sapphyre | 𝔄𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔢 𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔶𝔢 𝔗𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔰𝔥𝔢𝔡 𝔶𝔢 𝔡𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝔴𝔥𝔬 𝔶𝔢𝔱 𝔩𝔦𝔳𝔢

𝔄𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔢 𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔶𝔢 𝔗𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔰𝔥𝔢𝔡 𝔶𝔢 𝔡𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝔴𝔥𝔬 𝔶𝔢𝔱 𝔩𝔦𝔳𝔢

—if you and i are both still alive and miserable,

i propose we begin to hunt each other for sport—

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[ A low, embittered but musing noise drones in Aemond's throat, would agree that Daemon might have been the only other one that night to have found his antics so entertaining.

The reason so little spoken about him would be that Aemond had spent most of his life in the shadow. Out of sight, out of mind, out of trouble. Too disgusted by his brother to sink into depravity. Too busy trying to prepare himself to greatness to earn his uncle's infamy at his age. Too burdened with trying to keep his family from fucking falling apart. Raised on the belief that any sign of weakness from any of them would be blood in the water. And for all that he did for them, for duty, the light only ever shown on him whenever he fucking snapped.

For all he knew, Damon could have drawn those same cards in life. Known for only his worst and hardly his best.]

When needing to fight fire with fire, that fear served me very well.

[ The breadth of so much glory at his fingertips knowing that he was his brother's greatest asset. He was needed upon, for once. What better opponent to take down a great dragon but with another great dragon? Equally fierce and ruthless, but this one deeply loyal to the right side of history. Raised with an unbreaking devotion, dutiful no matter how much he actually despised his own brother. The chains of command keeping him (somewhat) leashed from spiraling out of control. Only when he donned the crown, king in all but name, did his grandsire probably truly came to regret him. By then it was too late. No one could stop that fire from soon consuming itself. He could have been so much more. Imagine what you could have achieved. ]

I knew then it would come between me and you. [ Aemond slips and sinks back into the water up to his throat. Taunt on his tongue like warm milk.] At least in the end I took you down with me.

[ Certainly robbed of the glory of having his head on a pike. The bitterness is still there, but beggars can't be choosers. Better here in this circus of hells than still alive to go on beheading the rest of his family.]

[ Daemon peels an eye open to look at him across the water, wryly amused, but whatever he was going to say ends up unvoiced; closed again, simply enjoying the water.

I think it was actually Vhagar that took me with her, you couldn't even get out of your saddle, but close enough—

Everyone hates Daemon for good reason, he's fucking insufferable. ]

You didn't think your witch could pull a second dragon off of you?

[ Idle curiosity. No harm in dissecting it, now. His paramour isn't here, and neither are Nettles and Sheepstealer. Daemon and his dragonseed had hunted for Aemond all up and down the blasted continent, and the younger prince refused to meet them. Impressive, honestly, to manage to hide a dragon the size of a fucking castle. Especially one that Caraxes grew up with, and would have had an easier time finding than one a younger creature like Sunfyre, in theory.

In the end, it had worked out. Rhaenyra's decree had made something in him go colder than he could reconcile. Whatever it was had been teetering on an edge since they lost Visenya, with his children scattered to the winds and the young woman keeping him stable banished for her own safety, it had finally fallen. Behind his eyes, he sees the water rush up; he feels the impact. He hadn't been afraid. ]

My lady had no say in it. [ he corrects, one eye pointed across the water. ] I wanted the fight I was owed. Just you and me.

[ Alys couldn't save him. She could sow the murmurings of victory in his ear every morning and divine him strength through her prayers to the gods. She couldn't touch his thirst for glory. For all that she could have offered him if he had asked a different way to earn his victory. Truth of the matter was he was too stubborn for the help. Since the march to Harrenhal, too stubborn and too obsessive to share in anything. No, his victory with Daemon had to be his and his alone. No tricks, no armies, no other dragons. A pure match of strength and fire.

Did he think he could survive Daemon alone? Possibly. Riding atop of a flying mountain is enough to make anyone feel invincible. The question remains is if he too knew that he wouldn't. He had felt true terror watching Daemon stick the landing on the back of Vhagar. If anything, it wasn't the kind of death he might have expected.

Curiosity shifts him, drawing forward to look Daemon more closely. His arms rested at the tops of his knees. Long, pale hair sticking to his back and shoulders like a blanket.]

You knew it was no match without your seed. Why did you want to die?

[ His lady, oh, alright. Daemon makes a sound that's clearly patronizing— it's fine if Aemond wanted some servant matron who spun fortunes in the fire, but she was no lady. He's saving You might as well have been fucking one of Rhaenyra's bastards for when he really wants to annoy him.

A huff of laughter— ]

I knew it was to be a draw, at least. [ And he was correct. Daemon slew Aemond, and Caraxes slew Vhagar. None could have done it alone besides the Blood Wyrm, not Meleys, not Vermithor, no matter that they were bigger and older, none had his grinning monster's sheer viciousness and drive to win, none had someone so brutal-minded giving the commands. ] You forget, I grew up with Vhagar. I knew her, too.

[ Daemon learned to fly alongside his father with her, he traveled with world with Laena with her. There was no one alive with more intel on how to combat the ancient warrior, and he was confident. He was right. Vhagar was dead before she hit the water and Caraxes crawled out, determined to rub his accomplishment in her face, even dying.

Pointless. They all fucking died, Daemon still lost, a draw is not a win. And yet he knew he was the only one capable, and that the encounter would serve all his purposes— stop Aemond, cripple the greens past recovery, end his own life. The real horrifying potential would have been surviving without his dragon; thankfully, he was spared having to do something as pitiful as slit his own throat on the shore. ]

But you're right.

[ Maybe if he'd forced it, defied Rhaenyra and kept Nettles with him, they could have eventually found Aemond and won decisively. Daemon wanted to die. ]

I have felt extinction around my throat my whole life. A good an opportunity as any, and quite the show. My children will go on and the world will be different, with no one trying to make it old again.

[ It's hard for Aemond to imagine growing up in what could have been a less volatile atmosphere. One that might have entertained the idea of what his life might have existed like beyond his duty to protect his family. What good times were there for he to try and restore once this war was over? It was always about trying to make things better.

The circumstances are different, but some feeling there is the same. Aemond's gaze turns down to look at the water. Clearly discomforted as his usual sharpened edges slip and soften. Not having expected what could be an honest answer.

He feels not unlike the same small, stupid boy willing to salve bitter bygones for a taste of kinship. He never got the grasp of it before. It always felt a bit like stabbing himself in the foot every time he might try. Especially towards someone who purportedly has little reason to do anything else but loathe him. It's exhausting to think that Daemon is all he has left of anything. Forced to face duality that sings in his blood every time he looks at him.]

Was the old world really so great? [ He asks after what feels like an yawning silence, gaze landing back on his uncle again. Curious and yet still slightly condescending. Maybe he just doesn't get it. Maybe it's something else nagging at him that he can't bring himself to ask. ]

[ The old world.

Hollow words for something that had been so profound and so wonderful its demise has left a wound on the world that will never heal. The scar of the ruins is bleeding, and will continue to bleed and boil, forever. Valyria, and Valyrians, made the world worth anything at all; the Free Cities are grand and great because they built themselves up from the Freehold, and the only slivers of legitimacy and civilization that Westeros has about it at all are from the Conquest.

Hideous backwater people who believe in nonsense gods and hate all those who are different. The Conqueror should have slain them all. Maegor should have finished the job.

(To what end? Daemon knows they all truly died with Valyria.) ]

You were born, [ he begins, his gaze unfocused at the ceiling, ] to steal my brother's blood and arm usurpers with dragons.

[ Daemon has no bastards. He never gave House Royce any heirs. He understands the value of his blood, the power of his blood. Viserys loathed it— he knows his brother hoped that his children with an outsider wouldn't be able to claim dragons, and that the sorcery of their blood would be diluted enough that they could not threaten Rhaenyra, and furthermore, that he'd have a legacy of something besides dragon-lords. He thought the company afforded him by his Hand's little whore-daughter was a selfless kindness; he was a fool. ]

I was born because my parents were in love.

[ His parents were siblings. So were his grandparents; they, too, were in love.

It's not Aemond's fault that Viserys couldn't care for Alicent, or that Otto pimped his daughter. Daemon understands that. He understands, too, that Aemond has too much Targaryen in him to ever know peace. Viserys has cursed him. He remembers lurking in the great hall at High Tide, and watching Alicent transform from a girl who resented her children to a woman who finally saw a way to use the offspring forced upon her for her own goals. An awful thing. Viserys' son lost an eye and he could barely remember his name; Viserys wanted to shed his scales, but he could only love Rhaenyra, born to him from his cousin-wife, and her Targaryen flesh.

Was the old world really so great.

Daemon could laugh. ]

You'd have just been yourself, in the old world.

[ As spitting an accusation as Daemon gives, he's not wrong. Not entirely. My mother was doing her duty. Strengthening the king's succession. It still wasn't love or desire. And in return, Aemond's upbringing lacked that maternal warmth. Not in the way he watched Rhaenyra with her unfiltered adoration for her dirt-haired bastards. Aemond had to claw out his mother's love by giving her the things he thought she needed. Nevermore did he feel the weight of her love that night at High Tide, nor could he forget how it slipped away once he returned from Storm's End. In the end, it felt like it was only blood and duty.

It's a fool's dream to try and think the world could be any different. That he could have been born to any other sort of life that didn't end in him plunging to his death in a tangle of dragons. As honorable as it was. Whatever he had intended to make of himself before his father died, whatever he had thought to do once the Blacks were all dead and his brother sat the throne, nor whatever fragments of life he had begin to see with Alys and the babe that grew in her belly (Had that babe been made out of love? It felt more like desperation)

Foolish dreams, all of it.]

I guess we'll never truly know.

[ Except they kind of know. They're here. Divorced from everything and still living, if it can be still called living. Severed from their war with no way to return to it. His duty is obsolete here. He has no one to protect against Daemon. Desire is like a phantom limb, twitching without any true purpose. Aemond's not used to purposelessness. He wants to ignore it and put the twitching to an end.

Otherwise, he has just been himself. They both have. With no one else to reign in the fire in their blood. They are free, and so is that chaos threats to consume him knowing it cannot be stopped.]

What now?

[ What will he do? What does he want? ]

[ Duty. A fictional concept used to manipulate. Westerosi nobility are obsessed with it because they have nothing else, having to employ it as a motivation for all they do because otherwise they would have to admit the truth of being selfish, power-hungry peasants dressed up in mummers' costumes. Otto wanted the throne, and so he called it duty to protect the realm when he spent his whole life ruining House Targaryen; Alicent wanted to torment Rhaenyra, and so she called her jealous abuses a duty to uphold decency.

Nothing but craven mongrels in ill-fitting silks. Viserys had been fooled, but Daemon has ever seen the honest face of every single one.

They could have known. Daemon remembers watching them as children, drunk and bleeding and eating snails, and thinking what he'd do to everyone in that chamber if it was his son who lost an eye. Maybe he should have gone back to King's Landing after all— giving himself to Rhaenyra hadn't exactly worked out.

Oh, well. He laughs quietly. ]

Now we see how many turns at death it takes to quiet one or the other.

[ Foolish dreams indeed. ]

Or do you want to go find a nice hut to live in here, minding your own business?

[ What kind of death lies below this one? A nothingness or a new hell? It certainly won't be the dreamy halls of Old Valyria or whatever dusted manuscripts painted of such places in death — lorded over by all the gods they named their dragons after.

Whispers say dragons are in this world too. As the time passed since his arrival, he has felt the vacancy of Vhagar's presence peeling at the hole in his chest. If given the chance would he claim another? Would his uncle?

It would speed up the process re: reaching a mutually assured permadeath. ]

And play a country lord of rocks and ruins, what fun is in that?

[ Well by the night's findings, Some people have found their fun in that. And as nice as it was taking a well-stocked keep for a night, what's the point of keeping it in a place in a perpetual state of anarchy? It sounds like madness to try. Equally as mad sounding as the call to arms that summoned them from the dead for. ]

Becoming the Elden Lord sounds like a bad joke. [ More cursed and bloody to collect a bunch of magical runes than it might be to claim the Iron Throne. But the power it grants, Aemond is at least slightly seduced by that idea of it. As tonight has proven, all this realm's chaos is a little fun. Maybe he can deserve a little fun, he's fucking dead. ]

Though it wouldn't hurt to try. Maybe quiet you in the process.

[ Somehow, he makes that sound simultaneously hostile and suggestive while seemingly innocent of both. ]

[ Daemon has never lusted for power the way people think he has. He's never needed to— he's a Targaryen, he's a prince, he has a dragon. Always a few steps away from the Iron Throne, and a few times, standing solidly with one foot hovering over it. Has he wanted it? From time to time. Sometimes even intensely. But always in concert with the want of something else.

His brother. His niece. Dreams of making Westeros a place worthy of inheriting the legacy of Valyria.

Here he is not a prince, he has no dragon, and being Targaryen means nothing except to him. And Aemond, perhaps, though he's still fairly skeptical. Too much Hightower in him. Raised by bitter little snakes and abandoned so thoroughly he found himself in the arms of a witch. Can Daemon pry him out from that? … Would it be worth it to?

(Better question: Will he be able to keep himself from trying? The pull of their blood has always been too strong, for him.) ]

Are you sure that's why you might want it? [ Somewhat dryly. He recalls the fuss made about Prince Aemond, Regent. Just one more Westerosi desperate for the Iron Throne. Power for power's sake. Tedious. ]

They say that death was shattered, by those runes. Perhaps it's what brought us here.

[ Fragments of great magic, reaching across worlds. ]

I wonder what else they could bring back.

[ Aemond scoffs. Exhausted, exasperated. Wondering if it even matters why he might want something. It doesn't. Daemon's already doomed him to something lesser. As has been his lot in life to anyone worth anything. There should be nothing to prove if there's nothing to gain. Everything's gone, lost, and squandered. His life, as little of it there was, was a joke of what he wanted it to be. What it deserved to be. Everything he'd worked towards.

Is power from want and hunger or is it survival and starvation? As if anything this place offers could make him stop craving something impossible.

A ripple in the water as Aemond lifts himself out of the bath onto the pools edge. Peeling the blanket of water-logged hair over one shoulder to comb his fingers through and wring out.]

You speak the power of literal gods that have made or broken this world in some way or another. Where is that kind of power supposed to end?

[ Again, if it is to be believed. Which in these parts, people seem to remark as something more tangible than the fabled legends of old recanted by one maester or the other. Those runes are one of the most interesting things about this place. Those who hold the shards known to have done equally remarkable things. Possessing even just the right one could play with life and death itself. Is it wild to dare to want despite the rest?]

Think you might resurrect your blood wyrm, is that it?

[ As if he wasn't similarly curious or wanting. ]

Is that all you could imagine.

[ What a bullshitter, this guy. Daemon is absolutely thinking of Caraxes, but he's going to pretend it's about his lost children to look like less of a selfish cunt. It lets him needle Aemond more as he watches him climb out of the bath; Only worth something once you stole my wife's dragon. Thief, impostor, pretender.

Miserable of him. He'd have liked Aemond quite a lot, if the world had been different.

He would like his lost children back, too. And Laena— perhaps her most of all. As the years have gone on he's felt her absence more and more, and the realization of perhaps valuing honesty and patience in a romantic partnership over passionate love has been a strange one. He was never mad with obsession over Laena like he's been from time to time over Rhaenyra, but Laena would have never lied to him like Rhaenyra did. A cold blade.

But what the fuck would he do with any of them, like this? No. Better it's them, draining each other's venom. This is not a hell of the Seven or of the gods of Valyria. But it is condemnation, of some kind. ]

Lightheaded already?

[ Not here. Nothing else deserves to be brought to this place. Nothing else worth bringing back could handle it other than their dragons. What would it serve if either of them had the power to bring back loved ones in a place full of shattered death and madness. Perhaps Aemond just doesn't understand what it would mean to love someone that much. Or (perhaps the more likely version) Daemon is just being a shit.]

No. It was more relaxing when I didn't have the company of a miserable old cunt.

[ It was nice, it was quiet. Far less prickling. Not that being alone with his own thoughts had been granted him much more peace to contend with. A flick of his wrist to dispel cooled droplets across the steamy water's edge. Lightheaded? Piss off.]

Whose fire has gone out long before he could begin to question mine.

[ Being dead is no excuse, apparently. No mercy is granted towards him or what he's lost. He respects it the same. Funny how he spent weeks searching for his uncle only to find it growingly insufferable to be in his company. Had he expected something different? Isn't that the definition of madness?

More foolish dreams. Perhaps he really just does want to get drowned, reset, and pulled into the Erd Tree's embrace. He'll have to try harder.]

[ Por qué no los dos? Except in High Valyrian. Daemon has loved deeply and madly, enough to think that he might enjoy someone's company here and allow himself to be completely unhinged with it, and he is also being an insufferable shit on purpose. A specialty of his.

He laughs, low and lazy. When he was Aemond's age, he'd have reacted violently to a taunt like that. It's a different kind of fire, now. Smoldering like a collapsed mine under the earth, ever-burning, dark and horrid. ]

Is that why you couldn't stop burning fields and villages? [ The older prince sits up, though he doesn't make a move to get out. Only the teeniest bit pruned in places, he's still enjoying the hot water. One hand fans out, making ripples. ] Concerned with the legitimacy of your own fire? Envious it wasn't you seeing visions in it?

[ And then, a sigh— ]

Oh, nevermind. Go on and take what you will of this place, it's had enough of quarreling, ours isn't going to improve the situation.

[ Unfortunately for Aemond, he is still his own age. Only time will tell if the hellfire brewing inside his chest will temper and collapse in on itself in any similar way. Or will it only continue to get in his own way time and time again?

Aemond's jaw clenches as he rises, sweeping the woven towel off the tiled floor from behind his seat that he may make his exit with some dignity. A concerted effort to ignore the deep and constant needling. For all Daemon's efforts in the night, it may as well be a dagger-sized wound.

He steps out, lower legs pinkish and dripping onto the pool's ledge. Sorting the towel between his hands as he ignores the off-kilter line that a better man might throw out to quell a spat.

Aemond's chest rises and tightens, shifting one step to leave. Only to instead turn a split second. A long, thin blade of a stiletto cracks into the grout of the pool's edge beside the arm of Daemon's rippling hand.

Will he get in his own way tonight? Perhaps.]

No? [ Said in the tune of someone who is casually three seconds from losing his shit. What's certain by the look on Aemond's face is that he meant to only just miss. A warning. At least one of them can take the highroad without resorting to the Westerosi equivalent of gaslighting.

Go on, improve the situation then.

Aemond's gaze flickers down to the water and up again, adjusting the towel over his shoulder as he takes his leave. ]

Edited (just a word) 2023-03-22 04:03 (UTC)

[ He watches his nephew, letting himself be distracted by the sight of him bare, even as he's quick about towels. Thinking about it abstractly— young, fit, attractive. Aemond could be all Targaryen for how he looks, and the missing eye even adds to the aesthetic value; his face is a little too sharp, otherwise. Daemon understands. He can't have his hair all the way back or he looks stupid for it.

Furious little viper. Daemon sinks back, and is planning on dunking his hair under to try and work out some of the tangles before it dries again, and then he's reminded about just how dangerous it is to let his attention diffuse.

Aha. No startle, but not because he's too badass for it. Purely because he's grown sluggish with the heat. Woops. But he's fine with appearing to have unflinchable nerves.

Daemon's quiet laugh follows the younger prince. ]

Guess you don't want to fuck, either.

[ Why? Shut up, Daemon.

He does dunk his hair back this time, and if Aemond chucks another knife, it could very well get him in the throat. ]

[There is no other knife, that was the only knife. There would be nothing more sad and pathetic to him to try and retrieve it now. Contended with the temptation to waterboard his uncle to death with the towel. As Daemon's last quip lashes back at him, he stops in half turn to look back and consider both of those options.]

If this is what you find stimulating, I might actually feel slightly sorry for my sister.

[As if it should come as any surprise that constant negging would do little to stir the passions of someone bullied relentlessly his entire life. Far less so than the fleeting idea of taking his hands around Daemon's throat, especially when its presented so openly that way. The tip of Daemon's head keeps him peacefully oblivious to the sway in Aemond's weight as he fights the exasperation of lurching forward and into temptation.]

Think of something better. You know where to find me.

[Biting words. Certainly a tall order from someone who has no leg to stand on. There's no point in denying that he doesn't want a taste of what Daemon is offering. Even if that feeling muddles so easily with the one that would like to crush his skull between his hands.

He will leave Daemon to finish his bath. A rather noisy exit of damp feet slapping against tile and the wrenching of doors. Followed by a startled yelp by one of the lady's serving maids for having unexpectedly run in with a furious storm of a half-naked prince stomping his way back to his guests' quarters. To where he can be later found should Daemon consider taking up the offer.]

[ Tragic, that Aemond may never have a better opportunity to kill him with such little effort. An infinite spawn of daggers would be very helpful at the moment. But Daemon gets away unscathed, running long fingers through his hair and working out any remaining tangles as his nephew storms away, sounding very much like a big duck.

He takes his time extricating himself from the bath, and drying off in blissful solitude. Lurking maids find his company less objectionable, and he retires to his loaned room — not the lord and lady of the castle's, quite content to inhabit whatever's been set up and small enough to solidly bar the door from the inside. This is when, were he another man, he might follow up on that something better. But he doesn't. Because it's more petty, and thus more satisfying, to leave Aemond waiting.

And also because there is in fact something more sad and pathetic than the idea of Aemond scrambling after his knife, and that's the state of Daemon's passions. He would literally rather die being choked in a bath with a soggy towel than let the younger prince know he isn't turned on by negging, to the extent where the slightest hint of discomfort or insecurity makes him unable to perform. No thanks! Absolutely the fuck not!

He stays in his room. Menacing seduction from afar is plenty.

When someone knocks on Aemond's door in the morning, after not enough hours and when the sky is still grey outside, it's not Daemon, but one of the serving girls. She nervously tells him that a visitor has arrived to request an audience, and his companion is already in the dining room with him.

Daemon waits, a new knife tucked into his boot, with a strange man telling him about an even stranger invitation. ]

[As a younger brother, Aemond already has endured years of the — often poor and lazily executed — mind games to know that his night is to pass silently. The time spent wondering and waiting to see his challenge be heeded is far more than Aemond is too proud to ever admit, but less than Daemon might expect it to be. Spite is a powerful force. Pretending it never mattered to begin with is easy.

It's a fucking lie, but that is neither here nor there.

It's still effective, a thorn driving slowly and steadily into his spine. Wandering to the same thought now and again as the rest of his night is spent before the hearth. Had he gotten in his own way? The prince knows it's better that he never finds out. Dwelling further will only beget shame and humiliation. Daemon has surfaced enough of that on his own, he needn't do it to himself.

Morning comes around with him never making it into bed. Fire smothered down to ashes. Emerging from his quarters with his things freshly laundered. Pale hair dry and waved, drawn mostly away from his face. Dark Sister back at his side still a far better trade than the dagger left in Daemon's possession — a (now) relic from Qohor. Reliable, but likely pales in comparison to some of the weapons forged in the Lands Between.

A indifference follows as Aemond descends the hall to where his uncle and this grand-dressed stranger are conversing. Be it deliberate frostiness or just tiredness, he draws a chair at the opposite side of the table to deposit into. The young princes glance is only spared to the fellow in his large hat — who delights in Aemond's decision to join them.]

["— as I was saying as a Tarnished myself, I know what it is like coming to these lands the first time. Which is why I believe joining the Roundtable Hold crucial to your surviving here. —"]

[Oh, is that all? One would think something named the Greater Will would have had a better handle on managing all of their puppets.]

[ Sometimes, in his posture, Aemond reminds him of Viserys when they were young. He was scholarly and well-mannered, and the regal distance with which he held himself - that looked so kingly, eventually - was sharper. Especially when their father was still alive, and Viserys carried that spark of wanting to impress that Baelon's death extinguished. That's how Daemon remembers him. How he continued to see him, even as he grew old far faster than he should have, and began to decay.

He sees it in Aemond as the younger prince joins them.

Makes his decision to scorn him overnight sting just a little (for Daemon has never been in denial of what he really wanted, merely resigned to the impossibility). But only a little. What'd have been worse? Failing to maintain an erection, or accidentally calling him his father's name?

No one, it turns out, should fuck Daemon Targaryen. And yet. He turns a spoon over in his fingers listening to Rogier and his absurd hat, decidedly not thinking about sex, and some of what the man says lines up with the masked man he'd murdered. Some more lines up with rumors he's heard whispers of. ]

The wind tells tales of the Roundtable Hold not really existing, [ he drawls. ] Does it? As a place? Or is it merely metaphorical?

[ When the sorcerer explains that it's a place just slightly out-of-step with the realm of the Lands Between, and further out-of-step with any other reality, Daemon is forced to accept that is sounds like it might as fucking well be true. It's not like he and Aemond are from this place; they did not arrive by being carried from one place to another.

The talking hat continues, ]

I see you have managed to apply some runes here and there. To really take advantage, you'll need to negotiate with a Finger Maiden. The collective at the Hold can point you in the right direction.

[ If Daemon were to ever mistake Aemond for Viserys, Aemond would simply expire. It's a good thing both of them stewed alone in their rooms all night instead. Definitely not thinking about fucking one another to sate the attention they'd both been starved by the same man. What a family, they are.

For all the food that got dragged through the mud the night prior, it is a surprise to find anything was left to put on the table the next morning. It's not as though the lands they've passed through seem particularly viable — acid swamps and corpses for flowers as far as the eye can see. His travels so far largely consisted of meat which he swiftly learned to ask little about where it came. What he would do to have access to the cooks of the Red Keep about now.

As Rogier speaks, the young prince helps himself to the scant helping of platters. Turning a stone fruit around in his hand for blemishes with passing interest.]

The maidens not reside in the Hold itself?

[ Aemond's head tips out of his own way to look beyond the fruit to the sorcerer at the end of the table. Awfully inconvenient sounding. If their purpose is to aid a tarnished, what other place need they be?

It is shortly explained that the path maidens are guided upon is equally complicated. Following the guidance of grace throughout the Land's Between. Which is further explained as their means to even reach the Hold itself — honing in the guidance of grace to transit between realms. Because there is no in-universe explanation for how fast travelling there actually works. At least it is without the need of clicking one's heels and repeating 'there's no place like home']

— It's rather simple reaching there once you get the knack of it. Many young tarnished such as yourselves have no problem seeing the light of grace, but one should not find it impossible to reach the hold if they find themselves without.

[ As far as Aemond recalls, the faint glimmering light that would be grace came and went as vivid as the spots behind his eyelids. Had he seen it or simply was the refraction of the Erd tree's light plying him with some inflated sense of purpose? And what of his uncle?

Aemond does look across the table now to Daemon. Addressing his presence for the first time since storming away like a flat-footed duck the night prior. Wondering if their Greater Will graced him any more than they did him. If he had any interest in pursuing the sorcerer's invitation at all. As usual, it is impossible to divine anything of Daemon. Much to his displeasure. ]

[ An honest tragedy: Daemon absorbs all of this with an opaque expression, privately mourning all the ways he's been ground down by life, because he really can't justify saying what he wants to, which is, Finger Maidens sounds like something I got in trouble for as a boy.

Aemond and Rogier maintain their straight faces. What a world, what a world.

A keep set between realms, mystical women that commune with strange powers, the light of grace. Daemon thinks of priestesses of fire, glass candles, and blood magic. He wonders how much of the world was like the Lands Between, before the time of the Freehold. How much of it is still like this, in the shadowlands.

He takes a breath and sits up from his lean, looking at his nephew before finally moving his gaze back to the sorcerer. ]

I see no reason not to investigate your claim. [ Sure, it could be true. But it could also be bullshit. Hard to tell, here. ] If you speak true, it would be very helpful. And if not—

[ He shrugs. ] Seems like a waste of your own time, really.

[ Apparently they'll come back, more likely than not. ]

As any indication of the night's festivities you've both faced, there are much simpler methods for one to try to collect your runes. It remains an offer in good faith.

[ Aemond hums — agreeably snarky — as he bites into his plum. As with anything here, the flavor is less than desirable. Sad, nearly flavorless, still somehow tart. He sets it down on an empty platter. ]

Demonstrate for us. [ The young prince agreeing with the elder one, in so many words. Not without the regal haughtiness as one might be instructing a fool to dance for a court's pleasure. He does look a bit like one, after all. ] Since you're so inclined.

[ To which the man underneath the great sorcerer's hat cracks a smile out of the corner of his mouth and asks the tarnished party to follow him.

The halls remain silent as they were the night after the slaughter. No indication of who has or has not returned, would seem to imply at least some of the felled guards have resumed their postings. Heads turn silently under the creaking of plate and helm to watch them as they pass.

The end of their journey resides in a meager chapel long abandoned. Dusty pews and a lesser statue of Marika looking over them in glazed judgement. Just the faintest of glow rests in the center of the aisle like a flame without a candle.]

[ Field trip time. Daemon takes the spoon.

And of course it's another fucking sept. What's wrong with these people. (Just wait until he hears the whole history of Marika vanquishing the race of dragonlords that ruled the Lands Between before she was imbued with divinity.) He's plainly unimpressed as he trails behind Rogier and Aemond, taking stock of everything with a critical, skeptical gaze. ]

'Grace', [ he says, his voice dry with disrespect. ] Does your god truly welcome her own replacement? Do traps not exist in this realm?

[ Little things skitter and retreat in the rafters, startled by speech when footsteps had not disturbed them. Rogier is somewhat incredulous about this challenge, explaining that it's the various powers of nature — that include the Greater Will, sure — allowing them to shift around, not Marika.

Her statuettes being all about the place and facilitating things are just a coincidence, Daemon's sure. Mmhm. ]

[ There seems to be no one else in the Lands Between that was once more loved than their god-queen. Yet every vision of her remaining now seems to sit in some sort of ruin. Abandoned by her people as she has abandoned this realm. There is no love for her here nor the other statuettes that sit in this sanctuary of eras bygone. In a way, her likeness reminds Aemond of the Mother — if only in some grasp of familiar comfort. Though it seems to be the extent of it.

He shares not Daemon's disdain would suggest he is more amicable to the ways and means in which the faith of this world is entwined with the living. Perhaps it is because Daemon has not died in this realm or felt what it is like to be awakened again by the light of the Erdtree.

At least, that is what the young prince tries to make of it. Even then, he doubts if even that could change his uncle's mind. For someone who is so difficult to kill, yet somehow continues to walk around as if he is willing to die — it would seem to be the natural way to walk this world. Unfortunately, he's pretty sure Daemon has always been this way. Erdtree or no.

Rogier proceeds with his tutorial, in the face of two incredibly incredulous outsiders. Requesting a hand from them each in order to facilitate the transcending from one realm to the next.

Aemond scoffs, it feels like they're being set up to fall prey to a cheap trap. Maybe the Roundtable Hold existed inside the hearts of the friends they made along the way. Though nevertheless takes a step forward to lay his hand upon the sorcerer's white glove.

As soon as Daemon may do the same, the decrepit little sept crumbling around them is gone in a blink.]

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...this motherfcker

huehuehue

smh at them both tbh

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