In which a God decides to turn to his luck, tell it to fuck off, walks through the Veil of Death, and finds it waiting on the other side, fucking up his life again, like the bitch she is.
CONTENT WARNING:
mentions of rape, lynching, slaves, incest, burning people alive, dismemberment, disembowelment, plotting of murder, and of character death (obviously).
Aelyx Targaryen, first of his name, was once a boy who gave his life for his family. He gave his all to the people, his soul to his cause, and his weapon for their survival. He fought their war for them, and he won it. And then, he got, surprisingly, betrayed. I hope you've noticed the sarcasm in that sentence. It was quite heavy.
What found him in the afterlife wasn't a judgement chamber. It wasn't God, it wasn't the big pearly gates, and it wasn't the Devil and his fiery pit. No. What found him was an army of the dead, whose sole purpose was to follow his orders and answer his questions.
The boy knew not his old name. Not the names of his betrayers. He remembers his life, but never their names. He was simply called Thanatos now. Some called him Reaper, some deemed call him Death. He just called himself Boy. He need not other names. He was a boy who became a God, of the dead maybe, but it was a calming job. Watching and guiding the few quiet dead to their path of passing. The boy never spoke, not the dead that spoke or to the dead that didn't. He observed and he smiled beneath the thick black hood. The boy so loved the dead whose stories he heard.
The dead whose parting was quiet, painless and quick, who lived to see old age and feel the life's gifts for the kids whose passing went too soon, was too quick and too painful. The stories were melancholy, soft and always told with that special kind of sweet, fond of tone. The Boy so adored the dead. Because the dead were his, as he was of the dead.
Then one day, a man came. He was living, with eyes of ice and platinum for hair, looking almost an imitation of silver. He told the Boy to kill the nonmagical. He told the Boy to slaughter them, to bloody the streets and make cities scream. Instead Boy strung the man up before the Magicals, bore the man's soul to their filthy, tainted world and painted the pebbled ground crimson with the man's own muddy blood. For all his status of fine breeding had done, even cattle would have cleaner blood to that of the Man. For the cattle is free of his sin, free of his disgusting, vile taint and free of his sick thoughts and his marred soul.
The Boy left, but the Magicals did not leave the Boy. They called upon him, time and time again. Until one day, the Boy tore them bloody, strung their intestines like decoration within the Ministry of Magic's halls, and let his beloved dead feast upon their ungrateful souls.
Then one day, when the world shook, and the bombs fell from the sky, the Boy smiled in melancholy, and turned a blind eye. His luck was always inevitable. Wherever he was, there would be death. And so the Boy attempted to escape his gift, only for it to return again.
Aelyx Targaryen was 5 name days old, and his soul was of millennia old. His father was the Crown Prince, his mother a princesses of Dorne. Aelyx was born with a crown of silver with streaks of black throughout, with skin that was kissed by the sun and eyes the exact shade of amethyst. The King, mad as he was, still looked upon his grandson, the next heir after his own son, and it was clear to all the Seven Kingdoms that the King loved Aelyx beyond any other inhabitants of their world. And it was, to the world's greatest surprise, to hear of the King sending his grandson to the Isles of Dragonstone, to become as educated on their monstrous history as Aerys himself was.
Aelyx was 9 name days old, when Dany had been birthed, and the world had screamed in storm, the dead whispering to their God of the madness of the Dragon Queen, who shall never come. Viserys had fallen, becoming one with his nephew's dead, and Aelyx grew to ten and four name days, when the Queen, his grandmother Rhaella, passed and was welcomed into his horde of dead.
The Usurper heard of the Crown Prince. The boy of ten and six, with Dorne and Fire and Blood, the trained one of Arthur Dayne, with the bastard boy of Rheagar and Lyanna's, a Blackfyre boy brought into the Martell house by marriage to Arienne Martell. Beautiful Daenerys promised to the handsome Robb Stark, of Northern House Stark. The boy was said to be the very picture of Rheagar, handsome and charming and kind. But there was a wilderness to him, an edge of cunning and ambition and fire that was not quite dragon and very much Dornish.
So the boy grew, and his horde of the dead whispered to him the plans of the world. The rotting skeletons in closets of Lions and Stags, the Throne's illegitimate heirs, and the incestuous twins of gold and red. The Lion House
And so Aelyx Targaryen whispers to his Prince Uncle, tells him of the things he suspects, whispers poisoned words to poisoned mind, and watches the ground crumble beneath the Rock, as the Proud Lion slept, and then watched the world wake to news of The Incestuous Lions, and the Theft of the Line of King. Watched the Lannister gold flow into the seas beneath Casterly Rock, and let the dead laugh merrily. Dragon King that fathered him, staring at him in pride, mother with a smile vicious and cunning, Grandfather the Mad King, with knowing eyes and a grin that was face splitting and pleased, as he watched his grandson, the Rightful King, burn it all to the ground.
The Martell's watched the Lannisters fall, all done by their Elia's child, their nephew and the Rightful King. Their pride and joy, little Aelyx. How intelligent and cunning and dangerous, the boy was. Yet he was all of Dorne, in personality and almost entirely Targaryen in body. They watched the gold run out, watched the Proud Lion scramble to pay off the world to not speak of the children that would one day sit upon the Throne, and watched the Lions die, executed for their treason against the crown after the Usurper heard of the news.
Watched as Robert Baratheon had raped and burned Cercei Lannister to the ground on a pyre, and lynched Jaime Lannister after cutting off his cock, letting the world know of the sins of House Lannister after all the years Doran had waited to see the justice. His nephew had brought it to him. To them. His dear nephew. Dorne had bent the knee.
Twenty name days had passed since the birth of Aelyx Targaryen. He has wed the son of Jaehaerys Velaryon, Oxerys Velaryon. The Velaryon House have proven loyal, and it has been known, even though quietly and only among the dragons and the dragon riders, that the Velaryons had been capable of childbearing. Even their boys, if born in the right conditions. Oxerys was all of ten and eight, slight in height, agile and lean in frame, with wide hips and thick thighs, hair that was the appropriate length of any Valyrian male. He was all Aelyx Targaryen could wish for. And he was not the quiet, lost Velaryon heir many have told him he was. Oh no. His dear was far beyond such lowly behavior. No, his Oxerys was vicious and bloody, in the way he could remember a House in his old home had been. Though their eyes were grey and hair black, as to the Velaryon silver hair and teal eyes. His Oxerys was perfect.
At ten and two name days, Dany met her betrothed, Robb Stark, with his Tully colouring and pure Stark face and body, and she was smitten. The boy was only a few moons older, and he too was, to the amusement of the Lords and the future King, just as ,if not more so, taken with the Princess. Aegon Blackfyre, the bastard of Rheagar and Lyanna, was completely enamoured with his own betrothed, the princess Arienne, who was the perfect representation of the perfect Dornish woman. And just as Aegon was enamoured with her, she was with him.
And yet, despite the love of his little family, Aelyx wasn't avoidant of his duties as the Rightful King. There were two eggs waiting for him to hatch, male and all his. And there was an army to acquire. Aelyx leaned back against his large tub, the burning water giving him the sense of cooling. The dead around him whispered of the unsullied, the slaves. The Mad King, however, whispered of the dothraki that a Magister of Myr was rallying to attempt to gift them the Targaryen Princess. His little aunt. Oh, Aelyx was smirking. His beloved dead were again so very entertaining. The Mad King laughed, and so did Aelyx. A slow, baritone laugh that made his magic sing with malice and desire.
He'll make the Magister an example, and make the dothraki taste the fire of his dragons, and he'll be able to feed his dragons for years, with the bodies he'll preserve, of each and every dothraki he sees upon the lands. Yesss, they'll make fine food for the dragons.
The spider crawled upon the wall. He was eying the snake, whose gaze was already upon it's pray. The spider did not understand why, but it knew that the snake was not happy, and that he would be next, should he not act as he meant to. The spider retreats, cowed.
Upon the Great Wall, a Targaryen sat. His eyes were fading from lavander to a curious shade of deep, murky blue. He was writing a letter, his hand shaking and his teeth gritted. He would warn his kin of the darkness. The unruly dead. Those of ice and corrupt magic, darkness and cold and arctic.
The Targaryen let his blood touch the parchment, and let the Wall seal close the letter, tying it to the crow, and letting it flee the tall tower of the Wall manned by criminals and those most deserving of the punishment of death, but we're given a way out within the walls of a castle tall above ground, where no women were allowed and stealing and desertion were punished by death. Aemon Targaryen would die in peace. Joining the horde of the dead, whose stares were kind and warm and welcoming, and not cold and piercing and filled with pain.
The letter arrived, and so had another soul. A Targaryen man, appearing young and yet with eyes that spoke of age and exhaustion. Aemon Targaryen warned his kin of impending doom beyond the Wall Black. Beyond the wildings and the giants and the mammoths. He warns of the cold. Of Winter. Of the dead. The Ice and the Night, the King of Night and Ice, and his army of the fallen, be it soldiers fallen to war and buried in snow long ago, be it wildlings that buried their own within the mounds of snow, or the giants and drowned their dead in the depths of nearly endless waters. Or the fallen if their side, of the south and the north and the west and the east. All sides with more dead to their name then living.
Quiet, was Aelyx as he read the letter. And then the piercing laughter rang. It was long and near maniacal, loud and with a tinge of absolute amazement. Not a god, but the workings of this world's magic. How wondrous, how beautiful and dangerous. Aelyx wanted to see how well they bore against his dead. How much their existance was solid, if they were present or lost to the paths of the fallen and the unreachable.
Aelyx I Targaryen would watch them burn, and he would take what was meant to be his. He just needs to break the Kingdoms first. Make them fall to their knees, submit and bow to their King, and he would not burn their cities. Surrender and bent the knee, earn forgiveness.
For it is not to be given, but earned.