Game of Thrones: Path of the Hungry Bear-Chapter 95: Just Smoke

Chapter 21: Just Smoke freewёbnoνel.com

Crown Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen

'It's all just smoke'

The typhoon of rage and betrayal in her mind quieted enough for her to function in the world when her brother's maxim sounded in her mind, putting a temporary end to punishing duality of her thoughts moving both faster than a swallow's flight and slower than a trailing snail in opposite directions trying to figure out both the sequencing and severity of Aegon's betrayal, and the consequences and shame of her own part in facilitating it, all the while repeating in her head over and over: 'I've given my body to a man who intends to kill me'

'Just smoke'

Her brother's favored chastisement for his brothers whenever he found them unduly focusing on matters of lacking or non importance, she'd noted it down for teaching her own sons, whom lacked a strong connection to her uncle-husband as a replacement father figure after the deaths of Harwin and Laenor. She'd fantasized about them learning about how a man prioritizes and organizes his time from him through her, but now after seeing the seven dragon eggs she realized that more than anyone, it was her in need of wisdom.

'It's all just smoke'

Like scales falling away from her eyes, now she sees. She'd allowed the beauty, the strength, the money, the passion, all of it to blind her to her brother's true nature, his true intent, and most importantly of all his true method. The knights, the castle, the ships, the gold, all of it meant absolutely nothing to Aegon, all of it just smoke, hiding away the truth. Fire and Blood. The egg now in her arms, one of seven, the maximum clutch size, something not recorded since House Targaryen fled old Valyria. Two clutches a year of seven eggs each, a sign of blessing by the Fourteen Flames.

She never saw a single egg from the violent couplings of Syrax and Sunfyre.

How many dragons had her brother stolen from the family during his years as 'The Knight of the Pit'? Worse yet, how many of them took after their mutant freak of a sire? How many were waiting for one of his army of bastards to come claim them? She had to pull herself back from that line of inquiry before the despair cracked her fraying façade. She simply thanked her little half-brother for the egg, and secretly for revealing that her peaceful life has just been the preface to nightmarish tragedy, and got on her fat yellow dragon to begin the multi-stop return flight home, using the time between stops to quietly weep and let the head wind dry her tears enough to recompose herself to pretend to be the same confident Crown Princess she was on the route in, an act that almost shattered when the pink and copper egg hatched during their stop in Tumbletown.

A thick and bullish dragonling busted out of the egg with little preamble. She hadn't even put the thing in a fireplace or on coals since the journey started. Rhaenyra bit back a scream when the ball of muscles and scales leapt onto her bed in the Footley Keep and rubbed itself on her belly, thanking whatever gods cared that she'd laid with Daemon several times during their stay in Dragonsreach before his public beating saw him bed bound. Her battered husband groaned in his sleep next to her, his limited body needing rest after their morning flight from Highgarden. He flung himself from bed when he wakened from his afternoon nap and saw the thing, his usual catlike agility unable to save him in his infirmity from landing on the hard wooden floor.

Urraxes the Pink Dread brought great delight to her father during their short stay in King's Landing, the little creature quite docile and obedient despite its youth and voracious appetite. The thought that her father might bond with the dragonling briefly brought her out of her melancholy, but he claimed no greater connection between them, and Urraxes continued cuddling with her stomach, the sign not missed by her father, who congratulated her and his post-beating forgiven brother for the conception of another scion of the blood.

She used the flight home to Dragonstone to order her chaotic mind, and settled on a plan. She needed Daemon's help to start countering her brother, but she needed to inform him in such a way as to minimize his satisfaction for being right all these years about her brother. After his hips healed enough, she intended to ride him thoroughly a handful of times across the space of a fortnight, and only tell him of her horrible realization with his belly full of wine and his balls drained of seed.

Then they'd begin the work of taking back their dynasty.

- Gregor Waters -

The boy wanted to rip the rough wool tunic off his back. He wanted to scream back at knights and men-at-arms screaming at him and a hundred other shaved bald bastards to keep running. He wanted to beat the asses of all the dumb pricks that got his hopes up that this group of boys herded down the coast from Oldtown were going to become princes. He thought they were stupid and wrong from the start, but they wore him down during the trip, and the sight of his father, the father of them all, atop his massive zorse, armored in silver and gold and silk, with Valyrian Steel in hands. His suspicions caved.

Then the tournament ended, and they'd all been dragged off in the night, razors taken to their silver hair, their clothes stripped and burned, replaced by roughest wool after their skin was scrubbed raw with burning soap. Any who resisted were beaten with switches, and Gregor knew better than to catch a beating after seeing someone else get one.

Now they ran each day, carrying stones, while grown men screamed at them and beat them if they failed to keep pace. Days they'd done this without explanation, until all complaints abandoned their mouths and settled down in their hearts. Today their running route changed, the men running alongside of them leading them into the hills, and how his legs screamed and his lungs burned with each rise.

Then he came, flying amongst the clouds on a golden beast. Sunfyre the Golden landed over the next rise, and as they ascended a piercing whistle came from up ahead, and nothing else happened for a time, until a shrill roar came from somewhere off to the right, followed by another and another until the cries came from all around them.

Someone screamed as a golden dragon flew over them, close enough to fan them with the wind whipped up by its wings. Gregor wondered how Sunfyre managed to get behind them, but then noticed the smaller form and yellow wings instead of pink. The dragon beat them over the rise, and as they reached it the boys stopped in wonder at the sight of many dragons flying amongst the hills to a spring that steamed into the warm air. Sunfyre stood tall and proud at the bank of the spring as seven smaller dragons of golds, yellows, creams, and pinks circled and landed.

If Sunfryre stood tall and proud, the boy's father stood like a monument of calm amidst, the scrambling, almost goofy looking dragons rolling and trilling for attention from the big gold dragon and his rider. A second whistle from Prince Aegon, made with his fingers in his mouth, sounded out, and the eager dragons quieted and stilled.

The knights and men-at-arms led them down into the canyon, calling for a stop a hundred paces or so away from the assembled dragons. Their father came forth, cutting the distance between them with steps that thundered in his ears, as if destiny came with him.

Aegon Targaryen was everything Gregor ever dreamed of becoming, and he knew that all the other boys that came with him felt the exact same way. Larger than any man he'd ever seen, not just in height, but in width. He didn't have shoulders like an ox, oxen wished they had shoulders like Aegon. The arms coming out of his short sleeved green tunic looked like they could squeeze four men to death in a single grapple.

He wore enough gold on each hand to keep Gregor's whore mother paid for years, though he only needed ten minutes to seed her womb with a brat no amount of moon tea could strangle before he moved on to the next of the dozen whores he'd impregnated that night nigh eleven years passed. In fact, three of those boys were here with him now, forming a small faction within this hundred boy cohort.

"My sons." when Aegon spoke, he heard it clearly as if he stood right beside him, but from all around him, the man not yelling, but instead as if all other sounds took step back from the power of his voice.

It stirred some primal terror in Gregor, as if he saw now a devil standing planely in the daylight.

"Any single one of you can step forward now, and claim a dragon." he continued, but not a single one stepped forward, Gregor felt rooted in place, "Do so and I will rip you from the back of your dragon and dash you on the ground in front of it while it looks on in helplessness."

The boy believed him. Aegon Targaryen wasn't simply some larger than life character, he was truly larger than life in body and deed, they'd all seen his dominance with their own eyes, no man can stand against him.

"These beasts know true obedience to me, and only a man who knows the same will ever be granted the privilege to ride upon them in my service." Aegon declared, "I offer you a path that is hell on earth, but to he who is man enough to walk it, who proves himself not only worthy, but better, the reward is further hardship. Seven of you will become dragon riders, and princes. You will rule land, command armies, and hold life and death for all beneath you in your hands. A lifetime of service to me, and my legacy. The rest will be granted one final chance to rise above. Those who fail, will have nothing but my contempt, if even their lives. Decide now if you seek the path, or leave, and prove yourself a mongrel dog unfit to stand amongst men."

Gregor didn't even look around, no one left.

Aegon raised his fist in the air and declared, "So it begins."

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Show of hands, who realized the 'biggest secret in the world' was that Aegon had hidden dragons. I'd put down a fair bit of foreshadowing, but no one ever mentioned it in the comments.

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