Chapter Text
The vision before him collapses like water through cupped-hands, dissipating into nothingness within his grasp.
One-by-one, eyes-of-amethyst appear before him in the mummer’s world; crowns of silver, platinum, and gold hover above, absent of flesh or form.
‘The Prince that was Promised shall bring the Dawn.’ the voice speaks.
But he does not know this. Is it a prophecy? An omen of Doom? He wonders, and the voice laughs.
One-by-one, visions appear.
Three-silver-haired Targaryens upon the cliffs of Dragonstone. Gulls cry above, and three-dragons soar overhead.
As one, the figures turn, their gazes snapping toward him, as though commanded by a hidden puppet-master.
‘It begins here,’ the man speaks, eyes-of-amethyst set-upon him, and upon his brow lays the Conqueror’s red-ruby crown.
Aegon, he knows.
‘It ends there,’ the taller of them woman declares; her features beautiful yet cruel, her finger pointing northward.
Visenya.
‘The House of the Dragon shall fall come three-centuries’ time.’ the other-woman speaks.
Rhaenys.
‘Speak plainly!’ Vaegon shouts.
Aegon and Rhaenys speak in unison whilst Visenya turns away.
‘From my Blood will come the Prince that was Promised, and his shall be the Song of Ice and Fire.’
He pleads for more, for answers, for anything— but the vision dissipates.
Upon the jagged-swords of the Iron Throne lays a brute of silver-hair and muscle.
Maegor, he knows. His mother’s uncle. Maegor the Cruel, the Realm had titled him. None had known of how his demise had come to be.
But as he nears, Vaegon’s brow rises as he takes note of the dull-white of Maegor’s eyes as he spears himself upon the throne; a mindless intention, for no roar erupts from his throat.
A cold-tingling breaks out over his skin as Maegor coughs— his bodies’ innate reaction. Crimson-flecks of blood paint his lips before a river of blood pours outward from his mouth. Suddenly, the dull-white vanishes, replaced by a purple-clarity.
His great-uncle’s eyes widen, and his voice erupts in a dying-shout.
A caw reverberates throughout the throne room and Vaegon turns to, glimpsing the sight of a three-eyed-raven.
And the vision shifts once more.
The air is dank and humid within the bowels of the Red Keep; the skull of Aegarax lit by dim-candelight as a voice echoes.
‘The child must not be born. Lest Maegor’s rot infest the Realm anew,’ the man says, yet the dim-candelight does not suffice in revealing the man’s features.
‘Does the Hightower demand it?’ asks another.
Vaegon’s eyes widen.
‘Yes Grand Maester,’ the messenger replies, and Vaegon stifftens.
Grand Maester Myros, he deduces.
‘Kill the babe within Rhaena’s womb,’ the man commands. ‘We must weaken the House of the Dragon lest they spread their perversions to the Realm. You shall be.. remembered for your service.’
Vaegon collapses to his knees onto the rough, red-dirt as the vision fades, only to be cast into another.
Before him lies six-cribs, each holding a babe of silver-hair within.
No cries emerge from their stilled-lips; nor does a healthy-hue colour their cheeks.
Dead, he knows.
His gaze shifts toward his surroundings, discovering Grand Maester Elysar lurking within the shadowed-corner.
A wet sheen gathers in Vaegon’s eyes as a cold-rage overtakes him.
And he seethes— how long had the Citadel been poisoning their blood?
He turns away in wroth; the vision fades, yielding to another.
A woman’s wild-laugher echoes within his ears.
Three-horses thunder down the cobbled-streets of King’s Landing, a whirlwind of silver-hair and amethyst-eyes.
Viserra— the realisation dawns upon him. Older, nearly a woman grown.
Her widened-amethyst eyes fix upon him, but she heeds not as her frightened-palfrey collides with her companion’s mare.
Her eyes close as she is volleyed from atop her saddle toward a brick-wall, and he vomits acidic-bile as her neck is snapped instantly.
He staggers backward, expecting to fall onto his rear, yet a coldness seeps into his skin as a woman wails nearby.
The cobblestones of King’s Landing blur until he is stood in a stone-chamber, a small, opened-window revealing the vastness of the Mountains of the Vale.
He turns toward the anguished-sounds, revealing his heavily-pregnant younger-sister, Daella— no older than one-and-six.
She screams in pain upon the birthing-bed until a little-girl passes between her legs, and his younger-sisters weakened-voice comes out queer and faint: ‘The Prince that was Promised shall come from my own Blood.’
But she shakes her head in confusion, purple-eyes searching those an older Rodrik Arryn, while her ladies-in-waiting exchange uneasy glasses.
She passes her babe to the Lord of the Vale, deeming her Princess Aemma Arryn.
Day suddenly passes into night and day again; and upon the fourth-day, only then does his simple, frail, little-sister succumb to childbed-fever.
Tears mar his cheeks, eight-siblings dead.
He had been cruellest of all to Daella.
He weeps and mourns, before turning away.
But only then does he notice within the corner— a maester of the Citadel, a small-smile contorting his features.
Unfeeling, Alyssa had once been called as a child. Empty.
But rage burns within him anew at the sight of a wicked, feeble man, sneering at his sister’s murder.
He will not forget this.
‘Release me!’ he roars at nothingness; despair burning off into furious rage.
But the voice weeps for him; such sad, sorrowful tears does it give in mourning.
He finds himself standing upon foreign-cliffs, his fists clenched with white-knuckled intensity.
The sight of Daella— simple, yet sweet— dead at the behest of the Citadel, sickens him.
Yet he must look forward, lest he be lost.
His gaze falls to the form of his elder-brother Aemon, and the steadfast blonde-haired man beside him.
Vaegon hears his eldest-brother name the man: Lord Cameron Tarth.
In the far-off distance, a three-hundred-strong armada burns upon the dark-blue waters; the flag of Sunspear falling beneath the waves as Vhagar releases a torrent of dark-green dragonflame.
He fails to take notice of the man above him until the sharp-click of cocked crossbow, then the bolt is loosed.
He watches as it pierces Aemon’s throat.
He had no tears left to weep, only rage.
Caraxes’ wails overhead, echoing his rider’s agony across the skies as the red-scaled-dragon circles overhead.
Vaegon closes his eyes as Caraxes breathes crimson-coloured dragonflame upon the cliff-face.
The vision fades, Caraxes’ dragonflame licking his skin— a bitter-warmth, he discovers.
He stands before a great, lacquered door within the Red Keep.
The courtiers do not take note of him— for they are ghosts of a future not yet lived— but dread clings to them. He already knows what lies beyond.
His hand rests upon the bronze doorknob, and his mind stirs.
Will this be Saera?
Gael?
Alyssa? He questions.
Which of his sisters will be next?
The door opens beneath his hand, and he is at-once met with the sight of his elder-sister Alyssa, screaming upon the birthing-bed, the sheets saturated with her crimson-lifesblood as she brings forth a male-babe from between her legs.
He resigns himself, a hidden sentinel amongst the treacherous maesters that are absent in their healing, but thorough in their veiled-regicide.
Time-passes and she perishes; her body cloaked beneath a white-cloth.
Baelon weeps beside her, and cradled within his arms is their sickly son, Aegon.
He knows his nephew’s fate is sealed— he sees it in his pallor.
Vaegon’s shoulders heave as the vision gives way to the mummers world.
The green dragonglass candle swirls before him; the voice whispering.
‘Show me!’ he screams, ‘Show me the rest!’
He looks deep within the forbidden green-hues until he sees the future.
His sister Maegelle, skin once porcelain white, becomes a charred, stone grey effigy. She is the first Targaryen Princess to die of greyscale.
Gael, silver-hair floating like a lily-pad within Blackwater Bay, her stomach-raised from pregnancy. She, nor her babe, survive.
The Conqueror’s dragon dies; Balerion rots within the Dragon[it as the magnificence and glory Valyria decays with him.
Princess Aemma Targaryen delivers a healthy-girl, naming her Rhaenyra, her mother's prophecy comes forth from between her lips. A Grand Maester is not present.
Dragons hatch and multiply. the Hightower; the Citadel; the Starry Sept peer to King’s Landing nervously.
Daemon marries an Andal-woman in a nameless sept; a scorned, pinched-look upon Baelon’s features that he carries as he exits at-once, leaving his wife’s plain-brown eyes hardened.
Baelon’s body lies beneath a white-sheet. Dead. Blackfyre rests above.
His nephew, Viserys, ascends the Iron Throne as King. Rhaenys averts her gaze. Lord Corlys too. Their children huddled around their despondent mother. Queen Aemma stands near with her hand upon her visible pregnancy.
Queen Aemma dies in child-bed, a gash upon her belly. A son is borne, named Baelon; yet the child soon drowns in his mother’s lifesblood. The Grand Maester’s furrowed-brows and saddened-smile does not hide the jovial look within his brown-eyes. A Targaryen Queen dead. ‘We need a male heir,’ he says, Viserys weeps.
In time, Viserys weds again., the Septon deeming her Lady Alicent Hightower. The Grand Maester looks onward, a smile contorting his features.
Queen Alicent Hightower births a healthy Prince, naming him Aegon.
A year-passes, a dreamer is born of King Viserys and Queen Alicent’s blood. Helaena’s purple-eyes lock onto Vaegon’s as she enters the world and takes her first-breath.
A chill passes down his spine.
Princes Aemond and Daeron are born in quick succession.
Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen weds a Velaryon.
Princes and and Ladies of House Targaryen are borne.
Rhaenyra’s husband is hidden and sequestered to Essos.
Rhaenyra remarries, choosing her uncle, Prince Daemon, Vaegon's nephew.
Trueborn children are borne; their blood the purest Valyrian in generations.
Two decades have since-passed. Dragons dance; dragons die.
A furious mob of axe-wielding sheep are led by a shepherd. The shepherd and his flock attack the manse of the dragons upon Rhaenys’ hill.
Rhaenyra dies, screaming the prophecy her late-mother had recited upon her birth as she is bathed in golden-dragonflame.
Two decades pass and the last dragon dies— it coils tightly around its clutch of five-eggs, and closes its eyes, knowing it is the end.
A torrent of green flame upon orange-sands. Martell and Targaryen banners burn under its unquenchable flame.
A sun’s son marries a dragon’s daughter. Dorne is seventh.
One-hundred-and-ten-years later.
Nine cloaked mages hail from the East. A palace burns with green-ferocity as a woman wails. A dreamer is borne.
‘The dragon has three heads,’ says a silver-haired man, speaking to no-one in the doorway. His olive-skinned, brown-haired wife gazes at him strangely.
House Targaryen falls.
‘Mercy,’ Vaegon whispers, but the visions come faster, a barrage of images flickering throughout the forefront of his mind.
if you look back you are lost… Vaegon…
rise!
rise! the voice howls— a piercing wail.
Upon the isle of Dragonstone, a silver-haired woman screams upon the birthing bed. Her lips part as she recites her forebearer’s prophecy and her ladies-in-waiting look on in apprehension and fear.
The World trembles as the Promised Prince draws forth her first breath, and magic is borne again into the World.
But In the lands of Always Winter, a piercing-screech echoes as the dead awaken in the cold-snows.
Red-robed women begin to see answers within their flames; they prepare for the Stormborn.
Queen Rhaella dies shortly thereafter, and the last scions of House Targaryen are sequestered away in Essos.
A decade passes and Princess Daenerys marries a long-haired Dothraki Khal with bells in his beard.
A year passes and her babe, her brother and her Khal have died, yet three-dragons have hatched, and the dragonglass candles burn anew.
The Ghiscar kneel to her; Essos fails to withstand the might of the Targaryen Queen; Westeros is next.
Wooden-horses hail from the East across the black-salt sea.
A Targaryen heads northward, her dragons thrice deny her past the Wall but she goes. A dragon dies twice over.
The Wall comes down quickly after, frozen-dragonflame tearing the mythical barrier asunder, the undead-dragon ridden by an undead King.
The Long Night arrives on the wings of Viserion and the Winds of Winter enter the Realm of Men.
Daenerys Stormborn flies Lightbringer to Winterfell and the Night King and his White Walkers return to the earth, as thousands-upon-thousands of wights collapse into a field of bones, salting the earth.
A never-ending Summer covers the World.
But the Stormborn had paid the cost of endless summer with her and her dragon’s life.
Those who would see the extinction of the House of the Dragon have at long-last won.
A hidden three-century-long battle.
Vaegon does not know when the vision had ceased, only that it had.
He is met with the caves breath of dank-humidity.
His eyes-of-lilac are fixed upon the green dragonglass candle.
Watches transfixed as the wick’s flame burns ever-low; casting sickly swirls of amethyst, indigo and deep red, until at last, it gutters and dies.
It is only then that Vaegon feels it again: the pain.
He casts his gaze downward to his split-palm, noticing that the crimson had long-since dried, flaking along the lifeline of his palm.
you have seen… son of dragons… you have remembered.
A sneer twists his lips as ascends the steps of the Citadel in the dark, fleeing the cloying depths to return to King’s Landing at-once.
He shall save his House— this he swears— even if it were his last act.
He will tear down the Citadel; the Starry Sept; the Hightowers; all of it.