

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

~

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

~

“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.”

~

“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 III

The tall Grazdan with the spiked beard spoke in the Common Tongue, though not so well as the slave girl. “Your Grace,” he growled, “Westeros is being wealthy, yes, but you are not being queen now. Perhaps will never being queen. Even Unsullied may be losing battles to savage steel knights of Seven Kingdoms. I am reminding, the Good Masters of Astapor are not selling flesh for promisings. Are you having gold and trading goods sufficient to be paying for all these eunuchs you are wanting?”

~

Whitebeard stared in shocked disbelief. His hand trembled where it grasped the staff. “No.” He went to one knee before her. “Your Grace, I beg you, win your throne with dragons, not slaves. You must not do this thing—”

~

Dany fed her dragons as she always did, but found she had no appetite herself. She cried awhile, alone in her cabin, then dried her tears long enough for yet another argument with Groleo. “Magister Illyrio is not here,” she finally had to tell him, “and if he was, he could not sway me either. I need the Unsullied more than I need these ships, and I will hear no more about it.”

 ASOS Daenerys IV

Ser Jorah pointed. “Those are sellswords on the flanks. Lances and mounted bowmen, with swords and axes for the close work. The Second Sons on the left wing, the Stormcrows to the right. About five hundred men apiece. See the banners?”

Yunkai’s harpy grasped a whip and iron collar in her talons instead of a length of chain. But the sellswords flew their own standards beneath those of the city they served: on the right four crows between crossed thunderbolts, on the left a broken sword. “The Yunkai’i hold the center themselves,” Dany noted. Their officers looked indistinguishable from Astapor’s at a distance; tall bright helms and cloaks sewn with flashing copper disks. “Are those slave soldiers they lead?”

“In large part. But not the equal of Unsullied. Yunkai is known for training bed slaves, not warriors.”

“What say you? Can we defeat this army?” “Easily,” Ser Jorah said.

“But not bloodlessly.” Blood aplenty had soaked into the bricks of Astapor the day that city fell, though little of it belonged to her or hers.

“We might win a battle here, but at such cost we cannot take the city.”

“That is ever a risk, Khaleesi. Astapor was complacent and vulnerable. Yunkai is forewarned.”

~

“Missandei, what language will these Yunkai’i speak, Valyrian?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” the child said. “A different dialect than Astapor’s, yet close enough to understand. The slavers name themselves the Wise Masters.”

“Wise?” Dany sat crosslegged on a cushion, and Viserion spread his white-and-gold wings and flapped to her side. “We shall see how wise they are,” she said as she scratched the dragon’s scaly head behind the horns.

~

But when Mero was gone, Arstan Whitebeard said, “That one has an evil reputation, even in Westeros. Do not be misled by his manner, Your Grace. He will drink three toasts to your health tonight, and rape you on the morrow.”

“The old man’s right for once,” Ser Jorah said. “The Second Sons are an old company, and not without valor, but under Mero they’ve turned near as bad as the Brave Companions. The man is as dangerous to his employers as to his foes. That’s why you find him out here. None of the Free Cities will hire him any longer.”

“It is not his reputation that I want, it’s his five hundred horse. What of the Stormcrows, is there any hope there?”

“No,” Ser Jorah said bluntly. “That Prendahl is Ghiscari by blood. Likely he had kin in Astapor.”

“A pity. Well, perhaps we will not need to fight. Let us wait and hear what the Yunkai’i have to say.”

 ASOS Daenerys V

Her bloodriders were in such a fever to go meet him that they almost came to blows. “Blood of my blood,” Dany told them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly, no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts too.

“That was wisely done,” Ser Jorah said as they watched from the front of her pavilion. “Let the fool ride back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no harm.”

“He does,” Arstan Whitebeard insisted. “Wars are not won with swords and spears alone, ser. Two hosts of equal strength may come together, but one will break and run whilst the other stands. This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men and plants the seeds of doubt in ours.”

Ser Jorah snorted. “And if our champion were to lose, what sort of seed would that plant?”

“A man who fears battle wins no victories, ser.”

“We’re not speaking of battle. Meereen’s gates will not open if that fool falls. Why risk a life for naught?”

“For honor, I would say.”

“I have heard enough.” Dany did not need their squabbling on top of all the other troubles that plagued her.

~

They watched Oznak zo Pahl dismount his white charger, undo his robes, pull out his manhood, and direct a stream of urine in the general direction of the olive grove where Dany’s gold pavilion stood among the burnt trees. He was still pissing when Daario Naharis rode up, arakh in hand. “Shall I cut that off for you and stuff it down his mouth, Your Grace?” His tooth shone gold amidst the blue of his forked beard.

“It’s his city I want, not his meager manhood.”

~

“I’ve had a look at the landward walls, and I see no point of weakness,” said Ser Jorah Mormont. “Given time, we might be able to mine beneath a tower and make a breach, but what do we eat while we’re digging? Our stores are all but exhausted.”

“No weakness in the landward walls?” [...] “Does that mean we might attack from the river or the sea?”

“With three ships? We’ll want to have Captain Groleo take a good look at the wall along the river, but unless it’s crumbling that’s just a wetter way to die.”

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

“From wood, Your Grace,” Ser Jorah said. “The slavers have burnt every tree within twenty leagues of here. [...] [”]

“Did you see them bronze heads above the gates?” asked Brown Ben Plumm. “Rows of harpy heads with open mouths? The Meereenese can squirt boiling oil out them mouths, and cook your axemen where they stand.”

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

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

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

Dany sighed. “I will not throw away Unsullied lives, Grey Worm. Perhaps we can starve the city out.”

Ser Jorah looked unhappy. “We’ll starve long before they do, Your Grace. There’s no food here, nor fodder for our mules and horses. I do not like this river water either. Meereen shits into the Skahazadhan but draws its drinking water from deep wells. 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.”

“Slave or free, they are hungry and they’ll soon be sick. The city is better provisioned than we are, and can be resupplied by water. Your three ships are not enough to deny them access to both the river and the sea.”

“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.

“When cowards hide behind great walls, it is they who are defeated, Khaleesi,” Ko Jhogo said.

Her other bloodriders concurred. “Blood of my blood,” said Rakharo, “when cowards hide and burn the food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes. This is known.”

“It is known,” Jhiqui agreed, as she poured.

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

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

[...] “There must be some way into this city.”

“I know a way.” Brown Ben Plumm stroked his speckled grey-and-white beard. “Sewers.” “Sewers? What do you mean?”

“Great brick sewers empty into the Skahazadhan, carrying the city’s wastes. They might be a way in, for a few. That was how I escaped Meereen, after Scarb lost his head.” Brown Ben made a face. “The smell has never left me. I dream of it some nights.”

Ser Jorah looked dubious. “Easier to go out than in, it would seem to me. These sewers empty into the river, you say? That would mean the mouths are right below the walls.”

“And closed with iron grates,” Brown Ben admitted, “though some have rusted through, else I would have drowned in shit. Once inside, it is a long foul climb in pitch-dark through a maze of brick where a man could lose himself forever. The filth is never lower than waist high, and can rise over your head from the stains I saw on the walls. There’s things down there too. Biggest rats you ever saw, and worse things. Nasty.”

Daario Naharis laughed. “As nasty as you, when you came crawling out? If any man were fool enough to try this, every slaver in Meereen would smell them the moment they emerged.”

Brown Ben shrugged. “Her Grace asked if there was a way in, so I told her ... but Ben Plumm isn’t going down in them sewers again, not for all the gold in the Seven Kingdoms. If there’s others want to try it, though, they’re welcome.”

[gingerwritess]

Hey there!! So I have 2 motives for dropping into your inbox! 1) (the more important one) YOURE SO AMAZING AND I LOVE YOUR WRITING AND YOURE JUST AWESOME. I hope you know that ❤️ aaaand 2) I know your requests are super full, so whenever you get to this is great, your writing is just so awesome and I wanted to ask if you’d be willing to do one with Loki and an insecure reader?? Anyways, hope you have a great week! Love ya!!!!

this is while you’re still kinda new to waking up next to loki. take that relationship status how you will ;)

ps thank you smsmsksjdjwhej sorry this took so long to answer!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“You’re really pissing me off.”

Loki cracks an eye open. “…I beg your pardon?”

Sighing, you backhand his chest and roll onto your stomach next to his sleeping form, staring down at him. “I said you’re pissing me off.”

“I’m…sorry…?”

“Why are you so goddamn perfect?”

A laugh catches in his throat—that scared him. God forbid you ever wake him up with those words one day and actually mean them.

“It’s infuriating,” you grumble, poking a finger into his cheek. “We just woke up, for pete’s sake, can’t you at least have morning breath?”

“…who is Pete?”

Annoying little perfect prick. You let out a groan and drop your head onto his perfect chest, bringing up a hand to rest over one of his perfectly chiseled pecs. “No one, it’s an expression.”

Strong arms wind around your shoulders and you wiggle around a bit to get comfortable, eliciting the tiniest of groans from your godly pillow.

“I’m just really sick ‘n tired of waking up to the literal definition of perfection every morning,” you sigh, drumming distracted fingers on his chest, “when I have to look like a moldy piece of trash every morning.”

His hair is never frizzy, always sleek and shiny and perfectly wavy and luscious—bed head who? You don’t think he even knows what snoring is, or what drool is, and he never has that foggy half-asleep messiness about him.

Whereas when you wake up, mirrors crack.

And you’re fairly certain you could kill a man just by breathing in his direction before brushing your teeth.

“You do not look like a moldy piece of trash,” Loki laughs, tilting his chin down to press a kiss to the top of your head.

“I do too. Why do you even kiss me in the mornings?”

“Must be something inconsequential, like I love you or something.”

You glance up at him with a scowl.

Fuck, even from this angle? Where are his double chins???

“Fine, I love you too, but seriously.” You nuzzle back into his chest, subconsciously trying to hide your face from his adoring gaze. “How can you even stand to-to…you know.” A wave at your face. “Look at me?”

Loki’s brow knits together. You can’t possibly be serious, with these ridiculous concerns about what you look like first thing in the morning, right?

Maybe he shouldn’t laugh, judging from your serious silence and nose squishing against his chest. His heart flutters; you’re trying to hide in his embrace again.

A cool thumb strokes over the soft skin of your shoulder, steady and reassuring. “No words could begin to describe your beauty, fair maiden.”

“Ha ha, very funny—”

“Shh, let me finish.” His chuckle rattles your head on his chest. “You are the most beautiful creature I have had the pleasure of seeing, and I’ve seen many, many worlds in my lifetime.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re supposed to say that,” you groan, absentmindedly running your hand up and down his torso. “It’s like, your job to say that. That’s like when a grandma says you’re pretty, it doesn’t count.”

Caught up in your insecurities, you miss just how much Loki is squirming under your distracted hands.

“B-but I mean every word,” he swears through gritted teeth. “You are stunning, simply ethereal, a goddess—oh, fuck, darling…”

Your nails barely scraped over his nipple and you don’t even notice his cursing or how his body jolts under you, too busy trying to point out your flaws.

“My hair is awful, Loki, it’s a freakin’ birds nest in the morning, and I drool in my sleep—there, I said it—and my body’s all lumpy, I’ve got rolls and cellulite for days, and—Loki!!”

He’s on top of you now, knees on either side of you and pinning your wrists next to your head. “How dare you,” he breathes, chest rising and falling rapidly. “How dare you speak of yourself in such a way?”

“It-it’s true,” you squeak—his eyes are flashing as he scowls down at you, almost scarily. “I’m not good enough for you, mister perfect.”

“Right…” The fingers around your wrists tighten.“I am the perfect one, of course.”

Loki seals your mouth with a searing kiss, burning hot and angry, and when he pulls away with a pop seconds later, he looks…different.

His hair is curly, tangled, sticking up in weird places, crumpled with sleep and messy—you bite back a shocked giggle. The eyes normally so crisp and striking first thing in the morning seem tired, a little puffy with leftover sleep and crinkling beautifully at the corners as he smiles down at you.

Those perfect eyebrows of his aren’t precisely shaped, his lips a tiny bit chapped, and he smells faintly of cotton and sleep and…you.

You’ve never wanted to hug him more than you do now.

“Loki…you look like you just woke up.” Pulling a hand out from his grip, you reach up to cradle his jaw with a grin, running your thumb across his lips. “It’s a good look. Refreshing.”

“Do you see now?” He smiles down at you, turning his head to press a kiss to your palm. “Don’t you dare hate yourself for being human. Every little thing that you hate about yourself, I get to love for the both of us.”

“You’re such a sap.” You pat his cheek with a grateful smile, laughing a little at his disheveled state. “Thanks for pretending to have bed head to make me feel better.”

His smile turns sheepish, embarrassed. “No, no, I’ve lied to you, my love.” He hangs his head in shame. “I’ve never wanted you to think of me as anything less than the best I could be, so…I lied to you.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You’ve been using an illusion every single morning??”

“…yes.”

“And here I am, getting all self-conscious about what I look like in the morning?”

The look in Loki’s eye is simply broken. “I am so, so sorry, I never should’ve—”

His voice dies out when you pull him down and firmly press your lips to his, knotting your fingers in his tangled, messy hair. “You’re so stupid,” you giggle, stealing another kiss. “We’re both so stupid.”

A cracked smile breaks out over his face and he rests his forehead on yours—he can’t help but agree with you.

“Let’s be ugly every morning together, okay?” You hug him close, burying your face in his wild hair.

“How about we be beautiful every morning together, instead?”

You laugh and kiss him again, and Loki sinks down to rest lightly on top of you, this time burying his face in the crook of your neck, not hesitating to plant a breathy kiss there, too.

“I’m still pissed off, though,” you murmur, gently stroking a hand through his hair.

“Why, my love?”

“You still taste like peppermint.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

hope you enjoyed, feel free to send me ideas!

loki tags: @bluediamond007 @himitoshi @drakesfiance @destiel1597 @dangertoozmanykids101 @archy3001 @jcalpha1 @yzssie @skullvieplu @forthesnakeofdragons @skulliebythesea @wegingerangelica @storiesfrommirkwood @agarwaeneth @adaliamalfoy @laurfangirl424@paradisaicsam @fitzsimmons-is-forever @ladylokimischief @katelinwrites @tarynkauai @polaristrange @loavesofmeat @canadian-ravenpuff-multishipper @lou-makes-me-strong @holyn0vak @chocolatealmondmillk @swtnrholland @kenzieam @jessiejunebug  @catticas @the-republic-and-face-of-texas @doralupin01 @whitewitchdown @atomiccharmer @falconfeather23435 @babygirlicecream  @avengrcs @vethrvolnir2 @bookgirlunicorn @wabisabigrl @myhealingstar @khaleesi-marvel @ei77777 @spacecrumbs @scarlettrosella@rocks-are-pretty-odd @confessionsofastrugglingteen  @easilydistractedwriter @arttasticgreatnessoftheawesome77 @fluffyllamaswearinghats @milktearose@lcyouinhell @h0tshotholland @dontmesswithmemundane @southsidesarcasticwriter @helnik-s @lilith-akemi @fire-in-her-veinz @unlikelysamwinchesteronahunt @mischievousbellerina  @kcd15@mellowgirl01 @lokislilcaribbeanprincess @allthingzhiddleston @scorpionchild81 @lokixme @vast-ish @blue-automne @galaxycharmed @devilbat @kangaroobunny @end-up-well

[xxlittle0birdxx]

WIP: J/B AU fic

Sometimes a scene pops into my head while I’m in the shower.  This one is no exception.

The throne room was the same, except the stained glass seven-pointed star in the oriel window behind the throne itself had been replaced with one of a three-headed dragon.  The girl sitting in the Iron Throne looked down at the gathered lords and ladies, her silver hair arranged in a mass of braids and flowing curls.  Tiny bells woven into the braids chimed softly as rearranged herself.  She looked as uneasy on the throne as Aerys had.  Jaime glanced at Brienne, standing between him and Selwyn, Elynor balanced on one hip.  Everyone stood in strained silence.  Even Elynor, usually a sunny child, was subdued, her face buried in Brienne’s shoulder.

Someone behind them coughed.  It echoed in the strangely quiet room.  

A young woman strode to the edge of the dais.  She announced in a clear, ringing voice, ‘You are in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, Rhoynar, and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Mother of Dragons, the Breaker of Chains.’

‘Think she’s got enough titles?’ Selwyn breathed.  Brienne sent him a quelling look. 

Daenerys shifted once more on the throne.  ‘Lord Lannister?’

Tyrion stepped forward and bowed.  ‘Your Grace.’

Daenerys’ brow lifted.  ‘You’re Lord Lannister?’

‘I am.’

Daenerys’ lips pursed and she motioned to Tyrion, while looking at a large man standing next to her.  ‘Ser Jorah?  Is he trying to mock me?’

Jorah inclined his head.  ‘I do not believe so, khaleesi.  Tyrion Lannister is the second son of the late Tywin Lannister.’

‘I thought Tywin Lannister’s heir was Ser Jaime Lannister.’  Her eyes swiveled over the crowd.  ‘Is he here?’

Jaime took in a deep breath and shouldered his way to the clear space at the base of the dais.  He bowed.  ‘Your Grace.’

‘You are the elder son, are you not?’

‘I am, Your Grace.’

‘And yet you are not the Lord of Casterly Rock.’

‘No.’  Jaime paused and added, almost as an afterthought, ‘Your Grace.’

‘So I won’t deprive a Great House of its lord when I execute you.’

Jaime started stonily ahead.  ‘No, Your Grace.’

Daenerys adjusted her body again.  Jaime felt a faint twinge of pity for her.  The Iron Throne was not a comfortable place.  ‘I heard stories about you when I was a child from my brother, Viserys.  How a member of the Kingsguard betrayed his oath and murdered my father.’  She took a moment to gaze down at Jaime.  ‘Do I have the right of it?’

‘If that is what Your Grace believes.’

Before Daenerys could order her man to seize Jaime, Brienne shoved Elynor into her father’s arms.  She pushed through the throngs of people blocking her path and all but marched to stand next to Jaime.  She was quickly joined by Sansa, Podrick, and Jon.  Tyrion stood in front of Jaime, his chin lifting with defiance.

‘Who are you?’ Daenerys snapped, clearly reaching a breaking point, as she slid to the edge of the seat.

‘Ser Brienne of Tarth.  Ser Jaime is my husband.’  Brienne’s lips pressed together, before she managed, ‘Your Grace.’

‘Ser?  I’ve never heard of a woman who’s earned a knighthood.’  Brienne visibly bristled, but held her tongue.  ‘Do you come forward to beg for his life?’

Brienne laced her fingers through Jaime’s.  His hand was cold and damp.  ‘I ask that you give him leave to defend his actions.’

‘Of course a wife will want to defend her husband,’ Daenerys stated.

‘There is more to the story than that of a rogue, murderous Kingsguard,’ Brienne replied with far more equanimity than she felt.

‘Is there?’ Daenerys turned her attention to Jon.  ‘And you are?’

‘Jon Sn--’  Jon cleared his throat.  ‘Jon Stark.  Lord o’ Winterfell and Warden o’ the North.’  It still felt awkward on his tongue.

Daenerys smirked at Jon.  ‘Why does the Warden of the North care so much about what happens to the husband of the heir of a minor Stormlands House?’

‘If we judged a man by a single action, none o’ us would be innocent.’  Jon refused to rise to her bait.  ‘Most people don’t break vows on a whim, Your Grace.’  He tilted his head toward Jaime.  ‘Hear him out.  It only costs you time.’

Daenerys abruptly stood.  ‘I shall think on this.  Put him in a cell in the meantime.’

‘No!’ Brienne protested.

‘Do not test me,’ Daenerys warned.  ‘Or you shall join him.’

‘Brienne…’  Jaime’s quiet voice pierced her fury.  ‘It was only a matter of time.’  He turned to face the soldiers that came bearing chains.  ‘Might I be allowed to say a farewell to my wife and child?’  The stoic man nodded.  Brienne spun to find Selwyn behind her.  He placed Elynor in Jaime’s arms.  Jaime held her tightly, pressing kisses to her hair, her round cheeks.  ‘Mind your mamma,’ he told her.  ‘Can you do that for me?’  Elynor nodded, her small face wreathed in uncertainty.  ‘Papa is going to have to leave you for a little while.’  He ran his hand over her bright hair.  ‘No matter what happens,’ he murmured,  ‘never forget that I love you.’  He glanced at Selwyn.  ‘Now, go back to your grandpapa, so I can talk to Mamma, hmmm?’  He gave her one more kiss, certain it would be the last before handing Elynor back to Selwyn.  

Brienne stood in shock and disbelief.  Jaime slipped the tip of his hook into her sword belt and drew her closer until he could touch her forehead with his.  ‘The best decision I’ve ever made was jumping into that bear pit to save you.’  He kissed her.  ‘I wouldn’t trade the last few years for anything.’  He grinned.  ‘Not even for all the sapphires on Tarth.’

‘You speak as though this is the end.’  Brienne’s face crumpled.

‘She might decide to burn me regardless of what I say.’ Jaime murmured.  Brienne’s arms wound around Jaime’s shoulders, tears slipping unheeded down her cheeks.  They stood wrapped in one another’s arms until the soldier tugged Jaime’s arm, pulling them apart.  Jaime touched Brienne’s face, then held out his arms and stood in impassive silence while the stern soldiers bound them together behind his back. 

[polygamyff]

52. Part 8

Even though we didn’t have sex, I have woke up with a smile on my face. I really enjoyed last night, I think hearing that I am not a danger to my kids, it’s really made me happy. Robyn has shown me nothing but loving, I have enjoyed it. I think not everything needs to be about sex, I guess but I enjoyed it, but Robyn is not in bed and I have slept way more then I usually do. I am usually the one to wake up early, but I was so comfortable in bed with Robyn, stretching my body out “yes” I groaned out, I needed that. Reaching over and grabbing my phone, I did text Nalah last night that I needed to see her, let’s see what she says. Tapping on Nalah’ message as my phone unlocked, she will be at her apartment all day. I guess I will pay her a visit, I need to inform her of this of course I mean she has the right to know such a thing. Getting out of bed, I can’t be bothered to check the rest of my notifications. I groaned out as I sat up on the edge of the bed, every time I travel and go to different climates my body always aches but I am used to it but hate it, this is my body telling me I am ill and to relax but life goes on. I am happy to know Robyn wants more kids, I would never say no to more kids, why not. I can afford it and also I enjoy being a dad and I would like a son but also I will be blessed even if I had five daughters because they are the best, Reign has changed me so much. My phone started to ring in my hand, looking down at the caller I.D. What does Tina want now, answering the call “morning?” I said groggily “hey my handsome man” here she goes “your handsome man? Come on now Tina, what can I do for you now. You want to use me again?” I laughed, she is forever using me for something “use you, actually not you baby. Who manages Robyn? I have been watching her closely and you know I work with all designers and models, you know me” oh she doesn’t want me “I feel a little offended now, and nobody. She doesn’t need one, why?” I wonder what she wants “I have a proposal for her and the little one, they both have beautiful faces and we would like her to model the Balmain baby and adult range, matching outfits. I mean you can act as her manager, but I need a fresh faced beautiful woman and that is what she is” I am shocked to hear that “oh wow, ok. I mean I can ask. I am not sure that is her thing though but I can always ask, my girl is very busy at the moment though but for you Tina, I will ask” I do like Tina even though she is crazy as shit “thank you, they are so beautiful so I hope she does agree. Get back to me” that is a nice compliment “I will, thank you. Bye” disconnecting the call.

There is many reasons why I don’t want to go Milan that time also, I don’t know why but I am honestly getting harassed by my ex girls I used to fuck with and I am not sure why Shawn chose Milan, like was it ploy but the girls are just being nice and asking when I am coming but I have changed. Like now, I have this one asking when is you and your assistant coming to Milan, she is asking because of the picture I posted of Reign. I don’t really entertain them, but they are good friends, I mean I guess I have fucked all of my female friends too. Replying to the message ‘I should be in Europe maybe in a few months’ time, even closer. No birthday party for me haha’ pressing send on the message, opening the baby gate. This is like the fifth gate I have opened; Robyn has gone baby gate mad “I am about sick of these because of Reign” Jay is awake already “jump over it nigga, can’t you jump?” Jay said “this isn’t an assault course, morning everyone. Krista, missed me?” I said laughing “always” Robyn is used to little Krista now, she even eats breakfast with us “sarcasm now, morning Mi Amor” touching the top of her head “I am busy today. I need to go and see Nalah” pulling the chair back “can I come with you?” Robyn asked “sure, I don’t mind that. Hey girl” touching Khaleesi’ head “how does it feel to be thirty one? I wanted to ask you that” Jay asked “erm, I am not sure. I feel blessed, I didn’t think I would be alive. Honest, I was fucked. That is it, the end” I shrugged “amazing story bro, actually. I do remember you. I was a bodyguard at Little Wayne’ party, and you had a big entourage and I saw this skinny as fuck guy. Like Robyn, this nigga was skinny as fuck. These people weren’t protecting him, he was just there. I just remember you came and we had to accommodate your people, I was talking to my friend and he said don’t you remember and I do but I was so young then, much smaller in size” he chuckled “I don’t remember it, I was probably at my skinniest. Like niggas see that and they think I am that still, people can’t accept I am different now. I am just saying, I had a death wish. I would come to the party with a case full of money, I was a bastard. Don’t get angry Robyn but I am surprised I didn’t end up having kids elsewhere, but I was a bastard. Shit was wild Jay, but yeah. I am alive” I laughed “god wanted you here” Jay pointed at me “you were never a bastard to me?” Robyn said “have you seen you? You are so damn beautiful woman” is she crazy “but you had beautiful! You are such a liar, you have. I mean I was what, nothing? Me?” rolling my eyes “but your innocence got me, your calming nature. You got to understand Robyn, these girls that I met were there for a reason. It’s just not interesting, just you but I do feel like people can’t accept I have changed” I just feel it.

Robyn wanted to come with me to see Nalah, not going to refuse now “you think Jay will be ok? We will be back before she waked up” Robyn asked “Jay is part of the family, that’s his little stink so she is ok. You know, we need to trust this circle Robyn. A lot of shit will change and it’s concerning, I have a murderous family now? I mean what the fuck” shit is wild “that doesn’t phase me actually, my grandpa did say it, but I ignored it. Who am I to judge but you need to be careful with all these changes” I do actually remember Robyn’ grandpa attacking me that time but I honestly don’t know half of the shit that be happening with the family “do you want to go and get a new car now? I always forget” I feel bad now “no, it’s ok. I am fine with this” frowning at Robyn “why? I can get you a car” she has been hiring this car for the longest “because, I said so now leave it” side eyeing Robyn “I must admit, you are way better than my driver. Much more pretty too” I grinned “awww thank you, I love driving with my man” nodding my head smiling, ny phone started to ring in my hand “Ally” answering the call “erm, I didn’t get around to asking, where are you anyways?” Ally asked as my phone buzzed against my ear “with Robyn why? She is driving” odd question “Valentina, party in Milan? Shawn arranged it? This is what I got from Valentina anyways, I just didn’t think you would want that?” My face softened “you’re kidding right? I’ll sort it out” I don’t want Robyn to know “that is fine, speak soon” she disconnected the call. Checking on the message, Valentina again, now I get why she is here texting me ‘You had no party for your 30th?? Well you did with your dad; you need to visit. You can’t just stop partying, it’s fun. Bring your girl along, we don’t discriminate’ she says that because her ass is bisexual, she be fucking anyone, replying back to her ‘Well she does, but I will visit for lunch. That is it’ shaking my head laughing, she wants that old Maurice which is gone “what are you laughing at?” Robyn questioned “uhh well” locking my phone.

“Uhhh well what, I did see a woman’ name on there soo?” Robyn peeped “and you think I would laugh and text back when you can see? So, when I would go Milan there was females I was friends with that I would party with. She is just asking when I am coming to party, but I of course said those days are over, they want to meet up I guess. I said I am coming overseas soon, we can meet for lunch, that is it” is Robyn going to kill me or “so you had sex with them?” I paused staring at her “not exactly, I have seen them with other girls. I just watched while I got high, I didn’t actually fuck them” Robyn let out an oh “even better, seen their pussies, that is ok right?” ok she is not happy “that was in the past, now it’s just hi and bye. She is good people, I can’t help what past Maurice did” now she is mad with me “I know you won’t cheat, I know you won’t but I don’t trust bitches that are openly messaging you when they know you’re with me?” nodding my head slowly “they invited you?” Robyn laughed “I am not going to lick pussies and share you, got it. Who else you texting on that account?” rolling my eyes “friends, it’s not sinister Robyn, these are clients too! And friends” Robyn scoffed “you have fucked all of your friends Maurice” I sighed out “you have Zen! The fuck, you drove him home!?” which she did “I have not seen his fucking dick, that is different and you are clutching at straws!” she pointed at me “now put your fucking claws back because you know that is wrong, my man is messaging a girl that you have seen her pussy” clearing my throat “so now what?” I said “you tell me brains?” Robyn is so angry with me “she is a client of mine too, not that way! Honestly, just like Tina, I have these connects Robyn” Robyn held her hand out “give me your phone” I guess she is going to search my phone, passing my phone to Robyn “let me park up” sounds like she is going to beat my ass.

Robyn is very quiet just parked outside of Nalah’ apartment, I mean I have nothing to hide it is all there “ok, you get a lot of messages from females that you have not opened so the messages you do open, you know?” Robyn said, rubbing my face “aye!” Robyn spat “yes, I mean yes” I was just in my own thoughts “well I have read them anyways, nothing really was sad. They compliment you too much about being a good daddy, but I do trust you. Just not women that I assume you had sexual relationships with, I don’t want these bitches thinking I am a weak bitch because that is not me, I am very secure in that manner” Robyn placed my phone in my lap “but I like what I saw, not an ounce of flirtatious behaviour” nodding my head “I am scared, I don’t want you to beat my ass either” I said laughing “I wouldn’t beat your ass, dramatic. I just like to know you respect me. But would I let you party with them? No, and neither will you see them in Europe or whatever you said in that message, it’s not harmless with them and I won’t have it yeah, see how I feel once we married but right now, that is a no” nodding my head, I will listen to Robyn of course “I was just trying to get her to leave me alone really, I wouldn’t ever want to lose you. On god” Robyn cooed out “same, I missed you a lot. Nice to see you are scared of me and I respect that like I respect you. But I will break your dick if you try anything too” she says something nice and then threatens me, she is nice “you can be scary sometimes, I am a good boy” Robyn got out of the car “you near shit yourself, Bye” she ain’t wrong I did.

Walking the lobby to Nalah’ apartment “I wanted to ask, if you thought I was scared didn’t that make you think I was cheating?” I questioned “no because you gave up your phone to me. And it was more of I don’t want an argument look; I know you Maurice, so I didn’t take it in that kind of context of cheating. You are too damn cute” Robyn knocked on Nalah’ apartment door “I don’t try and be cute, but it happens, I can’t help how sexy I am, actually. I got to tell you some shit” Robyn placed her hand on her hip looking all concerned “so Tina called me, I was like it’s about me. What else does she want but no, she spoke on you and Reign. She is Tina, she knows everyone in the modelling and designer industry, and she was like” the door opened “hello family!!” Nalah spat “one minute so yeah, Tina goes oh does Robyn have a manager, I was like nah she doesn’t need it. She said I want Robyn and Reign to model or runway Balmain kid and adult wear, they are beautiful” Robyn’ eyes bulged out “you are lying to me!” she pointed “deadass” I said “oh yeah, she called Ally while you was away, I said tell Tina to call Maurice directly. He is not lying” Nalah backed me up “see, I am not lying. I am shocked but yeah, up to you. I can be your manager; I take payment in handjobs or even oral? Your terms” Robyn’ hands over her mouth still staring at me “no” she shook her head “you’re beautiful, what can I say. Come on” placing my arm around Robyn as we made our way inside “I can’t take that in, I am not that beautiful” Robyn moved her hands away from over her mouth “you are, stop it and hi Nalah” walking into her apartment “look at your tan, what the hell. Did you go with him Robyn?” Nalah asked “no, why? You know I didn’t” moving my arm away from Robyn “you just glowing, I know but welcome to my place. I got us some cocktails” rolling my eyes seeing Shawn “you can also kiss and make up with Shawn, please and thank you” I didn’t know he would be here “he lives here now?” I asked “well he comes here now and then Maurice” stuffing my hands in my pockets “let’s talk then, come” walking off “Maurice” Robyn said, I am just going to say how I fucking feel or knock his small ass out.

Shawn closed the bedroom door “Valentina then? You want to talk” Shawn’ face softened “look-” I cut him off “don’t look me right, Robyn looked at my messages because I have her crazy ass messaging me on Instagram, she called Ally and then Ally sent it to me. Why are you setting me up? Is that why you wanted to go Milan? Boys night out, you cheat on my sister and I cheat on Robyn and we all keep it secret? I am passed that! You know Valentina owns a fucking whore house and she will do anything for her girls to work and you set that up!?” Shawn didn’t think I would know “it’s not a whore house, Maurice we know her she is good to us. It was just a party. I wasn’t going to cheat on anyone, just fun. I said it to her” I sniggered “knowing full well my past with these people, you’re supposed to be my friend, I can’t believe you. If Robyn read that she would have killed me thinking it’s me because of my reputation out there! The reputation I am trying to fix because I was so fucked! Don’t you like I am happy? Answer me” Shawn put his hands up “listen to me, it was harmless. You are my best friend; I am happy for you. I just wanted some fun, harmless laugh” I laughed “I think you’re on a different level to me Shawn, I am getting married next week. No night away, just getting married. I trust Jay more then you after this, you set me up with Valentina!? Yes, I get it, she is nice. But you know what she is, and I said, you fuck with my sister I will knock your fucking ass out, what is your problem!?” I shouted “nothing, just some fun! Maurice you need to lighten up, nobody was going to cheat, she knows Milan!” he shouted “she runs a whore house! She is ok from a fucking distance like every fucking female I know. I don’t think I want that in my life, people like you in my life. You want me to beg for you, you miss that, and I see it. I have to make decisions in my life and you ain’t involved in it, I want you to fucking leave me and my family alone” Shawn’ face softened “Maurice, come on now. We have known each other since school! This is dumb, I would never let you do anything like that again. I want the best for you bro” I just felt anger in me, grabbing Shawn by the throat “then why contact Valentina!? Tell me that, I am getting rid of everyone, I am done! I am done with everyone!” I spat, Shawn grabbed my arm “then let me speak” I want to squeeze his neck, pushing him back “damn” Shawn coughed.

Shawn put his hands together “I love your sister; I promise you now I wouldn’t ever cheat on her. We are happy, I didn’t mean it in a malicious way, Valentina knows Milan. I wanted a party for you, nothing sinister and she knows that, and I can show you the messages. I made a mistake, I am sorry, but I love you, I wouldn’t ever want that for you, I know how much you love Robyn! I know, I see it. Me, I always wanted that for you. This was taken the wrong way, in life there will be women from your past there, it means nothing. It’s just fucking business Maurice, you know that. I promise you this, I know. I was living that life with you; I was scared for you. Don’t take this as bad, never that. I promise you! Just some fun not in the bad way. I get it, you’re not the Maurice I knew, and I like that, just don’t want you to lose you like that. I have been so upset. Please, bro you are taking this the wrong way. I have never been so happy with Nalah please” I can tell he is being genuine “then why ask her?” I said ever so calm “just because she knows the villas and places to party, it wasn’t going to her girls. I was getting the boys along too, I am sorry” nodding my head “don’t fucking play me or my siblings, you will find out why, but my circle is going to be tight. All y’all going to be playing a fucking part, and I ain’t taking no prisoners got it?” Shawn got his hand out “got it, I got you. I always did Maurice. You are my brother, but don’t kill me” I chuckled taking his hand “don’t let me down, on god” patting his back.

Smiling lightly at Robyn “I hope everything was ok?” Robyn asked “you know me” I sat down on the couch “I am sorry Robyn” Shawn said “for what?” Robyn said in confusion, I wonder what his fat ass mouth got to say “I don’t want to fall out with my brother, he means everything to me. So I was taking him to Milan, to party. And I invited a girl, Valentina she is a well known woman to get girls but in the past she has been good to us, I needed someone to get us a villa so I can get a villa and party, I didn’t think anything of it until Maurice said she has been messaging him but the thing is, she is a friend and Maurice knows that but I am sorry, I feel like I let him down and you, I am sorry” he wants to admit to it so be it “right, I did see he was messaging her too which was very harmless but why did you do that? How?” Robyn asked “because she knows Milan, she is friends of ours too. We have never had sex with her at all” Shawn put his hands up “Maurice seen her pussy though, he admitted that” Shawn frowned at me “I ain’t lying to my girl, but this is his fault but nothing happened. Honest” I mumbled “wow, you’re a real dumbass. Now I am angry at you” Nalah said “I made a mistake! She knows how to party, I am sorry! Please. I wanted to say sorry to you Robyn” Robyn is not happy at all, I am just stressed out of my mind right now.

[multi-fandom-imagines8]

Fate

Part 1

Summary: After freeing the slaves in Essos with your mother Daenerys, she sends you to claim the iron throne while she rules in Meereen. That was until you met Jon Snow.

Warnings: some GoT season 7 spoilers.

A/N: Y/n/n= your nickname.

Word Count: 2628.

“What am I doing?” You asked while sitting on the throne in Dragonstone.

“Are you asking me, your grace?” Missandei looked around her to see if you’re talking to someone else.

“Yes and no. Do you believe I made the right choice coming here?”.

“Yes, you’re the only one who can save the seven kingdoms. If you hadn’t agreed, then your mother would’ve had to and then all what you’ve done in Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen would be destroyed and the slavers would’ve come back” she tried to encourage you.

“I know that, but she’s the one who wanted the throne for so long and fought her whole life for it. I could’ve stayed in Meereen. I just don’t know why she wanted me to go instead of her”.

“I believe she wants you to make your own decision and be a ruler of your own”.

“Can I tell you a secret?”.

“Of course, your grace”.

“I never really wanted to rule. A simple life would’ve been enough. Now, I have too many responsibilities and duties to fulfill. Do you think I’ll make a good queen?”.

“You already are a good queen”.

“Thank you”.

—-

“What does your lord expect from me?” You asked a sorceress who goes by the name Melisandre that came to talk to you about the lord of light.

“Bosys bantis amāzis. Meri kīvio dārilaros ōz maghagon kostas” (The long night is coming. Only the prince who was promised can bring the dawn) she prophesied you in High Valyrian.

“The prince who was promised will bring the dawn. I’m afraid I’m not a prince” you replied.

“Your grace, forgive me but your translation is not quite accurate. That noun has no gender in High Valyrian. So the proper translation for that prophecy would be the prince or princess that was promised will bring the dawn” Missandei elaborated.

“Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, does it?” Tyrion remarked.

“No, but I like it better. Do you believe this prophecy refers to me?” You questioned.

“Prophecies are dangerous things. I believe you have a role to play, as does another. The king in the north, Jon Snow” she informed you.

“Jon Snow? Ned Stark’s bastard?”.

You didn’t like the sound of that. You thought you’d only have to get rid of one queen, Cersei. And now she tells you there’s another king in the north.

“You know him?”.

“I traveled with him to the wall when he joined the night’s watch”.

Varys asked her why she believes the prophecy singled him out and she told him about the Wildlings and how he protected them and united them with the northerners. Maybe he’s not so bad after all.

“He sounds like quite a man” you expressed.

“Summon Jon Snow. Let him tell stand before you and tell you the things that’ve happened to him. The things that he’s seen with his own eyes” she suggested.

Tyrion also advised you to summon him and try to make him an Ally. He also informed you that the Lannisters beheaded his father and that he trusted him.

You sent a raven inviting him to Dragonstone to bend the knee.

—-

“You stand in the presence of Y/n Fireborn of the house Targaryen. Rightful heir to the Iron Throne. Rightful queen of the Andals and the First Men. Protector of the seven kingdoms. The sister of dragons. The unburnt. The breaker of chains. Daughter of the Khaleesi of the great grass sea” Missandei introduced and he seemed surprised.

You were never one for titles and great introduction, but this time you needed to be strong in order to take back what’s rightfully yours.

“This is Jon Snow... He’s king in the north” the man next to him introduced.

He sounded like a simple man. You wanted to smile but managed to hide it.

“So, I assume my lord, you’re here to bend the knee”.

“I am not” he answered.

Rude. How dare he.

“No, well that is unfortunate. You’ve traveled all this way to break faith with house Targaryen” you were a bit upset.

“Break faith? Your grandfather burned my grandfather alive. He burned my uncle alive. He would’ve burned the seven kingdoms-“ you interrupted him.

“My grandfather was an evil man. On behalf of house Targaryen I ask your forgiveness for the crimes he committed against your family and I ask you not to judge a granddaughter by the sins of her grandfather” you apologized.

“You’re right. You’re not guilty of your grandfather’s crimes and I’m not beholden to my ancestors vows” he boldly said.

“Then why are you here?” You questioned.

“Because I need your help and you need mine” he answered.

“Did you see three dragons flying overhead when you arrived?”.

“I did”.

“And did you see the Dothraki. All of whom have sworn to kill for me”.

“They’re hard to miss” being sarcastic now, is he?.

“But still I need your help?”.

“Your grace, everyone you know will die before Winter’s over if we don’t defeat the enemy to the north” another threat, not bloody likely.

“As far as I can see, you’re the enemy to the north”.

“I am not your enemy. The dead are the enemy” is he joking?.

“The dead? Is that another figure of speech?” You asked with a serious tone.

“The army of the dead is on the march”.

“The army of the dead?” Tyrion questioned.

“You don’t know me well my lord, but do you think I’m a liar or a madman?”.

“No, I don't think you’re either of those things” Tyrion seemed fond of this man.

He explained what he saw and told you about white walkers and that everyone should stick together to fight them instead of fighting each other.

You told him you’re here to take back the Iron throne and told them the things that happened to you and your mother that led you here, to this moment.

In return, the man who’s with Jon Snow told you why the people chose him to lead them. And what he’s seen. He also told you that he took a knife in the heart for his people and he gave his own-, but before he was able to continue, Jon shot him with a look that made him stop from talking. Tyrion tried to convince him to swear allegiance to you, but he refused saying that he doesn’t know you. He made a good point and you decided to let him stay. He was allowed to roam the castle, but wasn’t allowed to sail back north.

—-

“Amazing thing to see” he walked down the stairs outside Dragonstone, that had a beautiful sea-view.

“My mother named them after my uncles and father. Viserion, Rhaegal and Drogon. They’ll all gone now. I heard you lost two brothers” you told him and he nodded.

After another discussion about the throne and allegiance there was silence for a moment before you spoke again “I will allow you to mine the dragonglass and forge weapons from it. Any resources or men you need, I will provide for you”.

He looked shocked that you’d do something like that even though he didn’t bend the knee “thank you”.

The man was charming, it could be one of the reasons you allowed him to stay and keep his head.

As days passed, you’ve grown fond of him and he of you. Of course there was no time for things like that. You we’re fighting the Lannisters and he seemed to be in a completely different world.

After you returned from the battle, that you’ve won. You landed Drogon and Jon was standing there. He was afraid of him at the beginning m, but then he managed to touch him and pet him. That was something you’ve never seen before. Drogon didn’t like many people and yet he seemed to like Jon Snow.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”.

“Wasn’t the word I was thinking of, but yes, they are gorgeous beasts”.

“They’re not beasts to me. No matter how big they get, how terrifying to everyone else. They’re my brothers”.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how is that even possible?”.

“I’m called fireborn for a reason. I never met my father. He died before I was born. You see my mother had three dragon eggs and when she had a funeral for my father, she placed the dragon eggs beside him and entered the circle of fire, while she was pregnant with me. After the fire burned out, the dragon eggs hatched and I was born at the same time” you explained and he seemed fascinated with the story “when you first came here, Ser Davos said you took a knife in the heart for your people-“ before you could ask your question he interrupted.

“Ser Davos gets carried away” he gave you a smile.

“So it was a figure of speech?” You asked but he didn’t answer.

After Jon convinced you to fight with him, you needed a plan to convince Cersei to join you.

You discussed the best way possible to do that and Tyrion decided to go to King’s Landing to talk to his brother Jaime, since he’s the only one she’d listen to.

But you needed proof of their existence, so Ser Jorah decided to go north of the wall to capture a wight.

“The free folk will help us. They know the north better than anyone” Jon proposed.

“They won’t follow Ser Jorah” Ser Davos reminded.

“They won’t have to” Jon looked you in the eyes and you were a bit sad. He has grown on you.

“You can’t lead a raid beyond the wall. You’re not in the night’s watch anymore. You’re king in the north”.

“I’m the only one here who has fought them and the only one here who knows them”.

“I haven’t given you permission to leave” you wished he would stay.

“With respect, your grace, I don’t need your permission. I am a king” he reminded. Sassy! “And I came here knowing that you could have your men behead me or your dragons burn me alive. I put my trust in you, a stranger, because I knew it was the best chance for my people, for all our people. Now, I’m asking you to trust in a stranger, because it’s our best chance” he gave a speech and you were convinced and accepted.

You escorted him to the shore.

“If I don’t return, at least you won’t have to deal with the king in the north anymore” Jon said.

“I’ve grown used to him”.

“I wish you good fortune in the wars to come, your grace”.

“Return safely to me” you muttered under your breath.

—-

“You seem distant, your grace. Is there something bothering you?” Missandei noticed you were thinking while she braided your hair.

“What?” You didn’t catch that.

“Is there something wrong?”.

“Not at all”.

“May I speak freely?” She asked permission.

“Of course. Always!”.

“Does it have something to do with Jon Snow? I noticed ever since he was here, you acted differently” she remarked.

“I see” you chuckled.

“He’s in love with you” Tyrion entered the room.

“Jon Snow isn’t in love with me” you didn’t want to give yourself false hope.

“Oh, my mistake. I suppose he stares at you longingly, because he’s hopeful for a success military alliance”.

You gave Tyrion’s words time to sink in before speaking “even if what you say is correct. It wouldn’t work between us”.

Grey Worm barged into the room, carrying a letter. Apparently, Jon and the others are in trouble and need your help up in the north.

“I have to go!”.

“What is it?” Tyrion noticed the discomfort on your face.

“It’s Jon and the other. They need me”.

“You can’t. The most important person in the world can’t fly off to the most dangerous place in the world” he advised you against it.

“Who else can?”.

“No one”.

“I’m the only person who can help them and it’s a chance for an alliance between us” you rode Drogon and took off with the other two.

The were too many wights, but your dragons burned them and as soon as you landed, you extended your hand to Jon. As he was about to take it, a few others attacked him and he went to fight them. The rest on the people who were with Jon managed to get on Drogon.

Suddenly, you heard Viserion screaming. When you looked up, blood was coming from everywhere. He then fell to the ground and sank under water. It all happened so fast and you were still in shock. You just watched your brother die.

“Go! Go, now! Leave!” Jon shouted from afar. The night king was ready to use another spear and kill your other brothers. You waited for Jon and he tried to reach you, but two wights jumped on him, making the ice break and there was no sign of Jon. You had no other choice but to leave.

When you arrived at the wall, you went to the top and hoped that Jon made it out alive, somehow. They managed to capture a wight and the ships were ready. They were now waiting for you.

“It’s time to go, your grace” Jorah informed you.

“A bit longer” you felt guilty for leaving him alone to die. And just as you turned away and were ready to give up, you heard the sound of the horn and someone saying open the gates. You immediately turned around and saw him in a bad shape. The men got him on the ship and he was freezing. Ser Davos and some other helped take off his clothes and that’s when you saw the scars of a knife on his upper body. He was stabbed more than once. With all those scars and he still looked beautiful.

After he regained consciousness and was able to talk, you visited his chambers.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry” were the first words to come out of his mouth. He almost died and he’s apologizing for what happened to Viserion. He’s a good man. “I wish I could take it back. I wish we’d never gone” he took your hand for a moment to comfort you, but you hesitated and took it back a moment after.

You tried to hold the tears back “I don’t. If we hadn’t gone, I wouldn’t have seen. You have to see to know. Now I know. The dragons are my brothers. I’ll never have real siblings. They are the only children my mother’ll ever have. And I’ll never have children. Do you understand?”.

“We’re going to destroy the night king and his army and we’ll do it together. You have my word” you promised.

“Thank you, y/n/n”.

“Y/n/n? It’s been a long time since I heard some calling me that. Only my mother does” you informed him.

“Alright, not Y/n/n. How about my queen?” It was more of a statement than a question “I’d uhm bend the knee, but-“.

“What about those who swore allegiance to you?” as much as you loved hearing him say those words, you wanted to be sure that he means it.

“They’ll all come to see you for what you are”.

In all this sadness, you managed to find a moment of happiness. You smiled and held his hand.

“I hope I deserve it” tears were forming in your eyes. He’s the first person who didn’t serve your mother to acknowledge you as his queen.

“You do” he assured you.

He stared at you and you got lost in the moment, before snapping out of it “you should get some rest” you retreated.

[kellyvela]

Dany: He shouldn't make me wait.

Xaro Xhoan Daxos: The Spice King is the second wealthiest man in Qarth. He makes everyone wait. Of course, you could have avoided this embarrassment if you married the wealthiest man in Qarth.

Dany: I already have a husband.

Xaro Xhoan Daxos: Khal Drogo is gone, Khaleesi. You are far too young to be a widow forever and far too beautiful.

Dany: And you are far too smart to think that I will succumb to flattery.

Xaro Xhoan Daxos: I have traveled very far in my life and met many women, but none that are immune to flattery.

The Spice King: The Mother of Dragons! 

Xaro Xhoan Daxos: Here he comes.

The Spice King: Forgive me. I had terrible dreams last night. Terrible dreams. I could not sleep until the sun was shining and the birds were singing. Look what a beauty you are now the Red Waste has been washed off you. I am sorry about all that unpleasantness. The silver hair of a true Targaryen. Xaro Xhoan Daxos, she is far too lovely for a glorified dockworker like yourself.

Xaro Xhoan Daxos: Very true, and yet they say that your grandfather, who sold pepper off the back of a wagon, married a lady far lovelier and higher born than himself.

The Spice King: Every lady alive was lovelier and higher born than my grandfather. Did my servants not offer you something to eat, to drink? I'll have them flogged in the square.

Dany: Thank you, my lord. You are a gracious host, but there is no servant alive that can bring me what I want.

The Spice King: Oh, she has a talent for drama, this one. So, my little princess, what is it you want? 

Dany: My birthright. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

The Spice King: I fear I'm no better than a servant in this regard. I cannot give you what I do not have.

Dany: I'm not asking you for the kingdoms. I'm asking you for ships. I need to cross the Narrow Sea.

The Spice King: I need my ships as well. I use them, you see, to bring spices from one port to another. 

Dany: Whatever you grant me now will be repaid three times over when I retake the Iron Throne.

The Spice King: Retake? Did you once sit on the Iron Throne? 

Dany: My father sat there, before he was murdered.

The Spice King: But if you did not sit on it yourself, would it not be correct to say "take the Iron Throne"? 

Dany: I didn't come here to argue grammar.

The Spice King: Of course not. You came to take my ships. So let me explain my position, little princess. Unlike you, I do not have exalted ancestors. I make my living by trade. And I judge every trade on its merits. You ask for ships. You say I shall be repaid triple. I do not doubt your honesty or your intentions. But before you repay your debts, you must seize the Seven Kingdoms. - Do you have an army? 

Dany: - Not yet.

The Spice King: You do not have an army. Do you have powerful allies in Westeros? 

Dany: There are many there that support my claim.

The Spice King: When were you there last? 

Dany: I left when I was a baby. 

The Spice King: So, in truth, you have no allies. 

Dany: The people will rise to fight for their rightful queen when I return.

The Spice King: Ah. Forgive me, little princess, but I cannot make an investment based on wishes and dreams. Now if you'll pardon me.

Dany: Do you know lllyrio Mopatis, Magister of Pentos? 

The Spice King: Yes, we've met. A shrewd man.

Dany: For my wedding, he gave me three petrified dragon eggs. He believed, the world believed that the ages had turned them to stone. How many centuries has it been since dragons roamed the skies? But I dreamt that if I carried those eggs into a great fire, they would hatch. When I stepped into the fire, my own people thought I was mad. But when the fire burned out, I was unhurt, the Mother of Dragons. Do you understand? I'm no ordinary woman. My dreams come true.

The Spice King: I admire your passion. But in business, I trust in logic, not passion. I'm sorry, little princess.

Dany: I am not your little princess. I am Daenerys Stormborn of the blood of Old Valyria, and I will take what is mine. With fire and blood, I will take it.

The Spice King: Yes, my lady, but not with my ships.

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

How can you like daenerys

Quite a lot of reasons, actually. For the sake of my time, I’ll limit my answer to ten of them.

1. She tolerates disrespect in her own court.

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

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

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

How many leaders and rulers in ASOIAF would have tolerated being spat on in their own court? Not many, I’m sure. 

2. She’s witty.

“Little girl, another woman once tried to geld me with her teeth. She has no teeth now, but my sword is as long and thick as ever. Shall I take it out and show you?”

“No need. After my eunuchs cut it off, I can examine it at my leisure.”

3. She’s a creative and resourceful ruler, despite having never received any sort of training, unlike the majority of other leaders.

“Not a hole. A ditch, to bring water from the river to the fields. We mean to plant beans. The beanfields must have water.”

Ser Barristan remained. “Our stores are ample for the moment,” he reminded her, “and Your Grace has planted beans and grapes and wheat. Your Dothraki have harried the slavers from the hills and struck the shackles from their slaves. They are planting too, and will be bringing their crops to Meereen to market. And you will have the friendship of Lhazar.”

4. One of, if not the most, compassionate ruler in ASOIAF who is determined to take care of her people, despite what her advisors might say.

“Ser Jorah, you say we have no food left. If I march west, how can I feed my freedmen?”

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

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

It was time, though. A girl might spend her life at play, but she was a woman grown, a queen, a wife, a mother to thousands. Her children had need of her.

Daenerys considers the people under her rule her children. That says enough about her compassion for others.

5. She’s pragmatic and a great military strategist, again despite having no formal training in these matters.

“Ser Jorah Mormont scowled. “You told the sellswords-”

“-that I wanted their answers on the morrow. I made no promises about tonight. The Stormcrows will be arguing about my offer. The Second Sons will be drunk on the wine I gave Mero. And the Yunkai’i believe they have three days. We will take them under cover of this darkness.”

“They will have scouts watching for us.”

“And in the dark, they will see hundreds of campfires burning,” said Dany. “If they see anything at all.”

“Khaleesi,” said Jhogo, “I will deal with these scouts. They are no riders, only slavers on horses.”

“Just so,” she agreed. “I think we should attack from three sides. Grey Worm, your Unsullied shall strike at them from right and left, while my kos lead my horse in wedge for a thrust through their center. Slave soldiers will never stand before mounted Dothraki.” She smiled. “To be sure, I am only a young girl and know little of war. What do you think, my lords?”

The following is describing Daenerys’ conquest of Meereen. Meereen’s walls have no weak points, the Harpies heads can squirt hot oil, and all the trees were burned by the slavers to prevent Daenerys from being able to build weapons. Daenerys doesn’t want to order the Unsullied to assault the wall directly because it would lead to pointless loss of their lives (courtesy of the boiling oil from the Harpies heads). So instead:

“Aegon the Conqueror had won Westeros with three dragons, but she had taken Meereen with sewer rats and a wooden cock, in less than a day. Poor Groleo. He still grieved for his ship, she knew. If a war galley could ram another ship, why not a gate? That had been her thought when she commanded the captains to drive their ships ashore. Their masts had become her battering rams, and swarms of freedmen had torn their hulls apart to build mantlets, turtles, catapults, and ladders. The sellswords had given each ram a bawdy name, and it had been the mainmast of Meraxes-formerly Joso’s Prank-that had broken the eastern gate."

6. She's willing to and makes an effort to learn, and learn she does.

Dany reined in her mare and looked across the fields, to where the Yunkish host lay athwart her path. Whitebeard had been teaching her how best to count the numbers of a foe. “Five thousand,” she said after a moment.

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

7. She’s brave. Anyone who has the balls to face a dragon with only a whip is far more courageous than a considerable number of characters. And before anyone says,“the dragons wouldn’t hurt her no matter how angry they get, she’s their mother,” yes they would. Drogon tried to kill her.

His head turned. Smoke rose between his teeth. His blood was smoking too, where it dripped upon the ground. He beat his wings again, sending up a choing storm of scarlet sand. Dany stumbled into the hot red cloud, coughing. He snapped.

“No” was all that she had time to say. No, not me, don’t you know me? The black teeth closed inches from her face. He meant to tear my head off. The sand was in her eyes. She stumbled over the pitmaster’s corpse and fell on her backside.

8. Her idea of what it means to rule is extremely idealistic, even after all the exploitation she’s suffered. By intentions alone Daenerys is already a far better candidate as ruler than most other leaders in the books.

“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.”

She would rather have drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door, but a queen belongs to her people, not to herself.

She believes it’s her duty as a queen to protect her people and bring justice. In Dany’s eyes, a queen must put her people first, herself second. You’d think someone who suffered under the hand of her cruel and abusive older brother, who she also considers her king, and then exploited and sold like an animal by him to a barbarian tribe, would make a thirteen-year-old girl quite jaded about rulers. But Daenerys still wholeheartedly believes that rulers should be selfless, protect their people, and bring justice, though the people who had power over her in the past did none of those things for her.

9. She’s intensely self-critical.

That morning she summoned her captains and commanders to the garden, rather than descending to the audience chamber. “Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.”

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

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

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

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

What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness?

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

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

There is blood on my hands too, and on my heart, We are not so different, Daario and I. We are both monsters.

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

Now we must keep in mind that Daenerys’ chapters are told from her POV. They are not objective by any means. The fact that she’s so self-critical in these quotes (and more) does not mean she can never be a good ruler. It’s a human thing to magnify your failures and judge yourself much more harshly than the others around you, and this is well-communicated on Dany’s POV. 

Daenerys was trying to change a system that has been in place and served as the economic foundation of Slaver’s Bay for countless years. It’s an extremely radical - even revolutionary - change. There’s not a single character that would have been able to work that situation out smoothly and without bloodshed. Yet Daenerys never takes this into consideration, she simply blames herself.

The fact that she’s so self-deprecating reveals a lot about Daenerys. For one thing, she clearly doesn’t attempt to mentally shift the blame off of herself when things go awry. This means that she’s self-aware and willing to take responsibility for her actions. Being self-critical is also something I can very much relate to, so I empathize with Daenerys here.

10. She freed slaves.

I can already hear the storm of antis crowing that she did an awful job, which is ridiculous and I dare them to do any better. When such a revolutionary change is brought about, there is simply no way it’s going to go smoothly. Like I said before, there isn’t one character in ASOIAF who would have flawlessly handled the situation Dany was in.

The “white savior” argument is also something I find odd, because slavery in ASOIAF is not race-based. Among the slaves Daenerys liberated, there were Lyseni, who are blonde-haired and blue-eyed.

I love the fact that Daenerys, despite being a queen, empathizes with the lowborn. She’s experienced the same things they have - mistreatment, fear, exploitation, to name a few - in a time that she had no say about what happened to her, like them. When she does gain power, she does her best to use it primarily to help others. 

“I will not let the harpy of Yunkai chain up those I’ve freed all over again.” She turned back to look at their faces. “I will not march.”

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

[chid-sen-gan-blog]

How to Win Every Dany Stan Argument

(DS = Dany Stan, Y = You)

DS: Dany was born to rule the Seven Kingdoms. Y: That's a nice dream. Joffrey thought the same thing.

--

DS: You're not a true Jon fan! He's in love with Dany! Don't you want him to be happy?! Y: You’re the ones who want Mr. "All-My-Life-I-Wanted-to-Be-a-Stark" to restore a lineage who's members were responsible for roasting his grandpops and uncle alive and serve as a glorified baby-maker to kween khaleesi for all eternity. Are you sure you want him to be happy?

--

DS: You're delusional! Y: *putting down magnifying glass* Huh? Sorry, I missed that. I was busy looking for Dothraki braids in Jon's hair.

--

DS: Boatbang!!!!!!!!! Y: Okay, but... a eunuch was given a longer love-making scene in the same season.

--

DS: You're just a Jonsa! Y: (if you're not a Jonsa) Actually, I'm not. *chuckles* Yeesh... and I'm the delusional one. Y: (if you are a Jonsa) And I will continue to be, unless your fave roasts me alive for having a different opinion.

--

DS: Stop whining! It doesn't matter that they're under a monarch now! The North is still free! Y: Really?! Man, someone contact the revolutionaries through history! Turns out they were free all along!

--

DS: But she freed slaves! Y: Slaves who now serve her without pay doing the exact same jobs they did without pay before she freed them. How inspiring!

--

DS: Don't be so hard on her! She's young and still learning! Y: Don't be so hard on Walder Frey! He was old and bitter!

--

DS: She doesn't enjoy burning people alive! Y: Then why are there enough clips of her looking visibly pleased at immolation that you could make a remix with them?

--

DS: So, she's done a few things wrong... Y: What counts as a "few"? Because, by that logic, so has Ramsay.

--

DS: She came to rescue everyone on the Wight Hunt! Y: I hear the Night King's penning a thank you letter* for that. *he'll send it via turbo-raven, like the one Gendry sent Dany

--

DS: You're just saying that because you're a/an *insert GoT character name here* stan! Y: *gasps* You're right! I am! I also stan *prattles off names of other characters you like*...

--

DS: Love comes at the eyes! Y: Good to know! That means all my ships are canon! Wait... *pauses* I thought you hated Doreah for what she did to Dany. Why are you quoting her? Are you sure you're real Dany fans?!

--

DS: *points out flaws in your favorite character to prop up Dany* Y: *nods and wipes a proud tear* I know. They've grown so much since then.

--

DS: Jon wasn't a prisoner on Dragonstone! Y: ... yeah, because he definitely didn't say it himself.

--

DS: Dany's done a lot without her dragons! Y: A fact I don't deny. Leading her Dothraki through the Red Waste, and starting a civil war in Mereen? Career goals!

--

DS: She saved Jon! Y: There was a Stark who had a name and Benjen was his name-o! B-E-N-J-E-N! B-E-N-J-E-N! B-E-N-J-E-N! And Benjen was his name-o!

--

DS: *calls foul names* Y: Just like the ones Kraznys called your beloved kween! I'll take it as a compliment!

--

DS: Dany’s never wanted to hurt/kill anyone! Y: I don't know. She didn't sound all that fond of "clever plans" in The Spoils of War. And seemed pretty fond of Aegon the Conqueror's fear tactics in Beyond the Wall. And then there’s the speech she gave the Dothraki back in Season 6...

--

DS: She's only/will only hurt/kill(ed) bad people! Y: ... but you just said she never intended to hurt/kill anyone...

--

DS: Her dragons don't make her who she is! Y: Yep, that's all her. I wouldn't brag about it.

--

DS: But she's suffered so much! Y: Everyone has. It's Game of Thrones.

--

DS: She's pretty! Y: Ros was, too. Doesn't mean she should be queen.

--

DS: She's not a villain, and definitely not the final villain! That’s obviously Cersei! Y: Like how it was obvious that Ned would be sitting on the Iron Throne at the end of the series?

--

DS: She gave the Tarlys a choice! Y: Incidentally, it was the same choice Voldemort gave the Hogwarts students in The Deathly Hallows.

--

DS: Don't judge her based on what her dad did! Y: I will stop when she stops doing what her dad did.

--

DS: You're a misogynist/sexist! Y: Trust me, if I was, I wouldn't be watching the show anymore. The only people fighting for a throne currently are two girls. Though I guess there’s that guy who doesn't want it, and a walking popsicle, too...

--

DS: You're just jealous of Dany! Y: Guilty. I wish that I, too, could do whatever I want and face zero consequences whatsoever.

------

That's it for now! Any other common arguments that I forgot, feel free to tell me/add on (given that anyone actually read this). I hope you enjoyed! Thanks!