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aboveallarescuer · 4 years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

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

Hizdahr, of the tepid kisses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“To be a queen.”

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

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

ADWD Daenerys IX

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

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

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

And if I never march for Westeros?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daenerys gave him a quizzical look. “Lions?”

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

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

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

Dany was not pleased. “I forbid it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ADWD Daenerys VIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If it would please Your Grace.”

“Then come.”

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

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

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

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

ADWD Daenerys VII

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

Hizdahr will bring me peace. He must.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ADWD Daenerys VI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“These ones live to serve you.”

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

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

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

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

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

ADWD Daenerys V

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your Grace?” Ser Barristan prompted, gently.

A queen belongs not to herself but to her people.

“I need Hizdahr zo Loraq.”

ADWD Daenerys IV

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only then would her womb quicken once again …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“If that is your command, Your Grace.”

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

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

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

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

“If I knew who they were—”

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

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

“Your own subjects would gladly slaughter you.”

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

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

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

ADWD Daenerys III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your Grace—”

“Magnificence—”

“Your Worship—”

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

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

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

“I cannot go.”

ADWD Daenerys II

“Who is that weeping?”

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

“My servant. I have no slaves.”

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

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

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

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

“Hostages,” said Skahaz, happily.

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

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

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

Safe. The word made Dany’s eyes fill up with tears. “I want to keep you safe.” Missandei was only a child. With her, she felt as if she could be a child too. “No one ever kept me safe when I was little. Well, Ser Willem did, but then he died, and Viserys … I want to protect you but … it is so hard. To be strong. I don’t always know what I should do. I must know, though. I am all they have. I am the queen … the … the …”

“… mother,” whispered Missandei.

“Mother to dragons.” Dany shivered.

“No. Mother to us all.” Missandei hugged her tighter. “Your Grace should sleep. Dawn will be here soon, and court.”

“We’ll both sleep, and dream of sweeter days. Close your eyes.” When she did, Dany kissed her eyelids and made her giggle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The guilt …” The word caught in her throat. Hazzea, she thought, and suddenly she heard herself say, “I have to see the pit,” in a voice as small as a child’s whisper. “Take me down, ser, if you would.”

What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness?

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

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

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

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

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

ADWD Daenerys I

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

“He died for me.”

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

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

“A certain place? What do you mean?”

“A house of pleasure, Your Grace.”

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

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

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

“If it please Your Grace.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What was the name of the old weaver?”

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

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

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

“Some men have brought burnt bones.”

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

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

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

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

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

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

“And you to me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ASOS Daenerys V

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

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

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

“Strong Belwas needs liver and onions.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Defeated?” said Dany, bristling.

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

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

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

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

ASOS Daenerys IV

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

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

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

“This one will remember.”

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

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

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

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

“Our own losses?”

“A dozen. If that many.”

Only then did she allow herself to smile.

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

“Mhysa! Mhysa!”

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

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

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

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

ASOS Daenerys III

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

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

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

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

The girl told them. The answer was still no. 

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

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

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

“And even that, they would do?” 

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

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

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

“Tell me.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I remember,” Ser Jorah said.

“I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.” “He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice ... that’s what kings are for.”

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

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

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

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

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

ASOS Daenerys II

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

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

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

“If it please your worship.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How many men do they have for sale?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I remember, Daenerys.”

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

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

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

ASOS Daenerys I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys V

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

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

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

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

ACOK Daenerys III

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

“The Pureborn refused you?”

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

ACOK Daenerys II

The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them. Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

But before she could do that she must conquer.

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

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

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

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

ACOK Daenerys I

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

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

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

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys X

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

AGOT Daenerys IX

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

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

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

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

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

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

AGOT Daenerys VIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The child kicked inside her, as if he had heard. Dany remembered the story Viserys had told her, of what the Usurper’s dogs had done to Rhaegar’s children. His son had been a babe as well, yet they had ripped him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against a wall. That was the way of men. “They must not hurt my son!” she cried. “I will order my khas to keep him safe, and Drogo’s bloodriders will—”

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

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

“Stop it!” Dany screamed.

“So you have saved me once more.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

AGOT Daenerys VII

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

Ogo and his son had shared the high bench with her lord husband at the naming feast where Viserys had been crowned, but that was in Vaes Dothrak, beneath the Mother of Mountains, where every rider was a brother and all quarrels were put aside. It was different out in the grass. Ogo’s khalasar had been attacking the town when Khal Drogo caught him. She wondered what the Lamb Men had thought, when they first saw the dust of their horses from atop those cracked-mud walls. Perhaps a few, the younger and more foolish who still believed that the gods heard the prayers of desperate men, took it for deliverance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Khaleesi?” The knight sounded perplexed. 

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

The warriors exchanged a baffled look.

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

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

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

“It is known,” her handmaid Irri echoed.

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

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

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

“Go with them,” she commanded Ser Jorah.

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

“Viserys?” She did not understand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AGOT Daenerys VI

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

AGOT Daenerys V

Dany had not known, had not even suspected. “Then ... he should have them. He does not need to steal them. He had only to ask. He is my brother ... and my true king.”

“He is your brother,” Ser Jorah acknowledged.

“You do not understand, ser,” she said. “My mother died giving me birth, and my father and my brother Rhaegar even before that. I would never have known so much as their names if Viserys had not been there to tell me. He was the only one left. The only one. He is all I have.” ~

A sense of dread closed around her heart. “Go to him,” she commanded Ser Jorah. “Stop him. Bring him here. Tell him he can have the dragon’s eggs if that is what he wants.” The knight rose swiftly to his feet.

“Where is my sister?” Viserys shouted, his voice thick with wine. “I’ve come for her feast. How dare you presume to eat without me? No one eats before the king. Where is she? The whore can’t hide from the dragon.”

Her voice made Viserys turn his head, and he saw her for the first time. “There she is,” he said, smiling. He stalked toward her, slashing at the air as if to cut a path through a wall of enemies, though no one tried to bar his way.

“The blade ... you must not,” she begged him. “Please, Viserys. It is forbidden. Put down the sword and come share my cushions. There’s drink, food ... is it the dragon’s eggs you want? You can have them, only throw away the sword.”

Distantly, as from far away, Dany heard her handmaid Jhiqui sobbing in fear, pleading that she dared not translate, that the khal would bind her and drag her behind his horse all the way up the Mother of Mountains. She put her arm around the girl. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I shall tell him.”

AGOT Daenerys IV

Dany followed on her silver, escorted by Ser Jorah Mormont and her brother Viserys, mounted once more. After the day in the grass when she had left him to walk back to the khalasar, the Dothraki had laughingly called him Khal Rhae Mhar, the Sorefoot King. Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not even known he was being mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the very young and the very old. That won him yet another name: Khal Rhaggat, the Cart King. Her brother had thought it was the khal’s way of apologizing for the wrong Dany had done him. She had begged Ser Jorah not to tell him the truth, lest he be shamed. The knight had replied that the king could well do with a bit of shame ... yet he had done as she bid. It had taken much pleading, and all the pillow tricks Doreah had taught her, before Dany had been able to make Drogo relent and allow Viserys to rejoin them at the head of the column.

“So many,” she said as her silver stepped slowly onward, “and from so many lands.”

Viserys was less impressed. “The trash of dead cities,” he sneered. [...] “All these savages know how to do is steal the things better men have built ... and kill.” He laughed. “They do know how to kill. Otherwise I’d have no use for them at all.”

“They are my people now,” Dany said. “You should not call them savages, brother.”

“The dragon speaks as he likes,” Viserys said ... in the Common Tongue.

“I will give my brother his gifts tonight,” she decided as Jhiqui was washing her hair. “He should look a king in the sacred city. Doreah, run and find him and invite him to sup with me.” Viserys was nicer to the Lysene girl than to her Dothraki handmaids, perhaps because Magister Illyrio had let him bed her back in Pentos. “Irri, go to the bazaar and buy fruit and meat. Anything but horseflesh.”

“Horse is best,” Irri said. “Horse makes a man strong.”

“Viserys hates horsemeat.”

[...] While her handmaids prepared the meal, Dany laid out the clothing she’d had made to her brother’s measure: a tunic and leggings of crisp white linen, leather sandals that laced up to the knee, a bronze medallion belt, a leather vest painted with fire-breathing dragons. The Dothraki would respect him more if he looked less a beggar, she hoped, and perhaps he would forgive her for shaming him that day in the grass. He was still her king, after all, and her brother. They were both blood of the dragon.

She was arranging the last of his gifts—a sandsilk cloak, green as grass, with a pale grey border that would bring out the silver in his hair—when Viserys arrived, dragging Doreah by the arm. Her eye was red where he’d hit her. “How dare you send this whore to give me commands,” he said. He shoved the handmaid roughly to the carpet.

The anger took Dany utterly by surprise. “I only wanted ... Doreah, what did you say?”

“Khaleesi, pardons, forgive me. I went to him, as you bid, and told him you commanded him to join you for supper.”

“No one commands the dragon,” Viserys snarled. “I am your king! I should have sent you back her head!”

The Lysene girl quailed, but Dany calmed her with a touch. “Don’t be afraid, he won’t hurt you. Sweet brother, please, forgive her, the girl misspoke herself, I told her to ask you to sup with me, if it pleases Your Grace.” She took him by the hand and drew him across the room. “Look. These are for you.”

Viserys frowned suspiciously. “What is all this?”

“New raiment. I had it made for you.” Dany smiled shyly.

He looked at her and sneered. “Dothraki rags. Do you presume to dress me now?”

“Please ... you’ll be cooler and more comfortable, and I thought ... maybe if you dressed like them, the Dothraki ... ” Dany did not know how to say it without waking his dragon.

“Next you’ll want to braid my hair.”

“I’d never ... ” Why was he always so cruel? She had only wanted to help. “You have no right to a braid, you have won no victories yet.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Fury shone from his lilac eyes, yet he dared not strike her, not with her handmaids watching and the warriors of her khas outside. Viserys picked up the cloak and sniffed at it. “This stinks of manure. Perhaps I shall use it as a horse blanket.”

“I had Doreah sew it specially for you,” she told him, wounded. “These are garments fit for a khal.” “I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells in his hair,” Viserys spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. “You forget yourself, slut. Do you think that big belly will protect you if you wake the dragon?”

His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she’d hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.

It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. “You are the one who forgets himself,” Dany said to him. “Didn’t you learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails.”

Viserys scrambled back to his feet. “When I come into my kingdom, you will rue this day, slut.” He walked off, holding his torn face, leaving her gifts behind him.

Drops of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak. Dany clutched the soft cloth to her cheek and sat cross-legged on her sleeping mats.

“Your supper is ready, Khaleesi,” Jhiqui announced.

“I’m not hungry,” Dany said sadly. She was suddenly very tired.

#daenerys targaryen #a dance with dragons #a storm of swords #a clash of kings #a game of thrones #dany passages

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seyaryminamoto · 4 years

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Hello:) Did you ever think of rewriting chapter 28 and not making Sokka sleep with someone? Or to write another version for readers who do not feel comfortable with that?

No, I didn’t. And I won’t write another version of the story just to cater to the readers who don’t like one decision I made that isn’t objectively worse than a LOT of decisions I’ve made.

Frankly, can you stop for a minute to think about how utterly unreasonable this sort of demand is towards a writer who has spent seven years working on this story, non-stop? It’s not as simple as “yeah I can remove this factor and that way the entire story will work exactly as it did before but without triggering some of my readers”, because that’s not how I write things. A completely different story would happen if you alter the detail you’re so squeamish about, and maybe that’s the story you’re looking for, I don’t know, but it certainly isn’t the story I wanted to write.

FYI: I never cheapened the harm Sokka did with his mistakes in those chapters. I didn’t simply sweep everything under a rug, I didn’t invalidate Azula’s feelings on the subject, playing it as though Azula shouldn’t have given a damn that the guy she was developing feelings for had a one-night-stand with someone else, which IS how a thousand fics in this and other fandoms handle similar situations... yet to this day I keep getting this kind of response over something I wrote ages ago, as though everything that followed was worthless in your eyes because of something Sokka did before his strongest character development begun?

The most ironic part about this for me is that it’s Sokka’s speech to Azula, later on that night, what really tears things to shreds between them. Oh, his actions are bad, no doubt, but his words literally reduced Azula to tears. How come aren’t you complaining about that, instead? Do you seriously think he would have said or thought ANYTHING DIFFERENT if he hadn’t been with someone that night? Do you really think he would have thought of Azula any differently at that point in time, when their relationship was barely starting to take a romantic turn, and he didn’t trust her in the least? Yet you’re just fixated on the fact that he was with someone else. That’s clearly the only thing that matters here, isn’t it?

Anon, I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: I’m honestly exhausted of answering questions pertaining this chapter and the situation that it resulted in. I’ve received more of them these days and I’m wondering if it is because I refuse to answer? If it is, please spare me and yourself the waste of time. I won’t rewrite my story for you, whoever you are. I won’t change the entire course of Gladiator just because of one thing you disliked. You ARE free to dislike it, and you ARE free to stop reading if you can’t possibly accept what happened, just as I am free to continue writing even if I alienate people with my apparently dreadful writing decisions that, 7 years down the line, are still so unacceptable I’m getting badgered about them even now. Honestly, I’m done explaining why I wrote what I did, because it doesn’t matter how many times I try to explain, people like you refuse to understand me.

So... do me a favor, and do some introspection of your own: why is this so important to you? Why does this particular complaint of yours make you feel entitled to request, from a writer who has slaved over her story for seven years of her life, to as good as scrap everything she’s done just because of your personal needs? Is it TRULY that impossible for you to accept that people can learn from their mistakes and move past something, however traumatic it might have been?

Because, if you want my personal opinion? This particular ask of yours is a mistake too. And if I behaved as you do, it means I should never forgive you and demand that you turn back time and not send this ask at all. Just as my writing decision hurt you, these kind of messages hurt me. Is it my pain is less important than yours? Am I supposed to be here to cater to your every whim, despite you’re outright hiding anonymously and not owning up to having sent messages like these?

Okay, you know what? I’ll ask for two favors instead: click past 28 for what I assume will be the first time you ever do, and read my Author’s Note at the end of chapter 152. I don’t care if you didn’t read the rest of the story, just read that. If, after reading that, you still don’t understand what’s my stance on catering to readers’ demands, you’re probably better off not sending me any more messages in the future.

#anon #I am so done anon #and I really don't want to deal with this anymore #I'm damn sure neither do you #stop doing this to yourself #and stop doing it to me too #either learn to move on from 28 #or forget about Gladiator altogether #because I'm sure it will be better for your health #especially if 28 is that big a deal for you #it'll be better for my health too if I don't see anything in my inbox pertaining 28 ever again #where's the damn ask outraged by the gladiators' executions in the most recent arcs?#or about Ozai's secret murder spree in the Capital?#or about Hahn's outright harassment of a woman who rejected his advances?#all those things seem a thousand times worse to me than what Sokka did here #but no not a peep #I'm done

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dammitadolfnomorecake · 5 years

Text

🏰⚔️ DMODT- 4 fixed up a bit...

Drenched from the storm, the hunting party had barely made it back to the castle before it'd turned into a pounding torrent of water that'd rained all afternoon, and night. Levi wasn't thrilled by it, but he was even less thrilled by how sick Eren had seemed to be. The moment they'd arrived back at the keep, the teen had slumped in Erwin's arms, before being whisked away by the castle healers. Zeke had watched the scene unfold, before commenting over how "omegas didn't need strength if they did their job and spent their lives on their backs". The pigs from Marley had laughed, while Levi had to stop himself from decking the fellow prince. He'd seen how hurt Eren was over the death of the wolf pup, and had felt awkward over the whole thing, as he hadn't known what to say to make the teen feel better. He was only there to entertain Zeke, then Zeke had pulled a stunt like that. That evening, when Eren failed to join them at dinner, Levi had gone looking for the teen. Outside the omegas door, two guards had been posted with orders from the court mages not to let anyone in, including him. Zeke had been less than impressed when Eren wasn't in the castle keep to wave the Marley party goodbye, while Levi felt it was for the best. If Eren was sick, his magic would be unpredictable. He just didn't realise how unpredictable it would be. Feeling some guilt over the previous day, and concern that the teen was possibly sick because of the favour he'd done for the kingdom, Levi once again found himself outside of Eren's room, this time not taking "no" for an answer as he let himself and Erwin into the room. It was quite a sight to see. Everything inside the room was levitating, including Eren. With four mages standing at the corners of the omegas bed, Erwin stepped up to cover up the fact he wasn't quite sure how to ask what the fuck was happening "Prince Erwin would like to know the condition of our newest mage?" The fifth mage at the end of Eren's bed, sank to kneel on one knee "Sir, you should not be here. His magic is quite unstable" "I can see. What's wrong with him?" "He's burning with fever, no doubt the result of being soaked to the bone yesterday" "Has he been creating fires?" The mage sighed "That's not the all of it. As you can see, everything in this room is levitating. It'd been strong enough to affect the walls" Levi raised an eyebrow "The window, sire. It wasn't quite as large before" Levi looked to the window, but he didn't know what he was supposed to be seeing. It looked like every other castle window he'd seen "Can it be brought back further under control?" "Not until his vows are taken, or his fever breaks" "I do not see a cool cloth upon his forehead" "The fabric burst into flame each time it was placed near him" "Give me a cloth" "Sir?" "Give me a cloth, I have dealt with this kind of thing before" For all of five minutes, as a teen himself. Rising, the mage pulled a cloth from their sleeve, passing it to Levi. He'd never get used to magic. The cloth was almost like ice. Leaving Erwin's side, he walked around to the side of Eren's bed. No kid should be rasping for breath like he was, nor should he look so sick. His skin pale, sheets drenched in sweat, while his lips were speckled with what seemed to be blood. Reaching out, he jumped as Erwin spoke "Prince, perhaps you shouldn't touch him" "It's fine. It's a mere cold" "Erwin" "Mind your place, Levi" Reaching out, he placed his hand on Eren's forehead. The kid was fucking burning up. Whining, Eren pitifully called for relief... from an alpha. The brat was as much a slave to his own dynamic as any of them were "Shitty brat, this wasn't supposed to happen" Under his touch, Eren grew warmer, as he gasped down a breath. Then all at once, everything fell back into place with loud thuds, no longer levitating, as Eren was no longer levitating. Placing the cloth over the omegas forehead, Eren let out a weak sigh "Sir?" Levi raised his gaze, all five mages and Erwin staring at him "Don't look at me. I don't know what that was. Keep me updated on his condition, and make sure he doesn't burn my castle down" "Yes, sir" Flustered by what had happened, Levi swept from Eren's room. Erwin jogging after him, his stupidly long legs meaning he caught him in no time "What was that?" "I don't know" "Cut the shit. How did you know that would work?" "I didn't. I... When he was a child, he set fire to the hay in the stables, but when he was touched, it seemed to calm his power" "Erwin" "Don't "Erwin" me. I have no idea how this magic thing works, but it looked like none of them were going to step up and touch him" "You're fond of him" "I am not fond of that omega. I don't even know him" "You took him out of the castle grounds. You had him by your side, and you attempted to replace his bracelet taken by Zeke" "You're the one telling me to be nicer" "You're not acting like yourself. Is this because of how you remember him? Near death and in your arms?" "I barely remember him. I was attempting to repay him because Zeke is a dick. Nothing more and nothing less" "So you wouldn't care to know that the mages were talking about him earlier" "They were?" Levi bit the moment the words left Erwin's mouth. He couldn't even play it off cool "No" "You're a douche" "Possibly. It does worry me to see you like this" "You don't need to worry" "Is it because he's a street kid? An orphan like us? Do you see yourself when you look at him?" "I. No. Yes. Maybe. I don't know and that's what makes this so hard. Stop asking me what I don't know" Erwin finally stopped pestering him, but they'd only made it a few more steps when it seemed to start raining from the ceiling along the corridor. Groaning, Levi broke into a jog, relieved to find the next hallway dry "Was that Eren?" "Possibly. Probably. Those shitty mages need to get him under control. Have you talked to her, about this?" "Hanji is anxious to meet Eren. You could try talking to her. We know magic has been becoming weaker with every generation. The fact that Eren's magic is so strong, has sent her off spiralling with the possibilities. We know mages of old could raise a castle from the ground, or destroy it with just a whim" "You don't need to tell me that. You have no idea how many letters used to cross the desk over the use of dragon items to strengthen the kingdom's magic" "You do remember I'm the one who reads everything first" "Then why are you telling me things I already know?" "To make sure you understand that Eren could be a powerful weapon" "I know that, but he is also a child. Who can't even ride or protect himself from an alpha" "Now that Zeke has left, we don't need him to stay close" "No. What shall we have him do? The fact he can't ride, will hinder us if we fall back into war with Marley" "How many of our mage forces can? If they've all come from sanctuaries..." "Their training is up to their masters. Most see it as a practical skill" "Do we know who will take Eren?" "Not yet. It's decided during the ceremony. Hanji may be in charge of the mages, but she is more interested in combining magic with science. Science does seem to be the future" "Useless Shitty Glasses. Fine. Have him help the maids Levi rubbed at his face. He hoped Eren knew how much of a pain in the arse he was being "You can't keep him in the kitchens" "I'm pretty sure I can. We'll reassess his training and usefulness once he can actually do magic" "Because a raining ceiling doesn't count as magic" "You know damn well what I mean" "I'll see that it's done" * Eren was sure he was being punished for being ill and for being a dick to Zeke. Just like the sanctuary mages, the castle mages couldn't handle his uncontrolled powers, and the moment his fever had broken, he'd been sent to the castle healers. Once recovered enough to be useful, he was put back to work in the kitchens. They couldn't really make use of him elsewhere around the castle. He ran the risk of accidentally setting the washing on fire. He couldn't play gofer, because he didn't know the castle. He couldn't go to Armin's classes, because he had no idea about them, and he couldn't go watch Mikasa train, because that mean a lecture over being wet and sick. Like that was his fault. He'd thought his heat would have hit by now, and he was frankly growing impatient over it not. There were herbs he could take, that would speed up the process, but he didn't know if that would be acceptable for the ritual, or if it had to be a natural heat. Stealing some time for himself, Eren was sitting on the windowsill as he watched the soldiers running drills. The sun felt good against his skin, while the bricks seemed to absorb the warmth. He'd heard of magic users that could change their shapes into any number of things, and couldn't help but think it'd be nice to be a fat cat on a day like today. Maybe once his vows had been taken, his master could teach him such things. Lost in his own thoughts, he didn't hear Levi approaching "Eren?" Nearly falling out the window, he was narrowly saved as Levi grabbed him by the arm "Whoa! Everything ok?" "You scared the shit out of me, if that's what you're asking" Pulling himself together, Eren hoped he didn't look too disheveled. They hadn't replaced the pants he'd worn for the hunt, so it was back to his grey robes "I'm sorry. I didn't expect you to be sitting here alone" "I was just watching the soldiers training" Levi leaned over him, the man peering out the window "I see that. What's on your mind?" "Nothing much important" "So you admit something is. You can speak freely to me" Eren sighed, figuring he was well "I was thinking about my vow ceremony. I hate sitting and being useless" "No heat yet?" "No. It's quite frustrating" "As long as your heat doesn't come, you won't be mounted, right?" He didn't want to think about that bit, it showed in his scent "Eren, do you not want to take you vows?" "I do. I just wish I knew who would be my master. It may be silly, but I'd like to know who I'm about to sleep with, and know more about them than just their dick" Leaning back, Levi moved to lean against the windowsill "You have no idea?" "None at all. I know blood, slick and semen can all be used in spells. But... I don't just sleep with anyone. Despite what people may think of omegas" "I don't think that of you. I tried asking our head of sciences, but she had no idea either. Ceremonies are only known to those invited, and despite being our magic liaison, she never has been" "That just makes it sound even worse. It's stupid, isn't it? To want to know who you're being forced to show your body too?" "I don't think so. It is your body after all" "I've been waiting for this moment for so long, that I guess with it looming over me, it's a little overwhelming" "Is that why you're not in the kitchens?" "That, and Nicollo says I have no talent for the culinary arts" "I'm sure your wait won't be much longer" "I really do hope so. What about you? What are you doing? I don't see Prince Erwin with you" "Some of our newer soldiers decided it would be funny to steal meat from our stores. Prince Erwin is supervising their punishment" Eren let out a whistle "Damn. I don't want to be them" "Would you like to come watch?" "No. Thank you, but I fear I shall only get in the way" "Alright. Take care of yourself, Eren" "And you, Levi" * Pinching the bridge of his nose, Levi let out a long breath. In his left hand was a letter fresh from the leg of a Marley eagle. Prince Zeke was intending another visit, this time for two weeks, the following month. There had been a delay in a shipment from Eldia, so the prince has decided to return to the island to make sure they weren't intentionally withholding anything. Once again, they'd need to throw a lavish Ball, conduct festivals and check the details of the delayed shipment. Across the desk in front of him, was a hundred more requests that all required his time. The imitation prince let his mind wander, wondering if anyone noticed if he placed a training dummy in his place and took off to see Farlan and Isabel. He was anxious for news on the forests, and to make sure they were both alright. He hadn't heard hide or hair of them, and had no time to check in. Raising his head at the knock at the door, Erwin walked in, looking rather concerned "What's the matter? Do you need to take a shit?" "Eren's heat has started. The ceremony will be preformed tonight" It'd only taken a month to happen... "About time" "You're not worried?" Erwin had shared Eren's worry over who'd he sleeping with. The omega had a right to decide for himself, but having never seen a ceremony, he didn't know little choice Eren would have "Where is he?" "Being washed and made ready for tonight" Placing Marley's letter down, Levi then crossed his arms as he stared down Erwin "I know you're scheming something" "Well, we're at the age where we really should know what's happening on our own castle. Eren said the whole place is covered in magic" "We are a magical nation" "Yes, but think about it. We have no way of seeing those spells. If anyone was plotting against us, we'd never see them coming" "Admit it. You're purely curious" "A little. I'm also worried for Eren. He put on a brave face, but he's terrified. As you're so fond of bringing up, he is a child" "And how do you suppose we see this ritual? It's supposed to be limited to magic users only" "You're the crown prince. They cannot say no to you. Besides, the masters that teach omegas magic are alphas. So I'm guessing that they will be the ones that choose Eren's new master" Levi's stomach performed an uncomfortable flop. Eren wasn't his, but just the mere idea of someone else touching him was enough to annoy him. Given the fact Eren would have no control over his own body, being in heat and all that "You're glaring" "You're making me think about things I don't want to. We can't just walk in looking like this. Find someone to talk to discreetly, and we'll need something to cover our scents... and faces. This is shitty plan" "You didn't have to say yes" "You wouldn't give me a moments peace if I didn't. You've got that disapproving dad look on your face. You normally don't give two shits about the omegas coming here" "Normally they don't have so much magic, and normally they don't catch the attention of Prince Zeke. If Zeke has an interest in Eren, we need to have one too" "Speaking of Little Dick, Marley wants to come over for a month and inspect our shipping rosters. A delivery was late they're up in arms" "That hardly warrants a month long visit" "No. I have the feeling they're going to be checking over every single part of our shitty defences, and they'll probably bring their own mages this time" Erwin nodded, his mind clearly already creating his own counter scenes for possible scenarios "Go think somewhere else. I don't want to wipe your brains up off the floor. It'd be a waste of cleaning supplies" "That it would. If he wants to inspect our military, we need to make sure their in shape" "What's that supposed to mean? We all know round is a shape, and a shape unfortunately most of them fall in now that we can't make a move" "Exactly. Let me talk to Ackerman. Her and Kirstein have been..." "Wait. Which one is Kirstein? Is he in her squad?" "Yes. The one with the two tone hair" "The one that looks like a horse? Is it safe to let him think?" Erwin continued, as if he hadn't been interrupted "... looking at new formations and drills. Perhaps it's time to expand them throughout the guard, and into the regiment?" "We both know you plan all our military formations, drills and training. Talk to them. I have a sudden desire to leave the castle for a good three months" "You can't leave for three, but once Eren's heat is over, we'll take him and his master with us on extended training" "Why? He's perfectly safe at the castle" "It's possible Zeke has bought off members within the walls. After his heat and vows, Eren will be able to use this magic. Coming out of his heat, he's going to be weak and disoriented, making it the perfect time for him to go missing" "God. I'm sick of talking about him. That's it. Conversation over. Go do whatever it is you do. I need to finish all of this" Erwin usually read everything first, but the Marley letter had Levi now hunting for the shipping manifests, amongst all the other incoming letters. He didn't know what the man had or hadn't read, so that meant first sorting and organising. He needed a goddamn assistant for this shit. Maybe Arlert? Erwin seemed sweet on him. But it was likely the kid's ridiculous hair cut would get on his nerves too much. He didn't understand why it had to be so... coconutty. * Levi thought he and Erwin had explored every inch of the castle, until they found themselves walking down a never ending corridor, that stretched further than was actually possible for a castle tunnel to stretch. With the keep and the mote, the place should have been flooded with water, yet the walls were clean and dry. Tool marks giving the implication that it was dug by man, rather than by magic. Every few metres was an old fashion oil lamp, that offered limited lighting. Probably to throw them off. No sane person wouldn't be wandering around under the castle like this, nor would they have thought to even go around digging random tunnels. Erwin's ancestors had a lot to fucking answer for. Levi could practically feel the eye of spiders and other uninvited critters on them as they walked. The whole place was revolting. Couldn't they have magicked up some nice stone walls? A proper path? Real lighting? Or better yet? Found themselves somewhere outside to conduct this magic crap. He felt like he was an intruder in his own castle. Erwin's castle. Whatever. He didn't like it. Dressed in a black robe with his eyes obscured by a mask, Levi had thought Erwin was messing with him, right up until they'd entered the underground chamber that the ritual would be conducted in. Beneath their robes, they were naked, which was the bit he'd thought Erwin was messing with him over. He didn't understand why he had to be naked when the damn robe thing dwarfed him completely, and let him tripping on every third step. But inside the chamber, he realised everyone was dressed just the same, as they circled a rough stone altar where Eren laid naked. On the walls behind the altar, carved reliefs depicted nymphs and dragons frolicking. As well as a number of unknown mythical creatures. The alter itself was rather unremarkable in comparison. It glowed and pulsed like the walls of the cavern, but honestly looked like a big fat boulder that had been halved, and not some mystic sight. Across the brunettes skin, marking and symbols in Eldia green were painted. Eren somehow managing to lay there, despite his painfully hard erection, and the waves of needy heat wafting off of him. There were more than a few affected in the crowd. Alphas and their omega wards stank of arousal, making it easy to hide both his and Erwin's scents in the mix as they slipped through the crowd to stand opposite the altar. Under the glow of the strange rocks that lit the kingdom, the ceremony began suddenly. The master of the ceremony being an omega woman, who was alarmingly old and alarmingly naked. There were things he didn't need to see. Her saggy naked bits were definitely one of those things. It was hard enough not to concentrate on Eren, so he didn't need old fluffy bits looking at him as he tried to advert his eyes. Everything in Eren's scent was sending his alpha crazy. As the woman began to speak, four hooded and shadowy figures appeared around the edge of the cavern. Standing tall enough to reach the ceiling, they were easily 10 metres tall. Long, thin, purple lines tracing over the ceiling as the glow of the stones all turned purple to match. Now it was starting to feel like some kind of mystical ceremony. Praying to some god that she obviously believed in, a goblet appeared in her hand. It would have been cooler had it magically appeared, and not just been passed to her. But that was just Levi's opinion. Walking to Eren, the woman cupped the back of Eren's head, raising him enough to sip from the goblet. Something suspiciously red poured down Eren's face as he eagerly drank it down. Once drained, the goblet was removed, and Eren helped to kneel "Brothers and sisters, today a new mage joins us for the glory of Eldia!" Magic rippled through the air, while Levi didn't know what to think. He wanted to March right over there and claim Eren. All of this seemed a tad ridiculous, but he of all of people should know not to step on the kingdom's rituals. Marley was stripping away every part of Eldia's culture. Even the use of Eldian green was a hangable offence, but it was obviously an important part of this ritual "The first semen shall spill, let his magic be known" What now?" Bringing forth a long black thing, the woman presented it to Eren. Erwin leaned over his shoulder to inform him it was a dragon horn. Levi had only ever seen them in the royal gallery, and that was before they returned them to Draecia. He had a vague idea of what would come, but he wasn't prepared for the things it was doing to his dick. With no shyness at all, Eren sucked the black horn eagerly. Now free to move, one hand worked his erection, while he moaned around the horn. God. How Levi wished he was in Eren's mouth. Pulling the horn from his mouth, the omega ran the tip down his body, his hand abandoning his dick in favour of running precum along the markings covering his skin. Between his legs, Levi felt as if he'd gain three pounds. His dick felt so swollen and heavy, that even the slightest touch would send him over the edge. He knew he shouldn't be this aroused, but Eren was driving him crazy. He wanted to push the omega down and fuck his pert little arse until he couldn't walk for a month. He wanted to sink his teeth into the teens nape. Instead, he could only watch as Eren moved to sit the horn in an indent he hasn't noticed before. Mounting the horn, the omega let out a long primal growl. It's thick girth looked painful to take, yet Eren took it in its entirety. Above him, black clouds gathered, everyone taking a step back as Eren began to fuck himself openly and desperately on the horn. The cloud crackled with lightning, sparks flying up to hit the purple lines across the cavern roof, as the storm above him built. With his head lolled back, Eren's hands roamed his body, his moans and mews growing louder, almost as if surprised by how good he was feeling. The whole process took minutes, but Levi felt as if he'd been watching him for hours. He could watch the sight before him all damn day. Without realising, his hand had slipped to his dick. The firm hold around the base the only thing keeping him from spilling his seed as he rocked into his hand. Letting out a feral cry, Eren came across the altar, yet not stopping his desperate fucking of the horn until the small spurts semen turned to mere trickles from his spent dick. Looking right at him, the teens eyes were completely black, a smirk on his lips as if he knew exactly who Levi was, and all of it a show just for him "The first semen had been spent. He vows himself to the kingdom! Who shall take upon this child of destruction?" Rising to his knees, Eren slid from the horn. The omega so thoroughly soaked, his slick had spread to seep into most of the stone altar top. As the horn was removed, Eren moved to present himself. His back arching as he pressed his chest to the table. Levi's willpower snapped. Striding forward, he growled as he approached Eren. Fuck rituals and traditions, the omega had singled him out, now Levi was going to show the brat exactly why he was the only alpha suitable to tame him "Second semen must be spilt to forge the loyalty" The old hag could take her bonds and stick them where the sun didn't shine. Hell be damned if any other alpha thought they were claiming Eren. His own alpha was going fucking crazy. He wanted to mate. He wanted to breed. He wanted to mark and claim. And he stupidly hadn't realised that every single person in the room was either in heat or rut, triggering his own. His world had shrunk down to Eren, and his leaking opening. Climbing onto the altar, Levi growled as he freed his lower half from his robe. He wanted everyone to see what he was doing, and for them all to know he was the one taking Eren. Reduced to base instinct, and given how fucking loose Eren's hold looked, he needed no prep. Levi took himself in one hand, before lining up to sink into Eren's heat. Throwing his head back, he had no words for how it felt. His fingers rushed to grab Eren's hips in a bruisingly tight hold. Despite popular belief, he'd never just gone off and had sex, like Erwin did. Or so many of the soldiers in their command. There was too much danger of creating an "heir", that he'd just relied on his hands. Being buried in Eren's warm wet heat felt amazing, as did Eren's cries as Levi began to fuck him as his instincts dictated. A little sloppy and out rhythm from never having mated before, but his alpha surged, controlling his actions. Riding Eren hard, the omega cried out for more, and god did Levi want to give him more. Releasing his hold on Eren's hips, he slipped his hand down to jerk Eren off at the same time. His other hand snaked up Eren's chest, pulling the omega up into his lap. His fingers sliding through the wet marks, blurring the patterns so carefully painted on Eren's perfect body. Had Eren always been so warm and soft? Feeling his orgasm rushing to hit, he growled and grunted, biting Eren's back as he came, his knot not catching as Eren rose with a cry. Leaving his cum dribbling down his dick and balls as it mixed with Eren's slick, spilling down onto the altars stone surface. Above them, the purple became blue, the marks growing warm beneath his splayed fingers "Second semen is spilt. Loyalty is assured" Eren's neck started to glow, the omega dipping his head as strange green and glowing marks appeared across his nape. Levi's alpha instantly hating it. It severely limited the places he could mark the omega "This child shall serve Eldia, let him carry out the words of royalty, and bring victory to Eldia!" "For Eldia!" As the marks faded, Eren slumped down against him. His knot forced down uncomfortably, he was still coming inside Eren. Trying to rearrange the teen, Eren whined against him "Alpha?" "Shhh..." "Need more. Never felt sooo good, master" Master. Fuck yes. He could support that. He'd never felt a rush like he had at hearing that one word from Eren's lips "I've got you" Lost to his instincts, and lost to the pheromones filling the chamber, Levi laid Eren down on the altar. Wide black eyes turning to its normal intoxicating green stared up at him, as long arms reached to pull him into his embrace. When Levi's lips met Eren's, a shock ran through the pair of them. The sound of thunder clapping above. He didn't care for the blood on Eren's lips, yet it failed to make Eren's kiss any less as sweet. He could feel Eren's magic seeping into him, yet it wasn't entirely unwanted. Three long kisses didn't feel long enough, Levi jerking back as the woman yelled "Third semen for the bond!" So this was meant to happen? He was meant to knot Eren? He could definitely do that. Especially with how Eren was looking at him as if he was everything the omega could ever want. Having not knotted inside Eren, as his knot started to deflate, he pushed back in. Eren's back arching as he let out a long moan. Taking Eren's legs by the backs of this thighs, he spread the omegas legs wide. The sight beneath him intoxicating. His alpha wanted to take it slow, but Eren was growing tired. Guiding himself in slowly, Levi growled. He could happily stay buried inside Eren. Pulling back until just his tip was buried, he slammed back in. Eren's fingers scrambling to find some kind of purchase as he whined. With the need to breed in mind, he fucked Eren just as hard as he had from behind, his half formed knot flaring all too soon as his seed flooded the omega. Eren's hands flew to his stomach, arching his back as he moaned and thanked him for filling him "The bond is forged! He had earned his place! Like us, he is no more and no less! We are all equal! And the bonds were share will never die! The light lines shifted again, now to a warm yellow-white gold A cry of "Eldia" went around the room... Levi blind to near orgy happening around him. As Eren started to drift off, he assumed the ceremony was over. Everyone else was busy getting busy. Lifting the omega, he got the barely conscious Eren to sling his arms over his shoulders, as he wrapped his legs around his waist. From somewhere, a black cloak was produced and wrapped around Eren's shoulders. At least someone had the brains not to be busy fucking. Eren had to be cold. The cold of the altar had started soaking into him, Eren feeling so warm as sat chest to chest. He could feel the omega's heart racing just as hard as his. Rubbing Eren's back, the omega hadn't skinned himself on the stone, thankfully. He didn't know if he could forgive them if he'd been hurt. As Levi's sanity returned, he was hit by guilt. He'd just knotted and fucked Eren in front of everyone. And thoroughly enjoyed everyone seeing him making Eren his. And while it felt fucking amazingly natural and right... Eren had been scared over the whole process. The omega may have wanted someone he knew to mount him... but Levi knew nothing about magic. With his knot still firmly inside Eren, the omega nosed at his neck, and started to purr. This was definitely not how the night was supposed to go. He wasn't supposed to have his arms filled with this pretty creature. It wasn't his to claim. He wasn't his to claim... even if he sure as hell smelt like he was. Letting out a sleepy sigh, Eren kissed his neck "Mmm... my alpha" No. Levi wasn't Eren's. Eren would never be his. Carrying Eren up from the cavern, Levi had lost track of Erwin. He was instead engaged in a bitter battle of wills with his alpha. His alpha wanted to continued what had begun on the altar, while he, himself, wanted to make sure Eren was safe and warm during his heat. What had transpired never should have. Eren had come to be claimed by a Master of Magic, not by an imposter prince with a boner. He could only hope he hadn't fucked the youth's future up. He wasn't really the prince of the kingdom, and he was destined for an arranged marriage. He couldn't possibly have developed feelings for Eren... so... he'd deny him. That would be for the best. He'd deny everything between them.

#Ereri

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portalford · 6 years

Text

Suffice to Say that You’re Still Here

AO3

Being shot is not an experience that improves with repetition.

Ford wraps his singed arm with a strip torn from the bottom of his coat and catches the knot between his teeth, pulling it tight. Crude, but serviceable.

Besides, it's only a graze from one of those laser-type guns that fire an energy packet and cauterize the wound on impact. Certainly lethal if you hit the right spot, but much less effective if you’re hoping your target will leave a blood trail or get an infection.

A ridiculous design, really, but it looks cool when you fire it.

Ford draws his own equally cool, much more effective shock blaster from its holster at his hip. It fires electric pulses at varying strengths, neutralizing a target’s entire body and eliminating the whole lethal bleeding-and-screaming interlude you’d get with a laser gun.

He didn’t wake up this morning expecting to hide away in a supply closet while a horde of angry reptilians tears their own ship apart looking for him, but then he doesn’t really expect much of anything at this point.

It’s easier that way. Less disappointment, and less general confusion when Things (capital T; lowercase things are much easier to deal with) happen.

Judging from the volume and rapidity of the hissing, there’s a very heated argument going on right outside the door. Their language is simple enough that he hardly needs his translator to follow it anymore. Speaking it is a different story, but none of the beings he’s encountered on this ship seem especially interested in talking to him. They’re much more invested in eating him.

He tried explaining to one particularly tenacious group that he’s old and stringy and overall not good for eating, but they didn’t listen.

He wishes he could say that this will teach him to think before accepting a free ride off-planet, but it’s unlikely.

Of course, if he gets eaten he’ll stop taking poorly-intentioned handouts, but he won’t be around to learn from it, which is unacceptable. He has to learn one of these days, and he’d like to be alive to see it.

The hissing quiets and eventually stops altogether as his pursuers leave to search other areas of the ship. Ford counts to a hundred, then to the equivalent of a hundred on Kesslia 5 before daring to open the door and poke his head out.

He’s met with scaly grey skin and long sharp teeth, because this is one of those days that is determined not to improve no matter what he does.

“Kss ss,” the lizard says. Female, judging by the short cranial spines, and one of the largest he’s seen yet. She flicks her forked tongue over her lipless mouth. “Rest easy. I am help.”

She’s speaking a rough version of Kesslia 5′s common language – obviously not her native tongue – in what’s probably an attempt to soothe, and it just makes Ford more suspicious. He keeps the heavy metal door between his body and the potential threat and his gun in his hand.

“Yes, well, you’ll forgive me if I don’t thank you. I’ve already been tricked once by your shipmates today.”

His shoulder throbs. He ignores it.

The lizard hisses. She sounds irritated. “Young ones, always hungry. Wasting energy on hard prey, kss. They act like I don’t feed them at all.”

“You’re the cook?” Even less reason to trust her.

“I am. But not here to cook you.”

“Why not?”

A toss of her head that he suspects is the equivalent of a shrug. “Waste of energy, like I said. Not enough meat on you. Not worth the time it would take to kill you. You fight hard to live, and that’s admire-worthy."

Ford’s not entirely sure whether or not he’s just been complimented or insulted, but it doesn’t look like she’s going to eat him the moment he steps outside, so he does.

She doesn’t eat him. Progress.

“Come. I will hide you until we make port. They will not enter my cook-room while I am there.”

Ford trots at her heels, keeping an eye on the huge tail brushing a little too close to his ankles. “If we’re going to be spending time together, I don’t suppose I could get your name?”

“Bold, little drifter. You speak well, though. I am S’ves”

“S’ves.” Ford shakes his head; not sibilant enough. He licks his lips and tries again. “S’ves.”

Her hiss sounds amused, but not entirely condescending. “Not bad, for flat-tooth. What do you call yourself?”

A lot of things, actually, but now is not the time or place to be funny. “Ford.”

“Fford.” She somehow manages to pronounce his name like there are two F’s instead of one, but he’s heard worse. “Odd name. It suits you.”

“Thank you.”

She leads him into a tiny room made entirely of black chrome and points to a storage area hollowed out under the main counter, pushing various bins and bags out of the way. “Sit here. They will not see you when they come, and I will not tell.”

Ford does as she says, tucking his legs up underneath him. These beings are much taller than he is, averaging about seven feet when standing upright (not including the tail), so it’s actually quite comfortable, if he ignores the fact that he’s basically been in a sauna for the past four hours. Reptilian ships tend to be uncomfortable for warm-blooded species.

His rescuer (?) bustles around, pulling out what looks like several bins of dried insects and picking through them.

“Do you need any help with that?”

The noise she makes this time is definitely a laugh. “You? No, you sit still. Out of my way.”

“If you insist.” The best policy for being helped is simply to shut up and listen to every fickle whim your savior might have.

He hasn’t really learned to do that either, but lately he’s shown promise.

“Talk,” S’ves orders, testing him on the whim thing. “Where do you go?”

“This ship is going to Lottocron 9, so I suppose that’s where I’m going.”

S’ves hisses, head spines rattling. “Lottocron, gamblers and no-goods all. You sure you want to go there?”

“I don’t have much of a choice. Mostly I just go wherever I can.”

She stops her bug-sorting to look at him consideringly. “You look like a drifter, but you have manners. Were you person of consequence before you run?”

Now isn’t that a loaded question.

“…not really.” It’s not a lie, not in the context that she’s asking. “I wound up here on accident.” It was an accident, it was, Stan–

it was an accident.

“Hss, accident. Maybe one day you accident yourself back home.”

Ford squashes the little thing in his chest that hopes for that exact occurrence every day and changes the subject. “What about you? Why are you here?”

“Work. My hatchlings are grown and these young ones onboard need to feed and be guided. I help them.” She bares her teeth at him in what might be a smile. “I help you, too.”

Ford smiles back. It feels a little stiff around the edges, but that might just be from lack of practice. “And you have my thanks for that.”

The kitchen door slams open in a way that can mean nothing good, and Ford’s hand flies to his gun.

He’d really rather not destroy S’ves’ little sanctuary and workplace, but he will if he has to.

S’ves beats him to it, lashing tail upending her bin of bugs.

“What are you doing in my cook-room,” she snaps. Ford’s translator buzzes as she switches to the local vernacular. “I’ve told you all this is off limits! Get out!”

“We’re looking for a human,” one of the search party replies. He sounds cocky in the way people do when they’re bluffing. “It's wearing black clothes and carries a gun. It got away when we tried to catch it to eat. We were going to bring it to you, S’ves. A gift.”

“A gift? You were going to bring me one skinny human and call it a gift?” She sounds genuinely insulted. Ford is more worried about getting his neck broken by her tail, now swinging dangerously close to his head. “Do I not work hard enough for you? Slave away in here to make good food so you can live? Maybe not, because your brains seemed to have been starved right out of your thick skulls! I don’t want your human and I don’t want you in here distracting me. Get out!”

A minute more of mumbled hissing, some of it distinctly apologetic, and the search party flees through the kitchen door.

“Kss hss-ss. Ingrates, all of them.” S’ves' angular face suddenly blocks out the bright overhead light as she ducks down to look at him. “Good hatchlings, though,” she says, once again speaking the planet-wide language. “Just rough edges.”

“Most young people have them,” he offers. “Old ones, too.”

“True,” she says, starting to gather up her spilled insects. She stops, abrupt, and turns to him. “I have forgot to offer you food or drink, kss. And I say I take care of others.”

Ford folds his hands in his lap. “I’m fine, thank you.”

His shoulder is still aching. He’s still ignoring it.

He does end up accepting a glass of water before he leaves, but only because he’s lost a lot of fluid to the overly-warm temperature and it’s best to hydrate where he can. Certainly not because her repeated offers were making him feel guilty.

S’ves makes him wait a good hour after the crew disembarks before she escorts him off the ship.

“The dock will be empty now. Less security.”

“Less security is often a good thing where I’m concerned.”

“Yes.”

The station is indeed mostly empty. It seems to be night.

S’ves walks with him to the edge of the loading bay, then stops. “I will return to my cook-room now. There is a sleep-house nearby that ask no questions.” She presses a bag into his hands. It’s full of dried insects covered in some sort of spice.

“I don’t–”

“Take it,” she insists. “You eat. Stay alive.”

That is what he wants, right? “I will.” He tucks the bag into one of his pockets and folds his hands behind his back, taking a deep breath and mentally running through the words before he says them aloud. “S’ves, you have done me great service and will live in my memory forever.”

The words of her people’s formal acknowledgement are a little trickier in her native tongue, but he felt he had to try.

She laughs, but it sounds warmer than the ones he’s heard from her before. She reaches down to ruffle his hair, blunt claws scratching his scalp.

“Keep running, Fford. Don’t get eaten.”

He wants to fix his hair, but it’s a losing battle at the best of times and right now it just seems rude. “I’ll do my best.”

She bares her teeth in one last smile before turning to go.

Ford looks up at the deep purple sky of Lottocron 9 and slips under the shadow of an awning.

He’ll have to run eventually, but it’s safe to walk tonight.

#gravity falls #gravity falls fanfiction #stanford pines #my writing #ur local space disaster man #i have not been feelin Anything i write recently but apparently that's not enough to stop me

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verbumincarcerem · 6 years

Text

The Fanged God

Parts: I.

II.

The entire landscape had changed, becoming barren and desolate. Smoke coated the air, and bodies were strewn all over, crawling, clawing, doing anything they could to escape their pain.

Pain she could take, on others, on herself; she’d had plenty of exposure, plenty of experience. She wandered through the broken training field, which was now nothing but a den of suffering, and she was the only one immune to it and still standing. However the Fanged God had done this, it had been during the selection, and no one had seen him do it.

But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding a way to make it stop. As she staggered on, she felt his eyes on her, searing from some unknown point. She couldn’t focus on that, could only continue moving, searching desperately.

Before long, she did succumb to desperation. On some contenders, she acted rashly with her mercy, killing them quickly to end their pleading and suffering. But when she found Ventress and Savage, writhing in pain, darkness spider-webbing through the veins under their skin, eyes wide and close to insanity, she broke.

Now she was the one on her knees, pleading for it all to stop.

He hadn’t needed much cajoling. Wreathed in shadows, he was by her side in an instant, sympathetic.

“This is what will happen if my sister wins. Surely, you’ve always known that.” He strolled circles around her like a vulture lurking to swoop down and win its prize, his body language passionate and animated.

And whether it meant Ventress and Savage’s corpses or gaining her pledged servitude, he would certainly win either way. “Her Champion will ravage the darkness and all who use it. None of us will be allowed to live. Even in peace, we would be hunted down and slaughtered, all in the name of security. All because you and I see things in a different way.”

“I don’t care,” she said, glaring at him with barely restrained fury. “You’re the one that’s hurting them now, and I’m not listening to another word unless you stop.”

“Of course I’ll stop.” He tilted his head, his grin full of charm and threat all at the same time. “But only if you join me.”

Melody’s body was shaking, with fear, with rage, with adrenaline, with every raw emotion and impulse that she had. She wanted to tear him to pieces—but she couldn’t. He was too strong and they both knew it. It almost made her sick to be this powerless again.

And in a burst of selfishness, she wanted to demand why. Why her? Why not Ventress or Savage or anyone else here who actually wanted to be his Champion? Why did she have to make this choice? She wasn’t anything special, she wasn’t—

“I may use the dark side,” she snarled at him in answer, “but we are nothing alike.”

“Mmm,” he hummed, kneeling down before her, over her, “that delicious hate of yours may prove otherwise.”

And even though it made him stronger, she growled, enraged, “Go to hell!”

He laughed, light and easy. “As long as you come with me.”

And perhaps it hadn’t been a lie after all, because in the end, she did choose the darkness.

But not before she tackled him and tried to burn him alive.

Indestructible, long-fingered hands choked her fire and gripped her tightly, and one lightly brushed its fingers against her forehead. Darkness of a different kind overcame her swiftly after that, and she knew no more for a time. Her unconscious state was so deep that she missed her arrival on Mortis as well as the flood of rage her master, Maul, unleashed when he was told his apprentice had been the one who was taken.

When Melody awoke, there was a crick in her neck and her arms were numb.

Sluggishly, she raised her head, slowly taking in her surroundings. She was in an oval shaped room with a high ceiling, a dark and unknown metal covering every surface. Feeble light spilled through select holes in the ceiling, and amber orbs were lit along the walls, their weak glow throwing dark shadows in the curves of the room. A heavy, arched metal door was locked shut directly across from her, and the only other possible exit was on her left where the room gave way to a hallway which curved sharply away, blocking her sight of the area beyond.

There was nothing and no one else in the room but her. The same unknown metal bit at her wrists, and a quick glance informed her that she was cuffed to the wall. Not utterly surprising, but she was wary.

She was on Mortis. She knew only because she couldn't feel anyone or anything else like she could if she were somewhere in her own galaxy. She could feel the Force here—it was impossible not to—but it felt different. She had never been anywhere before where the dark side was so powerful and in such a concentrated place. Not even a Sith temple felt like this. Instead of giving her comfort, she felt dread building in her like an oncoming avalanche. Where was her captor?

Gradually, she worked on getting feeling back into her arms. It took all her concentration to flex even one finger, but eventually she was moving two and then her entire hand. That was the extent of her movement. The manacles clamped against her wrists were too tight to allow for even the slightest of twists, so she kept clenching and unclenching her fists. Needles pricked along the length of her arms as the blood began flowing through them again, and soon she had them awake, primed for escape.

But when Melody harnessed the Force to snap the manacles off of her, nothing happened. She glared at the cuff holding her right hand captive and tried again. The result was the same.

Deep, amused laughter suddenly echoed around the chamber, and Melody snapped her head up.

"I was wondering when you would try that," the Fanged God said, appearing out of nothing and stalking forward towards her. He looked the same as he had at the Choosing, utterly confident and completely irreverent. His red eyes glowed, bright pinpoints in the gloom, and she glimpsed fangs in his smile. “But I’d advise you to stop wasting your energy. Setting yourself free will be both easier and harder than you think.”

"I'm going to kill you," she snarled at him, jerking her body forward as far as her bonds allowed her to go.

"Are you so certain of that?” He clasped his hands behind his back and eyed her curiously. “Oh, I look forward to witnessing your efforts, but perhaps you missed the part where I'm immortal?"

“Let me out of these cuffs, so I can give it an honest try anyway.”

He shook his head and laughed again, but there was an undercurrent of anger that hadn’t been there before. “And here I thought choosing a dark Force user would be easier. But you are a Sith, aren’t you? Such a stubborn and arrogant bunch.”

Melody didn’t think he had any room to talk, but she held back insulting him further. He was moving closer to her, and she didn’t like how he was looking at her, like she was a broken toy that he was determined to fix. Her back hit the metal wall behind her before she realized that she had been drawing back from him. But it didn’t matter. Closer and closer he came, talking all the while.

"There's been a misunderstanding between us. That's why you're fighting me, isn't it? Because of what I did at the Choosing? A necessary evil, nothing more. Certainly nothing personal. Surely you realize I have no intentions of harming my Champion?"

"It's the dark side's nature to harm," said Melody. "Even when it's making you stronger."

"Even so, we are not enemies, you and I.” He stopped barely an arm’s length away from her, and her stiff neck shot pain down her spine as she strained to keep her eyes locked on his. He was seven feet tall easily, and that sheer fact caused her to tense, in rage or some other emotion she couldn’t say. A cold finger trailed down her neck, whimsical. “I feel like I've known you for a long time."

"What's my favorite color?" she shot at him, careful not to betray any reaction.

With a patronizing smile and a tilt of his head, he answered, "Black, of course. How endearingly predictable."

Lucky guess, more like.

"So if we're not enemies," Melody said, "why am I chained to the wall?"

His ministrations upon her neck stopped, and though he didn’t shift, his touch became heavy. "You attacked me. You deserve due punishment. Training you will be troublesome enough without you fighting me every minute. And you still have so very much to learn about the dark side before you'll be ready."

"Maybe I'll never be ready," she challenged. "Maybe you've made a mistake."

"No. I haven't. And either you do this willingly or…" His fingers suddenly wrapped around her throat, tight, and yanked her forward. She cried out, feeling the bones in her wrists close to snapping, but the sound that escaped her was garbled. He was choking her. He bent down, his cheekbones brushing against hers, to speak directly in her ear, as intimately as if he were her lover. "I'll make you succumb to me, completely. You'll certainly be willing then, though nothing but a slave to my whims, my desires. If that's what you want, then I can make it so. But if not…"

He pulled back to gauge her reaction, his thin lips quirking at the sight of her fear. He was close enough that, if she wanted to, she could bite him for being a complete prick, but she was too busy failing to keep her body from shaking.

“And what,” she half-whispered so she wouldn’t scream, “will I have to give up to make sure my mind remains mine?”

“I couldn’t say. Not until I train you.” He released her—at last—and stepped back. The endearing smile returned, and Melody hated that she found it so. “But doesn’t the prospect of endless power make up for any uncertainty?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she didn’t grace him with a response.

Either he didn’t notice or he didn’t care. The Fanged God was back to preening over his victory again. "You need some time to think about what I'm offering you. I'll grant you that time. But reject me again, and I'll be sure those Dathomirian friends of yours pay the price for it."

He vanished, a mocking reminder of how trapped she was and how freely he could move and hold control over her fate.

But, she reminded herself as she tried to break free again, all-powerful and immortal though this god might be, everyone had a weakness—everyone—and she would find his or die trying.

Shatterpoint hadn’t worked against the cuffs. They were structurally sound, and she couldn’t perceive any other weakness.

Still trapped against the wall a few hours later, Melody awoke from her nap to the sound of distant clattering. She soon found she wasn’t as alone in her cell as she first supposed, nor was that curving hallway an exit. It led to another series of holding cells, from which a small alien emerged, all gray skin, glowing yellow eyes, and a bulbous belly.

No. Not an alien. A droid.

“Oh my,” he said in Basic, shambling forward on two tiny legs. His voice was prim and haughty but heavy with feeling. “I didn’t know there was anyone else here.”

The droid stepped closer into the room where the light was stronger. He could have passed for something like a gremlin if he wasn’t made of metal and adorable. But what was a droid doing here?

“Oh, no.” He approached her, rockets activating in his feet to levitate him in the air. He weaved slightly, taking her in. “You’re trapped here, too, aren’t you?”

She smiled, all teeth and grit. “For now.”

She learned his name was Todo-360. He was a service droid and was very proud of that fact.

“I feel like I was another type of droid at one point,” he said, confident. “Not just a service droid, but something else attached to that. Ah, I can’t remember now, and I can’t seem to access that information.”

"How long have you been here, Todo?"

"Truly? I don't remember. I’m sorry, miss. Many of my time logs are corrupted, I’m afraid."

No information she could use. That was fine. At least he was talkative. And friendly. “Call me…” She hesitated. What name would she use here?

The Fanged God didn’t deserve her accomplishments, and she wasn’t going to give them. She would also never relinquish her hold on who she was. “Call me Melody.”

Todo bobbed his head. “At once, Miss Melody.”

“Do you happen to remember how to get these cuffs off?” She smiled at him charmingly. The droid seemed to shudder to a halt for a moment, but then snapped back to himself.

“Oh! Oh, yes, of course! I’m so sorry!” Todo floated down near her face, inspecting the wall. “Although, forgive me for saying, but getting rid of these chains won’t do you any good.”

Todo shifted, and for no real reason she could discern, her arms came free. She hissed as they fell forward—stiff, heavy and sore—and slid down the wall in a sitting position. “Thank you,” she replied, meaning it almost as much as she had with Savage. Todo floated down and landed next to her, his large, round eyes watching her with a shadow of intrigue.

Misery loves company, so they bonded fairly quickly. Mutual hatred over their captor was another common factor, but Melody felt that she was more into expressing that hatred than the droid was.

"Perhaps in his infinite wisdom,” she called into the chamber at the top of her voice, “the Fanged God has forgotten us lowly mortals have to eat!"

Todo chuckled shakily. "You obviously don't know the Son well if you believe he pays you that kind of thought."

“The Son?” She laughed, sharp and biting. How amusing that he seemed to have as many monikers as she did. "That’s specific. But, no, caring about anyone other than himself isn't in his toolkit, that’s obvious already. But perhaps, after all these years, you've also noticed how incurably vain he is?"

"Well, I—um—" Todo fidgeted, clearly wanting to answer her but not wanting to speak ill of their captor. Melody guessed that the only reason the droid was still around was because the Fanged God had forgotten about him. But she didn't need encouragement to keep going.

"In the end, it's not about him paying attention to me. It's about me paying attention to him. That's how I know he's listening. Hanging on every word."

"Perhaps you'll wish he wasn't."

"That's undoubtedly true. But in the meantime, I'll focus on getting me something to eat.” She tossed her head back and shouted, “If that's not too much time out of your oh-so-busy day, Your Worship!"

But food did not appear, and she fell asleep, dehydrated and close to starving.

The next morning was a different story. She woke up to find a platter of food in the center of the cell piled with food of all types and states.

“Todo?” she called uncertainly.

His reply was flat. “You were right about him listening.”

But the food, which should have filled the chamber with its various, strong scents, gave off no smell at all. Melody found an orange, plump and firm, and stared at it curiously. First, she was chained in a tower, then she had a gremlin-like roommate, and now food had appeared from seemingly nowhere.

“If I eat this, will I be forced to stay here forever, like something out of a fairytale?” she asked Todo, who’d come to inspect the food with her.

He emitted a startled chuckle. “I don’t think any food could be that powerful, but I am just a service droid. But, no, I’d say you’re forced to stay here regardless. The food makes no difference.”

He was right. And, Melody supposed, it was either this or starve.

She peeled the orange using her nails and bit into a slice. Her face screwed up instantly in disgust. Not only did it not have a smell, it had no real taste, no juice, no flavor. All she chewed on was a lumpy, bland, indistinct something, and with great effort, she swallowed it down.

It was the same for everything else. Melody ate her fill only because it was difficult to plan an escape on an empty stomach. On the other side of the mass, Todo was watching her, silent.

With a sharp roar, Melody wound up her arm and hurled yet another ball of fire at the door. Sparks and flame burst on its surface, adding scorch marks but nothing else. The door remained stubbornly whole and jammed shut. She rested her hands on her knees, catching her breath from her exertions for the past several minutes. At least she’d gotten the brunt of her aggressions out. All they did was distract her.

It bothered her, though, that even after testing brute Force techniques, nothing had been accomplished against the prison’s enforcements. Just what was this place?

"Are you done?" Todo asked nervously from his safe location farther in the cell, wheeling himself closer now that she was finished. (She shook her head at that. His feet could turn into wheels, and how was it possible for him to get more adorable?) "I told you. The door is impenetrable. No one ever escapes."

"Don't give up on me just yet." She threw a look at him over her shoulder. "I do some of my best work frustrated and pissed off."

She could make short work of this damn door if she just had her lightsaber, but a quick survey after Todo freed her told her it was gone. She hardly dared to hope that the Fanged God was taking good care of it.

Still, a lightsaber didn't make a Force user, or a Sith for that matter. If sheer force wouldn't blast the door open and send the Fanged God a message, then something else would. Everything had a weakness. She just had to find it.

Melody straightened, her rage and frustration evaporated with her fire, and studied the door with clinical eyes. She ran her hands over its surface, along the seams and the bolts, searching for failings in the structural integrity. The cuffs had been made perfectly, but they were small; there was much less room for error. The door in comparison was a mammoth structure, so surely, this would work.

It was insanely lucky that she could perceive shatterpoints and her captor had no idea… It was a technique she’d slowly developed, maturing it under the tutelage of Darth Plagueis. Maul, though, was the one who taught her how to weaponize it, stressing her the important of subtlety.

Shatterpoint was an edge she would always have against opponents, but only if they were weak in the Force and she struck first. As Inferna, she’d learned to rely on it as both a last resort and her trump card, surprising enemies with attacks they didn’t survive long enough to report.

She considered this moment, trapped in an immortal god’s fortress, the pinnacle of last resorts.

Melody poured the Force into every crack and crevice she found along with each bolt holding the door closed. At first, nothing happened, and Todo stared between her and the door curiously. Then, as if the door were made of crumbling, rocky sand instead of refined metal, it burst apart and out into thousands of pieces, leaving nothing but a jagged, gaping hole behind.

Gingerly and alert, Melody stepped over the debris and crossed the threshold out into a hallway, which was as dark as the cell she just left. No guards. And she didn't hear anyone or anything approaching.

Stars, but the Fanged God was arrogant, wasn't he?

"So," she said to Todo, jerking her head toward the open corridor. "Ready to leave this place?"

"H-how did you—?" Todo hovered in the air, head bouncing from the door to her in wonder. "Wait, you mean—you want me to go with you? I thought this was an escape, not a rescue."

"Don't read too much into it," she quipped. "We just so happen to be heading in the same direction. Tag along or don't. Either way, I'm leaving. Now."

She took off at a jog down the corridor, looking for doorways, stairs, anything to get her somewhere other than where she was. A quick survey out a slim window told her she was extremely high up in the tower. She had a lot of trekking ahead before she reached the bottom.

Melody wouldn't admit it, but she was relieved when she heard the boost of Todo's rockets behind her. The droid had chosen to follow her.

She wouldn’t have lost sleep over it, but she would have felt bad about leaving the little guy behind.

Sentiment, she could almost hear Sidious spit at her. She cut off the thought before she could envision Maul’s face, displeasure written upon it.

Melody and the droid canvased down the first few floors without an issue. By the time they reached seven floors down without a sign of trouble, Melody’s suspicions were running rampant, and she jerked to attention at every little flickering shadow.

On the thirteenth floor down, she was overjoyed when something finally interfered with their progress, glad that she was right about being vigilant towards the shadows in the corridors.

Non-sentient shadows of indiscernible shapes descended on them, attempting to separate her from Todo and corner her, but she managed to keep them back with flashes of fire and Force lightning when it was appropriate. In the corridors, the floor was a dark marble, and the fire melted and marred its surface as it lingered to burn in her wake. She had to be careful with her lightning, making sure not to let it touch any metal surface lest she wanted to test how effective of a conduit the tower as a whole was. She hadn’t come all this way just to fry Todo and herself.

“What are these things?” she asked Todo, backhanding a shadow aside with a fist wreathed in fire. “His sentinels?”

“Something more like a security system—ah!” Melody whipped around to see a shadow bearing down on Todo. She flicked her wrist and sent Force lightning into its center, effectively blasting it into nothing. Todo flew closer to her. “Oh, that was close, thank you. Ahem, from what I understand, they’re more or less extensions of the Son’s will, but I’m not certain how it all works.”

“Right,” she said, leading them further down the hall. She could see the floor’s atrium, which marked that they were in the tower’s center. Fighting would be easier there. “You keep calling him that. Why?”

“Oh—well—” Todo moved his hands in little circles, fingertips almost touching. A sign that he was nervous. “That’s just what I’ve always known him as. He’s the Son and his sister is the Daughter. There was the Father, but he was kill—AAAH!”

A shadow surged up from the ground between them, and Todo was swallowed.

“TODO!” Melody screeched and rushed forward. But she stopped, torn. She couldn’t attack without possibly hurting the droid, too.

“Dammit,” she growled. Everyone had a weakness. One of hers was droids.

And it was for that reason that when the shadow rushed her, expanding with the intent to capture her, she let it.

She waded in total darkness, blind and deaf. If it weren’t for the Force anchoring her, guiding her, she would have been utterly lost and afraid. An indeterminable amount of time passed, but she trusted the Force. It was good that she had. It led her to Todo, and she found him through touch alone. She drew the droid close to her, shielding him with her body. Then, she unleashed hell.

A shockwave of light made of fire and lightning both blasted the shadow off of them and destroyed every last inch of it. She hadn’t realized how hard it had been to breathe until it was gone, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself kneeling over Todo, and they were somewhere else in the tower entirely.

“Todo, are you alright?”

Melody pulled back, expecting for the droid to give her some sarcastic quip and a word of thanks. But his normally bright, yellow eyes were absent of light and his small frame was limp. He was offline.

“Okay,” she breathed, gently turning the droid over to get at its circuitry. “Okay, it’s going to be okay.”

She was reassuring both of them. Though his design was unfamiliar, she found a panel at the back of his head and loosened the screws with the Force. She levitated the parts in the air while she examined the wiring. Nothing was wrong that she could see. Perhaps he’d shut himself off in a panic?

Static crackled from her fingertips, and she sent small jolts of electricity through the wires. A nearly silent whirring sounded from him, and his body jerked, eyes flickering from gray to yellow as he came back online.

“Oh! Oh, my maker, what happened?”

“Easy,” she said, levitating his panel back into place and securing it. “You’re okay.”

Todo spun around, looking at her with eyes bright and round. They were permanently set that way, but it was hard not to detect the shock and awe in them. “You—you came for me? You—” He seemed to choke on his words. Disbelievingly, he continued in a small voice, “You fixed me?”

“Like I said.” Melody grinned and leaned back. “Don’t read too much into it.”

But though Todo’s physical expression remained static, Melody could tell that he was unhappy. He drew back from her, head shaking to and fro. “Oh… Oh, no. No, no, no. This is terrible. What have I done?”

Melody’s brow furrowed, but before she could ask what he meant, another voice—male, sultry, and chillingly familiar—boomed throughout the room.

"You've done beautifully, Todo. Exactly as planned.”

Melody at last noticed her surroundings—far too late.

Upon a black throne on a raised dais sat the Fanged God, fingers steepled and legs spread, the picture of control. His dark eyes were half-lidded, and he gave her a slow smile, a predator who had just caught his prey.

But Melody wasn’t going down without a fight. Snapping her arm forward, she sent Force lightning screeching in his direction—but it only struck an empty throne. Before she could search for him, hands stronger than any manacle seized her wrists and she was jerked forward, staring up into his far too expressive face.

“A valiant effort, but pointless,” he said, almost like an apology, as if he were sorry for what he was doing. “Todo’s showed me demonstrations of your powers. Though in truth, I hadn’t expected that little trick with the prison door. That’s very useful. I’ll certainly remember.” He spared a glance at Todo and nodded at the chamber entrance. “Leave us."

Melody shot the droid a look so full of accusation, of rage and hate and hurt, that he flinched away, metal fingers twiddling more agitatedly than ever. Todo didn't look at her or the Son as he said, "Yes, master," and glided hastily, guiltily, away.

The second Todo left, Melody regretted her actions. It wasn't the droid's fault. He could only do what he was ordered. No, the object of her hatred had much more agency than a droid but clearly less conscience.

Melody attempted to jerk her wrists from his grasp, hissing all the while. "You vile, sick, despicable, evil—"

"You're far too kind." Trapping her wrists in one hand, he brought the other up to grip her chin, forcing her to keep eye contact with him. He suddenly narrowed his eyes and frowned. “No, really, you are. You’re a Sith, you use the dark side, you could have made it if you’d just kept going. Yet you risked yourself for a droid? Why? Why would you do that?”

His fingers bit into her, but she couldn’t move. He drew her closer, trapping her hands against his abdomen. His red tattoos were stark against his pale skin, his eyes burning with terrible knowledge. “The light side still has a hold on you… That’s very interesting.”

He knew. Her body grew cold, and she stared at him with wide eyes, shaken. He knew.

Everyone has a weakness.

"But still, look at those eyes," he purred in approval, tilting up her face to get a better look. And Melody knew, sickened, with the amount of the dark side she'd used in such a short time—and all for nothing—that her eyes were no longer a slate blue but a darkening, bloodthirsty red. Like his. "What a pair we make."

Melody wasn't certain what she was going to declare about that. That he was deluded, that he was insane, that his princess, champion, or whatever was in a different castle, and that she wanted nothing to do with him. She could have renounced the dark side in that moment, anything to make it clear that she was done with him playing with her like he owned her, that she wasn't his—but that was in that empty space of a moment. That was before he drew her up to him and kissed her.

There was both the promise of absolute power and pleasure in his kiss, and she could feel the strength of it surging through her veins. Unlike his skin, his mouth was hot, and he consumed her with a lust that was overwhelming. He kissed her like he'd been dying to do it for longer than she'd even known him, longer than she’d ever been alive. Much longer.

Her feet no longer touched the floor, but she didn't care. She was weightless in his arms, the strong band of one holding her to the length of his body and the other clutching the nape of her neck. Her hands gripped his shoulders—those powerful shoulders—before she wrapped an arm around his neck with abandon, urging him closer.

One of his fangs skimmed her bottom lip, teasing her, playfully asking her for permission for something he could so easily take. Let me have you, he seemed to say with each graze, every nibble. It wasn't venom that was stored in those fangs, but darkness, pure and unadulterated, and she could feel its shadows whisking across her skin. Let me have you in every way, completely and forever.

All it would take was for him to bite down and pierce her skin, and she could stay like this for eternity. Beautiful, invincible, desirable, terrible, uninhibited—and good, so very, very good…

He laughed against her lips, wicked and smug, and the rumbles coming from his mouth, his chest sent shivers coursing down her spine and over her flesh, and she was aching for him—

Her eyes snapped open, shocked and horrified, and she Force pushed him so strongly that it would have sent an ordinary man flying.

But the Fanged God wasn't an ordinary man. She managed to break his grip and send him stumbling back a few steps, but that was all, and he didn't look the least bit bothered by it. He smiled and smiled as she reclaimed her balance and backed away from him, spitting and wiping her mouth furiously.

"Am I to understand it wasn't as good for you as it was for me?" He goaded, red eyes lit with delight.

She was somewhere beyond rage. The words cut out of her, each of them amputated completely from the other. "There isn't a word for the hate and revulsion I feel for you."

He clucked his tongue, bored with her. “Back to your cell it is, then. I have other matters to attend to.”

Another shadowy mass appeared and she was transported back to her cell. The door she’d shattered was back in place, perfect and whole as if nothing had even happened to it.

She surged toward it, intending to bring it down again, but whatever weaknesses it had before had been repaired. The Fanged God learned from his mistakes.

It didn’t stop her from trying to blast it off its hinges, incensed with everything and everyone.

#otp: until you're mine #the chosen one au #the fanged god

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crosbyru-blog · 6 years

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Three Reasons Why Money Was The Worst Invention Of All Time

[ad_1] Who invented money? Ask any number of people and they couldn't tell you who it was that actually invented money or where the idea came from. History has given us some bad ideas, but money has to be the worst and here are my top three reasons why.Something Invented By Man Should Not Have Power Over Him. If I think really hard and try to imagine a time without money, before it was invented and used on a daily basis, I tend to imagine that the world was a completely different place. People most likely had a barter type society where goods and services were exchanged and that is how one survived. If I had a particular skill, say hunting, and you were hungry you could come to me for food. The idea would be that if you could make fire, and I could provide the food, then we could exchange our skills or abilities and everyone got what was good for them. I assume, for the sake of argument, that if someone possessed absolutely no skills whatsoever, that person was still allowed to eat. I can't imagine that I would loan the helpless soul some meat, only if it could be paid back somehow. Before helpless soul could blink, he might owe me for five dinners and then I have to send out the collection agents to call in his debts. Money provides control, in both a positive and negative control. Although it is man made, and essentially just a piece of paper or a mixture of cheap metals, money has power, and is power. I can just imagine Mr. Helpless Soul explaining to his wife that he can't repay the hunter and doesn't know what to do. So Mr. Hunter decides to enslave the Helpless Soul family until the debt is repaid. It is unfathomable to me that so many people in my country, and the world go hungry every day. Those who possess the money have the power to deny the needs of those that don't have means. Where have the humanitarians gone? I've seen a business owner kick out a person who was homeless and starving, and then half an hour later deal with a complaining customer as he shouted that his food was not hot enough. Money only has the power that we give it. If we choose to see it as just a means to an end, or just some silly paper we have been told to obey our whole lives, then one can focus on what really matters. I am not advocating not paying debts, or shucking responsibilities. This is the world we live in, and norms must be followed...until the laws change again to suit what the politicians want on any particular whim of a day. Money Shifts Focus From Helping One Another To Arbitrary "Worth" Of Mere Things. Why should I do anything to help anyone else, unless they can pay for it? If my entire focus in life is to obtain material things, then I should only be motivated by money, or obtaining it, to do anything. What is anything really worth? Marketing companies have defined worth for me since I was a child, and it was beaten into me during commercial breaks of GI Joe. What is the value of all of the things you want in comparison to something that really matters? Imagine what the worth is of spending one more hour with a loved one before they pass away and are gone forever. The worth of teaching your children that there is more to life than money and obtaining things. The worth of feeding a homeless man, and helping him have at least one night's sleep where his stomach doesn't keep him awake. The value of reaching out a hand and helping someone else in this world is worth more than the largest diamond, the heaviest gold, and the purest oil. Now, I am the biggest hypocrite on this topic, because I love things! It has been programmed in me for so long, it is hard to shake the desire to obtain things. Imagine a life in which people helped each other because it is the right thing to do, and not just for what they could get in return. The argument is, well, that things can't just be free. You have to pay something to get something. How would the world work if everyone was just giving away everything for free and everyone just had everything they needed and didn't have to be slave to credit card companies anymore or to a job that they dislike? How would we survive? My answer to those questions is, famously! I would be free to learn a trade that benefits others and could use that ability to provide for my family and to help others. I have wanted to help by donating or giving my entire life, but never had the means. I've donated a little time here and there, and not near as much as I should or would have liked to, but at least it was something. But because I like things, and those things have cost me money, I have to continue in my job, and repeat the same cycle my father did. Money Makes You Question If People Really Care About You, Or Just Your Money. I try to envision the end of my life surrounded by those that have made my journey with me, who love and care for me because of the enrichment I gave to them through my friendship and dedication. In my latter years, enjoying my days with my wife, and talking to my grown children and my grand children. I want to soak up every single minute of my life between here and there. I want to feel and love and enjoy all that there is to offer. I have seen families destroyed, fighting over the money left behind after a loved one passes. Some of those grudges are held for the rest of their lives. They lose a relationship and also a loved one, and the only thing they can think about, is how much money they will be getting. More than likely, Mr. Entitlement as we will call him, won't even miss the loved one that was lost. How many brilliant individuals never get the chance to succeed because of lack of means, and how many elite are given free passes because their pile of paper is bigger than yours. Do the people closest to you care about you or your money? Does the girlfriend only love you because of what you can buy her? Do your children only listen to you in order to get something they want? Take the money away, and would they abandon you? Such a great idea, this money. My answer to all of this is that I don't have an answer. My two year old daughter asked me about money and loves putting money in her piggy bank. It made me start to consider all the reasons I worry about money, and fight about money, and read books about money. Nothing like the honesty of a child, to make you sit and think. [ad_2] Source by Mitchell Pierce https://www.buyherepayherebirmingham.xyz/three-reasons-why-money-was-the-worst-invention-of-all-time/

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anavoliselenu · 7 years

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Beautiful lies chapter 12

Chapter One

Selena

"Are you going to tell me where the money came from?" Becca looks at me expectantly over the rim of her third glass of Chardonnay.

"Justin," my liquor-loosened tongue reveals before I can filter it. "He and I had a kind of arrangement."

"How did you meet him?" Becca asks, her gaze inquisitive.

"Next question." I might be several drinks past drunk but there’s no way I’m telling her about the auction. I needed to maintain some dignity in this shameful situation.

Her eyes never stray from mine as she takes another contemplative sip. We’re sitting at a tiny bar in the lobby of our hotel. When I’d found out about Justin’s marital status, I’d fled for home, broken hearted and destroyed. Becca convinced me we needed a girl’s weekend away. I’d done one better and flew us to Rome on a whim. So here we sit, halfway around the world and all we can think to discuss is the exact topic that sent me running in the first place. Awesome. I take another healthy swig of my beverage. God, don’t they have anything stronger than wine in this country?

"What kind of arrangement can you make with a man where he just gives you half a million dollars, Soph?" Her tone is accusatory. Good thing she doesn’t know about the rest of the money, which is tucked inside my own bank account. I know my family has a lot of questions about where the money for Becca’s treatment came from, and so far, I haven’t said a word. Until now. Her eyes grow wide and she slaps a hand over her mouth. "Oh my God, were you like, his sex slave?" She giggles.

My cheeks burn brightly, but I shake my head. "You’d have to actually have sex for that to be the case, I’d think…"

She’s still giggling, so I know she has no idea she’s hit the nail on the head. Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.

"Let’s not talk about the money, Becca. It’s not important. Justin was willing to provide it, and I don’t regret anything because it helped you get better. Please just let it go," I plead with her to let it drop. Her health is cooperating for once and I want to enjoy this trip – just us. I don’t want to even think about the name Justin Justin. It's much too painful.

"If he’s as hot as you’ve said he is, I would have had a hard time not ripping his clothes off and jumping him. Oops, I’m sorry, my vagina accidentally landed on your penis."

I crack a smile at her change in topic. Of course it’s about sex. Becca’s not a virgin and she’s much more forward about sex than I am. You’d think it’d be the opposite, but somehow, I’m the cautious one, whereas being sick from a young age taught her to grab life by the balls and live it to the fullest. I envy her in that.

Her first sexual experience was with a boy in the cancer treatment center. He was seventeen and she was just fifteen at the time. She’d told me every single detail, a proud gleam in her eye. It was inspiring how she let nothing stand in her way. I’d summoned her inner strength the night I stood on that auction block waiting to be sold.

"Soph?" she asks, drawing me back from my faraway thoughts. "Are you okay?"

"I miss him," I admit softly. "That’s crazy, right?"

"Not crazy. That’s normal when you break up with someone, from what I hear."

"I didn’t break up with him. He wasn’t my boyfriend. He’s married, remember?" I’d told Becca nearly everything – about me living with him, us growing closer, and about being naked in the pool when his wife arrived home one afternoon. Of course Justin tried to stop me, all but tackling me in the hallway of his mansion that suddenly felt cold and foreign to me. I waited for him to try and deny it, to explain it all to me, but sadly, it was all true. Stella was his wife. He'd been married the entire time.

"Technically. But I still think you need the rest of the story. Obviously his wife wasn’t living there. How long have they been separated?"

I shrug. "He hasn’t had sex in two years." Unless he was lying about that too. I don’t know what to believe anymore.

"Damn, that’s quite a dry spell. And if he’s as hot as you’ve said he is…it’s not like he didn’t have offers, right?"

I was one of those offering. I blush, realizing I’d practically put my vagina on a silver platter for him and he repeatedly turned it down. It’s enough to give a girl low self-esteem.

"Listen, it’s okay to miss him. It’s okay to feel confused." She reaches across the space between us and grabs my hand. Despite being six minutes younger than me, Becca has always been wise beyond her years. Her advice is thoughtful and spot on. She downs the last of her wine. "But we’re in frickin Rome for a once in a lifetime girls trip, so there will be no moping allowed. We’re going to have fun."

Yay, fun. My heart feels like it’s been fed through a paper shredder. I nod and force a smile onto my face. Becca’s right. This really could be a once in a lifetime trip for me and her. Who knows what the future holds. I can’t waste time feeling sorry for myself. Of course that’s easier said than done.

I miss Justin’s bed, his scent, the feel of his rough stubble against my cheek when we kissed. I miss everything about him. Just as we’d started to grow close, everything I’d come to love was ripped away from me, leaving a gaping hole in my chest.

Forcing the thoughts of him from my mind, I throw back the rest of my wine and glance at the charming ambience of the bar around us, hoping this trip will be the distraction I need.

***

The next morning, the knock on our hotel room door surprises us both. Becca and I exchange a look. She shrugs while I move across the room to answer it. At least we’re both dressed.

Once the door opens, I stumble back, looking up into dark, intense eyes framed in heavy lashes that I’d recognize anywhere.

"Colt…" I murmur, utterly shocked to see him here in Italy.

"Soph…" he returns, his voice gravelly.

"W-What are you doing here?" I’m breathless and I don’t know why.

"You," he says simply, his eyes burning on mine.

Everything I’ve tried to forget slams into me at once. His deep blue eyes that are hungry and seeking. His masculine jawline, his height, and even his scent evoke a sense of deja-vu. I remember everything in perfect detail, including the wicked pleasure he gave my body. I suppress a warm shiver.

"Hi cupcake," Pace says, grinning at me from behind Justin.

What in the world? Remembering my manners, I reluctantly let my gaze wander from Justin to greet Pace and I introduce him to Becca. Utterly at a loss for what they’re both doing here, I step aside to let them in.

Becca’s wide smile as she shakes Pace’s hand reminds me of the affect meeting him for the first time can have on a girl. Her cheeks are rosy and her eyes are alight with mischief. Oh, this isn’t good.

"And this must be the infamous Justin Justin," she says, locking eyes with Justin next.

Watching my sister as she appraises Justin's perfect form from head to toe, my chest gets tight and I feel tears sting my eyes. Then my anger starts to rise, remembering his betrayal. But I’m in such a state of shock, that it takes me a moment to get my mouth working. "Ignore him. He’s leaving," I say, remembering that he and I are through.

"Awe, don’t be like that," Pace says. "We just spent ten hours flying coach to come see you. The least you can do is invite us in, and let me flirt with your sister." His lopsided smile is back and I swear, I practically see Becca’s knees buckle.

"You flew coach for me?" I blurt without thinking.

"It was the only option. The jet wasn’t available. I wanted the next flight out and first class was full," Justin explains.

I try to imagine these two men – who are each well over six-feet tall folded into cramped airplane seats for hours on end.

"Now that’s love," Pace remarks under his breath.

"This is where you’re staying?" Justin peers around the tiny room, which takes all of three seconds.

Splurging was coming on this trip in the first place – I wouldn’t waste the precious money I had on first class airfare or a fancy hotel room. Even though Becca had responded well to the treatment so far, there was no guarantee that she’d stay healthy, or that she wouldn’t need another round in a pricey treatment facility.

"What’s wrong with the room? Not up to your high standards?" I remark, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

He frowns. "Let me upgrade you. Take you somewhere proper," Justin says, his dark eyes finding mine again.

How dare he? He can’t waltz in here, interrupt my vacation and then insult where I’m staying. He doesn’t control everything. The urge to push him from the room and slam the door in his face is nearly overwhelming. I pull a deep breath into my lungs, just as he reads my uneasy expression and takes a step back.

"Never mind. As long as you’re comfortable." He eyes the bed linens like he’s checking for bedbugs.

Asshole.

"I am." Or at least I was until he arrived out of the blue and completely threw my emotions into a tailspin.

Pace crosses the room, pulls out the small chair from the desk and plops down. His frame dwarfs everything in our tiny efficiency. He looks out of place, but in a good way. "I didn’t realize you had a sister. Sexy obviously runs in the family." He throws a wink toward Becca.

"We’re twins," Becca informs him.

We always looked a bit different, and now more than ever. With Becca’s hair growing back in, it just reaches the tops of her shoulders and she wears it wavy and messy. My hair falls like a thick curtain down my back and is as straight as an arrow. She’s also about fifteen pounds thinner than me. Chemo will do that to you.

"Mmm," Pace growls, his eyes wandering between us. "I’ve always had a secret twin fantasy." The hungry look in his eyes is enough to bring a woman to her knees. Becca stands zero chance against his charms.

Justin steps closer to my side, his fists tightening as he shoots an evil glare toward Pace. "Don’t make me kill you as soon as we’ve landed. It would really dampen the trip."

"Don’t make me confiscate your balls. Now go talk to your woman," Pace challenges.

I open my mouth to correct him. I am no one’s woman, but my brain flashes back to that fateful night when Justin purchased me from the auction. I accepted the money–and spent a good chunk of it. Does that mean I still belong to him despite finding out he’s married?

I cursed the stupid contract, I cursed the man himself for holding my heart captive. That was never part of the plan.

When I meet his eyes again, he looks lost, broken, and it tugs at something deep inside me. As much anger as I felt discovering that he’d lied to me the entire time we were together, I still have feelings for him. I can’t just turn them off. Despite his obvious shortcomings, he helped my sister, and he made me feel alive. He was everything I never knew I wanted.

"Can we go out into the hall and talk for a minute?" Justin asks, his voice whisper soft.

"Hear him out, kid. Do it for me," Pace says, dimples out in full force, like he knows they’re impossible to refuse. The jerk.

I swallow and give an imperceptible nod before following him into the hall. He flew halfway around the world; the least I could do was listen to his explanation. Maybe it will give me some much needed closure. Maybe I can get the answers I need to move on and also figure out where we stand with respect to the large chunk of money exchanged between us. He never collected on his end of the bargain after all, I am still a virgin.

Once we’re out in the hall, Justin stands before me, looking directly into my eyes. "So, that’s Becca, huh?" He tips his head toward the door.

"Yeah."

"She looks good – healthy, I mean."

I nod. "Yeah, the treatment worked – so far. She goes in for another round in two weeks, but with everything that’s happened, it seemed like a good time to get away – for both of us." She and I have never done anything like this, but it was part of my plan to start actually living.

He nods. "I see."

We’re silent for several seconds and Justin’s hand twitches like he wants to touch me, but he doesn’t. Thank God.

"And would your running away to another country have anything to do with…Stella?"

I flinch involuntarily. I hate that he’s just said her name. It immediately conjures images of that day in the pool, when my whole little world shattered. In the country of Italy, her name should not exist.

"Will you tell me the story?" I ask.

"Anything you want to know."

"Are you getting divorced?"

"That’s up for debate."’

"Then I’m leaving." I turn for the door, my hand gripping the knob.

"No. Stay. Please hear me out," Justin pleads, prying my fingers from the door handle.

His hand on my skin sends a flash of heat through me at the memory of what those hands can do. He’s still the only man who’s made me come. I shudder as though the memory singes some part of me.

I hear a wave of girly laughter behind the door. It warms me to hear Becca enjoying herself, and it grounds me in the moment. Turning to face Justin again, I draw a deep, calming breath. "Do you love her?"

"No." His voice is sure, steady. "I never loved her like I should have."

My shoulders relax just slightly. Even if my body wants to run, and my head is screaming at me to flee, my heart has grown attached to this man. And for better or worse, part of me needs to hear him out, to understand this messy situation I’ve found myself in. Maybe if I can make sense of it, then I can move on.

"Please let me explain, that’s all I’m asking." He raises his palms in a placating gesture.

I’ve never seen him look so devastated and broken. Dark circles line his eyes and he hasn’t shaved in days. Even though I’ve agreed to hear him out, a wave of nausea washes through me. Am I prepared to handle whatever he’s about to tell me? I fasten one hand against the wall for support. "I just need a minute…"

He releases a heavy exhale and I swear what looks like regret washes over his features. "I will give you all the time you need, sweetness," he whispers.

The nickname against his lips presses like a weight onto my chest. My heart feels heavy, thudding dully against my ribcage.

Another fit of Becca’s giggles greet us from behind the door.

"He’s probably trying to de-pants her," Justin says.

"I don’t think she’d mind much."

"Should we check on our siblings while we’re giving you a minute?"

I nod. We might as well. I don’t think I’m ready to hear the entire sordid tale about how the man I was falling for is married and by the sounds of it, not necessarily planning to divorce. A stiff drink might help ease some of this ache in my chest too.

Back inside the cramped hotel room, Becca and Pace are standing near the open windows, deep in conversation. I’ve never seen her look so happy and chipper. She’s openly flirting and preening like a peacock, twirling a lock of hair around her finger and smiling up at him brightly. Our vacation is about to get a lot more interesting.

Realizing we’re back in the room, Becca turns to me. "Soph, did you know Pace spent a semester studying here in Rome? He’s going to take me sightseeing – show me all the best spots that aren't in those travel guides we bought."

So much for kicking Pace and Justin out. This was supposed to be a girl’s trip, but I won’t deny Becca anything, and I can tell she’d love to spend more time in Pace’s company. It’s that damn crooked grin and dimple of his that just beg you to come out and play.

"How did you know where I was?" I ask Justin.

"Kylie," he confirms.

I’d started working with Kylie at Justin’s charity organization a few days a week and it didn’t feel right to leave her hanging. And while I’d only intended to tell her that I would be out of town for a while, she somehow got me to spill the beans about my trip to Rome.

"When did you get here?" he asks.

"Last night." It’s almost noon, but with the jetlag and the wine we consumed last night, Becca and I haven’t unpacked a thing. It’s actually a small miracle we’re up and showered.

"I assume you haven’t had lunch yet. Let’s get you something to eat and I’ll explain everything." He turns to my sister who is for some reason squeezing Pace’s bicep while he grins adoringly down at her. "Pace, Becca, how about a quick bite to eat before you start your sightseeing?"

"I’m game," Pace says.

"Me too," Becca chimes in, grabbing her purse.

I want to sulk and stomp my feet and refuse to go, but denying myself food seems like a childish way to punish him. "There’s room service." I nod toward the menu sitting on top of the dresser.

"No way we’re sitting inside the room all day, Soph," Becca encourages. "Come on, it’s just lunch."

I shoot her a scowl. Traitor. I make a mental note to not be so nice to her. Like saving her some hot water for her shower this morning–that was a one-time deal. She might think she’s helping by interfering with me and Colt, but she’s not.

I gather up my belongings, my purse, sunglasses and the Euros I changed over before we left the airport, and follow the group to the elevator. This should be interesting.

Chapter Two

Selena

The sidewalk café is beautiful and understated. Black wrought iron tables and chairs with fluffy wine-colored cushions, and ivy growing along a little trellis that separates the street from the sidewalk café complete the space. It’s sunny and clear with blue skies overhead, but not too warm, and I find it hard to hold onto my sour mood.

Justin suggests a white wine from a local vineyard and when it arrives, I’ve never tasted anything quite so light, crisp and refreshing. His impeccable taste is just one more thing that’s easy to love about him. But I can’t go there. Won’t. My body has already betrayed me by springing to life when he’s near, like when he helped me into my chair and his hand brushed against my lower back. It left my skin tingling. And when he slid out the chair across from me, his tall, commanding presence caused a little flutter in my chest. I need to keep myself in check.

His eyes roam over my exposed skin–my bare shoulders peeking from the tank top–and my chest and neck flush with heat.

I’m glad our siblings are picking up the slack when it comes to making conversation, because Justin and I remain completely silent. Small talk doesn’t seem to fit my mood and I’d have no idea what to say regardless. They chatter away without a care in the world while Justin and I exchange serious looks.

"So how long are you guys here?" Becca asks.

"Depends," Pace says.

"On?" I challenge. As far as I’m concerned, Justin has made his point, showing up here in some masculine display to claim his property. He can piss off now, thank you very much.

Justin’s sad eyes slide over to mine. "I want a chance," he says, his voice dark.

A chance to explain, or a chance with me? I’m thankful for the large wraparound sunglasses that shield my eyes from his.

"Isn’t that what she gave you all those weeks in LA?" Becca asks, coming to my rescue.

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dammitadolfnomorecake · 5 years

Text

🏰⚔️ DMODT chapter 4

Drenched from the storm, the hunting party had barely made it back to the castle before it'd turned into a pounding torrent of water that'd rained all afternoon, and night. Levi wasn't thrilled by it, but he was even less thrilled by how sick Eren had seemed to be. The moment they'd arrived back at the keep, the teen had slumped in Erwin's arms, before being whisked away by the castle healers. Zeke had watched the scene unfold, before commenting over how "omegas didn't need strength if they did their job and spent their lives on their backs". The pigs from Marley had laughed, while Levi had to stop himself from decking the fellow prince. He'd seen how hurt Eren was over the death of the wolf pup, and had felt awkward over the whole thing, as he hadn't known what to say to make the teen feel better. He was only there to entertain Zeke, then Zeke had pulled a stunt like that. That evening, when Eren failed to join them at dinner, Levi had gone looking for the teen. Outside the omegas door, two guards had been posted with orders from the court mages not to let anyone in, including him. Zeke had been less than impressed when Eren wasn't in the castle keep to wave the Marley party goodbye, while Levi felt it was for the best. If Eren was sick, his magic would be unpredictable. He just didn't realise how unpredictable it would be. Feeling some guilt over the previous day, and concern that the teen was possibly sick because of the favour he'd done for the kingdom, Levi once again found himself outside of Eren's room, this time not taking no for an answer as he let himself and Erwin into the room. It was quite a sight to see. Everything inside the room was levitating, including Eren. With four mages standing at the corners of the omegas bed, Erwin stepped up to cover up the fact he wasn't quite sure how to ask what the fuck was happening "Prince Erwin would like to know the condition of our newest mage?" The fifth mage at the end of Eren's bed, sank to kneel on one knee "Sir, you should not be here. His magic is quite unstable" "I can see. What's wrong with him?" "He's burning with fever, no doubt the result of being soaked to the bone yesterday" "Has he been creating fires?" The mage sighed "That's not the all of it. As you can see, everything in this room is levitating. It'd been strong enough to affect the walls" Levi raised an eyebrow "The window, sire. It wasn't quite as large before" "Can it be brought back further under control?" "Not until his vows are taken, or his fever breaks" "I do not see a cool cloth upon his forehead" "The fabric burst into flame each time it was placed near him" "Give me a cloth" "Sir?" "Give me a cloth, I have dealt with this kind of thing before" For all of five minutes, as a teen himself. Rising, the mage pulled a cloth from their sleeve, passing it to Levi. He'd never get used to magic. The cloth was almost like ice. Leaving Erwin's side, he walked around to the side of Eren's bed. No kid should be rasping for breath like he was, nor should he look so sick. His skin pale, sheets drenched in sweat, while his lips were speckled with what seemed to be blood. Reaching out, he jumped as Erwin spoke "Prince, perhaps you shouldn't touch him" "It's fine. It's a mere cold" "Erwin" "Mind your place, Levi" Reaching out, he placed his hand on Eren's forehead. The kid was fucking burning up. Whining, Eren pitifully called for relief... from an alpha. The brat was as much a slave to his own dynamic as any of them were "Shitty brat, this wasn't supposed to happen" Under his touch, Eren grew warmer, as he gasped down a breath. Then all at once, everything fell back into place, no longer levitating, as Eren was no longer levitating. Placing the cloth over the omegas forehead, Eren let out a weak sigh "Sir?" Levi raised his gaze, all five mages and Erwin staring at him "Don't look at me. I don't know what that was. Keep me updated on his condition, and make sure he doesn't burn my castle down" "Yes, sir" Flustered by what had happened, Levi swept from Eren's room. Erwin jogging after him, his stupidly long legs meaning he caught him in no time "What was that?" "I don't know" "Cut the shit. How did you know that would work?" "I didn't. I... When he was a child, he set fire to the hay in the stables, but when he was touched, it seemed to calm his power" "Erwin" "Don't "Erwin" me. I have no idea how this magic thing works, but it looked like none of them were going to step up and touch him" "You're fond of him" "I am not fond of that omega. I don't even know him" "You took him out of the castle grounds. You had him by your side, and you attempted to replace his bracelet taken by Zeke" "You're the one telling me to be nicer" "You're not acting like yourself. Is this because of how you remember him? Near death and in your arms?" "I barely remember him. I was attempting to repay him because Zeke is a dick. Nothing more and nothing less" "So you wouldn't care to know that the mages were talking about him earlier" "They were?" Levi bit the moment the words left Erwin's mouth. He couldn't even play it off cool "No" "You're a douche" "Possibly. It does worry me to see you like this" "You don't need to worry" "Is it because he's a street kid? An orphan like us? Do you see yourself when you look at him?" "I. No. Yes. Maybe. I don't know and that's what makes this so hard. Stop asking me what I don't know" Erwin finally stopped pestering him, but they'd only made it a few more steps when it seemed to start raining along the corridor. Groaning, Levi broke into a jog, relieved to find the next hallway dry "Was that Eren?" "Possibly. Probably. Those shitty mages need to get him under control. Have you talked to her, about this?" "Hanji is anxious to meet Eren. You could try talking to her. We know magic has been becoming weaker with every generation. The fact that Eren's magic is so strong, has sent her off spiralling with the possibilities. We know mages of old could raise a castle from the ground, or destroy it with just a whim" "You don't need to tell me that. You have no idea how many letters used to cross the desk over the use of dragon items to strengthen the kingdom's magic" "You do remember I'm the one who reads everything first" "Then why are you telling me things u already know?" "To make sure you understand that Eren could be a powerful weapon" "I know that, but he also a child. Who can't even ride or protect himself from an alpha" "Now that Zeke has left, we don't need him to stay close" "No. What shall we have him do? The fact he can't ride, will hinder us if we fall back into war with Marley" "How many of our mage forces can? If they've all come from sanctuaries..." "Their training is up to their masters. Most see it as a practical skill" "Do we know who will take Eren?" "Not yet. It's decided during the ceremony. Hanji may be in charge of the mages, but she is more interested in combining magic with science. Science does seem to be the future" "Useless Shitty Glasses. Fine. Have him help the maids Levi rubbed at his face. He hoped Eren knew how much of a pain in the arse he was being "You can't keep him in the kitchens" "I'm pretty sure I can. We'll reassess his training and usefulness once he can actually do magic" "Because a raining ceiling doesn't count as magic" "You know damn well what I mean" "I'll see that it's done" * Eren was sure he was being punished for being ill and for being a dick to Zeke. Just like the sanctuary mages, the castle mages couldn't handle his uncontrolled powers, and the moment his fever had broken, he'd been sent to the castle healers. Once recovered enough to be useful, he was put back to work in the kitchens. They couldn't really make use of him elsewhere around the castle. He ran the risk of accidentally setting the washing on fire. He couldn't play gofer, because he didn't know the castle. He couldn't go to Armin's classes, because he had no idea about them, and he couldn't go watch Mikasa train, because that mean a lecture over being wet and sick. Like that was his fault. He'd thought his heat would have hit by now, and he was frankly growing impatient over it not. There were herbs he could take, that would speed up the process, but he didn't know if that would be acceptable for the ritual, or if it had to be a natural heat. Stealing some time for himself, Eren was sitting on the windowsill as he watched the soldiers running drills. The sun felt good against his skin, while the bricks seemed to absorb the warmth. He'd heard of magic users that could change their shapes into any number of things, and couldn't help but think it'd be nice to be a fat cat on a day like today. Maybe once his vows had been taken, his master could teach him such things. Lost in his own thoughts, he didn't hear Levi approaching "Eren?" Nearly falling out the window, he was narrowly saved as Levi grabbed him by the arm "Whoa! Everything ok?" "You scared the shit out of me, if that's what you're asking" Pulling himself together, Eren hoped he didn't look too disheveled. They hadn't replaced the pants he'd worn for the hunt, so it was back to his grey robes "I'm sorry. I didn't expect you to be sitting here alone" "I was just watching the soldiers training" Levi leaned over him, the man peering out the window "I see that. What's on your mind?" "Nothing much important" "So you admit something is. You can speak freely to me" Eren sighed, figuring he was well "I was thinking about my vow ceremony. I hate sitting and being useless" "No heat yet?" "No. It's quite frustrating" "As long as your heat doesn't come, you won't be mounted, right?" He didn't want to think about that bit, it showed in his scent "Eren, do you not want to take you vows?" "I do. I just wish I knew who would be my master. It may be silly, but I'd like to know who I'm about to sleep with, and know more about them than just their dick" Leaning back, Levi moved to lean against the windowsill "You have no idea?" "None at all. I know blood, slick and semen can all be used in spells. But... I don't just sleep with anyone. Despite what people may think of omegas" "I don't think that of you. I tried asking our head of sciences, but she had no idea either. Ceremonies are only known to those invited, and despite being our magic liaison, she never has been" "That just makes it sound even worse. It's stupid, isn't it? To want to know who you're being forced to show your body too?" "I don't think so. It is your body after all" "I've been waiting for this moment for so long, that I guess with it looming over me, it's a little overwhelming" "Is that why you're not in the kitchens?" "That, and Nicollo says I have no talent for the culinary arts" "I'm sure your wait won't be much longer" "I really do hope so. What about you? What are you doing? I don't see Prince Erwin with you" "Some of our newer soldiers decided it would be funny to steal meat from our stores. Prince Erwin is supervising their punishment" Eren let out a whistle "Damn. I don't want to be them" "Would you like to come watch?" "No. Thank you, but I fear I shall only get in the way" "Alright. Take care of yourself, Eren" "And you, Levi" * Pinching the bridge of his nose, Levi let out a long breath. In his left hand was a letter fresh from the leg of a Marley eagle. Prince Zeke was intending another visit, this time for two weeks, the following month. There had been a delay in a shipment from Eldia, so the prince has decided to return to the island to make sure they weren't intentionally withholding anything. Once again, they'd need to throw a lavish Ball, conduct festivals and check the details of the delayed shipment. Across the desk in front of him, was a hundred more requests that all required his time. The imitation prince let his mind wander, wondering if anyone noticed if he placed a training dummy in his place and took off to see Farlan and Isabel. He was anxious for news on the forests, and to make sure they were both alright. He hadn't heard hide or hair of them, and had no time to check in. Raising his head at the knock at the door, Erwin walked in, looking rather concerned "What's the matter? Do you need to take a shit?" "Eren's heat has started. The ceremony will be preformed tonight" It'd only taken a month to happen... "About time" "You're not worried?" Erwin had shared Eren's worry over who'd he sleeping with. The omega had a right to decide for himself, but having never seen a ceremony, he didn't know little choice Eren would have "Where is he?" "Being washed and made ready for tonight" Placing Marley's letter down, Levi then crossed his arms as he stared down Erwin "I know you're scheming something" "Well, we're at the age where we really should know what's happening on our own castle. Eren said the whole place is covered in magic" "We are a magical nation" "Yes, but think about it. We have no way of seeing those spells. If anyone was plotting against us, we'd never see them coming" "Admit it. You're purely curious" "A little. I'm also worried for Eren. He put on a brave face, but he's terrified. As you're so fond of bringing up, he is a child" "And how do you suppose we see this ritual? It's supposed to be limited to magic users only" "You're the crown prince. They cannot say no to you. Besides, the masters that teach omegas magic are alphas. So I'm guessing that they will be the ones that choose Eren's new master" Levi's stomach performed an uncomfortable flop. Eren wasn't his, but just the mere idea of someone else touching him was enough to annoy him. Given the fact Eren would have no control over his own body, being in heat and all that "You're glaring" "You're making me think about things I don't want to. We can't just walk in looking like this. Find someone to talk to discreetly, and we'll need something to cover our scents... and faces. This is shitty plan" "You didn't have to say yes" "You wouldn't give me a moments peace if I didn't. You've got that disapproving dad look on your face. You normally don't give two shits about the omegas coming here" "Normally they don't have so much magic, and normally they don't catch the attention of Prince Zeke. If Zeke has an interest in Eren, we need to have one too" "Speaking of Little Dick, Marley wants to come over for a month and inspect our shipping rosters. A delivery was late they're up in arms" "That hardly warrants a month long visit" "No. I have the feeling they're going to be checking over every single part of our shitty defences, and they'll probably bring their own mages this time" Erwin nodded, his mind clearly already creating his own counter scenes for possible scenarios "Go think somewhere else. I don't want to wipe your brains up off the floor. It'd be a waste of cleaning supplies" "That it would. If he wants to inspect our military, we need to make sure their in shape" "What's that supposed to mean? We all know round is a shape, and a shape unfortunately most of them fall in now that we can't make a move" "Exactly. Let me talk to Ackerman. Her and Kirstein have been..." "Wait. Which one is Kirstein? Is he in her squad?" "Yes. The one with the two tone hair" "The one that looks like a horse? Is it safe to let him think?" Erwin continued, as if he hadn't been interrupted "... looking at new formations and drills. Perhaps it's time to expand them throughout the guard, and into the regiment?" "We both know you plan all our military formations, drills and training. Talk to them. I have a sudden desire to leave the castle for a good three months" "You can't leave for three, but once Eren's heat is over, we'll take him and his master with us on extended training" "Why? He's perfectly safe at the castle" "It's possible Zeke has bought off members within the walls. After his heat and vows, Eren will be able to use this magic. Coming out of his heat, he's going to be weak and disoriented, making it the perfect time for him to go missing" "God. I'm sick of talking about him. That's it. Conversation over. Go do whatever it is you do. I need to finish all of this" Erwin usually read everything first, but the Marley letter had Levi now hunting for the shipping manifests, amongst all the other incoming letters. He didn't know what the man had or hadn't read, so that meant first sorting and organising. He needed a goddamn assistant for this shit. Maybe Arlert? Erwin seemed sweet on him. But it was likely the kid's ridiculous hair cut would get on his nerves too much. He didn't understand why it had to be so... coconutty. * Dressed in a black robe with his eyes obscured by a mask, Levi had thought Erwin was messing with him, right up until they'd entered the underground chamber that the ritual would be conducted in. Beneath their robes, they were naked, which was the bit he'd thought Erwin was messing with him over. He didn't understand why he had to be naked when the damn robe thing dwarfed him completely, and let him tripping on every third step. But inside the chamber, he realised everyone was dressed just the same, as they circled a rough stone altar where Eren laid naked. Across the brunettes skin, marking and symbols of Eldia green were painted. Eren somehow managing to lay there, despite his painfully hard erection, and the waves of needy heat wafting off of him. There were more than a few affected in the crowd. Alphas and their omega wards stank of arousal, making it easy to hide both his and Erwin's scents in the mix as they slipped through the crowd to stand opposite the altar. Under the glow of the strange rocks, the ceremony began suddenly. The master of the ceremony being an omega woman, who was alarmingly old and alarmingly naked. There were things he didn't need to see. Her naked was definitely one of those things. It was hard enough not to concentrate on Eren. Everything in his scent was sending his alpha crazy. Praying to some god that she obviously believed in, a goblet appeared in her hand. It would have been cooler had it magically appeared, and not just been passed to her. But that was just Levi's opinion. Walking to Eren, the woman cupped Eren's head, raising him enough to sip from the goblet. Something suspiciously red poured down Eren's face as he eagerly drank it down. Once drained, the goblet was removed, and Eren helped to kneel "Brothers and sisters, today a new mage joins us for the glory of Eldia!" Magic rippled through the air, while Levi didn't know what to think. He wanted to March right over there and claim Eren "The first semen shall spill, let his magic be known" What now?" Bringing forth a long black thing, the woman presented it to Eren. Erwin leaned over his shoulder to inform him it was a dragon horn. He had a vague idea of what would come, but he wasn't prepared for the things it was doing to his dick. With no shyness at all, Eren sucked the black horn eagerly. Now free to move, one hand worked his erection, while he moaned around the horn. Pulling the horn from his mouth, the omega ran the tip down his body, his hand abandoning his dick in favour of running precum along the markings covering his skin. Between his legs, Levi felt as if he'd gain three pounds. His dick felt so swollen and heavy, that even the slightest touch would send him over the edge. He knew he shouldn't be this aroused, but Eren was driving him crazy. He wanted to push the omega down and fuck his pert little arse until he couldn't walk for a month. Instead, he could only watch as Eren moved to sit the horn in an indent he hasn't noticed before. Mounting the horn, the omega let out a long primal growl. Above him, black clouds gathered, everyone taking a step back as Eren began to fuck himself openly on the horn. With his lolled back, Eren's hands roamed his body, his moans and mews growing louder, almost as if surprised by how good he was feeling. The whole process took minutes, but Levi felt as if he'd been watching him for hours. He could watch the sight before him all damn down. Without realising, his hand had slipped to his dick. The firm hold around the base the only thing keeping him from spilling his seed as he rocked into his hand. Letting out a feral cry, Eren came across the altar, yet not stopping his desperate fucking of the horn until the small spurts semen turned to mere trickles from spent dick "The first semen had been spent. He vows himself to the kingdom! Who shall take upon this child of destruction?" Rising to his knees, Eren slid from the horn. The omega so thoroughly soaked, his slick had spread to seep into most of the stone altar top. As the horn was removed, Eren moved to present himself. His back arching as he pressed his chest to the table. Levi's willpower snapped. Striding forward, he growled as he approached Eren "Second semen must be spilt to forge the loyalty" The old hag could take her bonds and stick them where the sun didn't shine. Hell be damned if any other alpha thought they were claiming Eren. His own alpha was going fucking crazy. He wanted to mate. He wanted to breed. He wanted to mark and claim. And he stupidly hadn't realised that every single person in the room was either in heat or rut, triggering his own. His world had sank down to Eren. Climbing onto the altar, Levi growled as he freed his lower half from his robe. He wanted everyone to see what he was doing, and for them all to know he was the one taking Eren. Reduced to base instinct, and given how fucking loose Eren's hold looked, Levi took himself in one hand, before lining up to sink into Eren's heat. Throwing his head back, he had no words for how it felt. His fingers rushed to grab Eren's hips in a bruisingly tight hold. Despite popular belief, he'd never just gone off and had sex. There was too much danger of creating an "heir", that he'd just relied on his hands. Being buried in Eren's warm wet heat felt amazing, as did Eren's cries as Levi began to fuck him as his instincts dictated. Riding Eren hard, the omega cried out for more, and god did Levi want to give him more. Releasing his hold on Eren's hips, he slipped his hand down to jerk Eren off at the same time. His other hand snaked up Eren's chest, pulling the omega up into his lap. Had Eren always been so warm and soft? Feeling his orgasm rushing, he growled and grunted, biting Eren's back as he came, his knot not catching as Eren rose. Leaving his cum dribbling down his dick and balls as it mixed with Eren's slick "Second semen is spilt. Loyalty is assured" Eren's neck started to glow, the omega dipping his head as strange marks appeared across his nape. Levi alpha instantly hating it. It severely limited the places he could mark the omega "This child shall serve Eldia, let him carry out the words of royalty, and bring victory to Eldia!" "For Eldia!" As the marks faded, Eren slumped down against him. His knot forced down uncomfortably, he was still coming inside Eren. Trying to rearrange the teen, Eren whined against him "Alpha?" "Shhh..." "Need more. Never felt sooo good" "I've got you" Lost to his instincts, and lost to the pheromones filling the chamber, Levi laid Eren down on the altar. Wide green eyes stared up at him, as long arms reached to pull him into his embrace. When Levi's lips met Eren's, a shock ran through the pair of them. He could feel Eren's magic seeping into him, yet it wasn't entirely unwanted. Three long kisses didn't feel long enough, Levi jerking back as the woman yelled "Third semen for the bond!" So this was meant to happen? He was meant to knot Eren? He could definitely do that. Especially with how Eren was looking at him as if he was everything the omega could ever want. Having not knotted inside Eren, as his knot started to deflate, he pushed back in. Eren's back arching as he let out a long moan. Taking Eren's by the backs of this thighs, he spread the omegas legs wide. The sight beneath him intoxicating. His alpha wanted to take it slow, but Eren was growing tired. Pulling back until just his top was buried, he slammed back in. Eren's fingers scrambling to find some kind of purchase as he whined. With the need to breed in mind, he rode Eren just as hard as he had from behind, his half formed knot flaring all too soon as his seed flooded the omega. Eren's hands flew to his stomach, arching his back as he moaned and thanked him for filling him "The bond is forged! He had earned his place! Like us, he is no more and no less! We are all equal! And the bonds were share will never die! A cry of Eldia went around the room... Levi blind to near orgy happening around him. As Eren started to drift off, he assumed the ceremony was over. Everyone else was busy getting busy. Lifting the omega, he got the barely conscious Eren to sling his arms over his shoulders, as he wrapped his legs around his waist. From somewhere, a black cloak was produced and wrapped around Eren's shoulders. At least someone had the brains not to be busy fucking. As Levi's sanity returned, he was hit by guilt. He'd just knotted and fucked Eren in front of everyone, and while it felt fucking amazing... Eren had been scared over the whole process. The omega may have wanted someone he knew to mount him... but Levi knew nothing about magic. With his knot still firmly inside Eren, the omega nosed at his neck, and started to purr. This was definitely not how the night was supposed to go. He wasn't supposed to have his arms filled with this perfect creature. It wasn't his to claim. He wasn't his to claim... even if he sure as hell smelt like he was. Letting out a sleepy sigh, Eren kissed his neck "Mmm... my alpha"

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