Chapter Text
Blood-on-the-Stone started awake with a reflexive hiss; across the sprawling city, in the other fiery mountain that he had been sternly told to never go to, another dragon was screaming its grief. Light-of-the-Dawn, who was egg-mother to Blood-on-the-Stone, regarded that mountain with disdain. Her heart’s blood, who was called Aenar by the other humans, called it ‘Belaerys’ with a wave of dismissal. These things told Blood-on-the-Stone that the distant place was not worthy of consideration for those who dwelt in this part of the smaller mountain, the nests the Aenar called ‘Targaryen’ with a wary pride that was easily baited to raised hackles.
But the grief of the stranger was piercing loud.
Blood-on-the-Stone did not understand it; here in the city was food a-plenty and dragons in abundance, dragons of flame and dragons of blood. This was the place for dragons to be, in the heat of the mountains under the light of a fierce sun. The long dark and cold did not dare come here. What reason could there be for such grief unending, here in the lands of Summer’s kiss? There should be no grief for a dragon, only fire’s warmth until the very end.
On the gleaming roof of a tall topless tower nearby to Blood-on-the-Stone’s nest, another dragon uncoiled and roared in harmonic agony. Blood-on-the-Stone had never been to a topless tower, as Light-of-the-Dawn had, but it looked a splendid roost to slumber upon. The moonlight painted the nearer stranger with silver upon horn and crest, but the deep violet of their scales dripped black shadow in the night. Blood-on-the-Stone coiled into a tighter ball with a shiver that had naught to do with the air, which was warm even at the edge of the mountain. He closed his eyes and resolved to let the heat within lull him back to sleep.
Yet even as he did so, there was a scrabbling on the stone. He turned his head without opening his eyes, letting the soft sounds make their way to him. There were human noises too; the soft sounds they made when their eyes rained saltwater. He huffed and lifted his head to look as a small figure stumbled past the entrance to his nest, towards the overlook that opened out onto the city below. Small and silver-haired, the figure smelt faintly familiar. Blood-on-the-Stone lurched to his feet in unexpected alarm, for the human was stumbling heedless and blind, and the overlook was steep. It gave a despondent wail, an echo of the distant grieving dragons, before flinging herself heedlessly towards the cliff edge.
Fool creature! It did not have wings! Blood-on-the-Stone surged forwards with a snarl of denial and snagged the pale human’s cloth covering with his teeth, before he had even noticed his own movement. He was the smallest dragon in the nest called ‘Targaryen’, but there was strength enough in his neck to heft the human back onto the cliff. He coiled about it as it trembled, putting the black of his body between his captive and the open air.
“The black sky! The flame! They burn, they all burn, I cannot-”
It was the girl child, the one who was the Aenar’s own hatchling. Blood-on-the-Stone nudged her with his nose, a sudden need settling in his gut. She gave a weak laugh and held his snout with her small hands; they were wet with blood, the metallic taste sharp on the air. He whined reflexively, soft and apologetic, he who had never apologised to any being.
“You are as black as the death-filled sky.”
Blood-on-the-Stone turned his head to look at the night’s sky and saw no death there. The girl laughed again, stronger this time, and the sound was as the crack of a whip that calls obedience, a sweet phantom ache in the three-chambered heart that beat beneath his scales. He turned to her again, burning eyes finding her salt-filled ones wide, and horror-struck. She seemed at last to notice that she was bleeding, and rubbed her hands on his scales.
“There must always be blood; blood for fire, fire for blood,” she said, her voice grave and solemn. Blood-on-the-Stone hissed his agreement, contentment filling his throat like flame. The blood of her body was the blood of his own, his heart’s blood come to him at last. “Dearest dark one, we are all going to die.” Her whisper made him alert again, tail lashing as he sought the threat. All things must die, but he did not mean to let this girl die, this human that was his.
“Not now,” she reassured him with a sanguine caress, “not tomorrow, but on some distant dawn that sky will be choked with black, and the flames will eat the mountains and the city and the people and the dragons.” She swallowed convulsively. “I do not know what to do.” Blood-on-the-Stone stared at her, astonished, then bared his onyx teeth. “It is not a fire that can be fought, dearest.” His girl seemed to shake herself, summoning wisdom from some unseen place. “I must tell my father. I must tell Gaemon. I must make them understand what I have dreamed. I must make them see.”
She turned to walk away, and Blood-on-the-Stone whined for the loss of her. She span back and embraced his face with the whole of her self.
“Daenys. My name is Daenys, best-beloved.” Blood-on-the-Stone rumbled his joy. Daenys. His heart’s blood. Daenys. “And you, you have no name do you? At least not one in this tongue.” She worried her lip with her white teeth, and Blood-on-the-Stone nudged her with a stern huff. She had bled enough!
“I shall name you, if I may? Father says first to claim is blessed to name,” she smiled at the dragon’s answering huff of agreement. She gazed deep into his embered-eyes and it seemed to him that she saw into all three chambers of his heart. “I will name you for the god of the dead. We must remember them, dearest. We must remember those that we cannot-” her voice choked off again and she screwed up her face and her courage.
“Balerion. You are my Balerion, and you must remember.”
Balerion. He did not dislike it. Balerion, his Daenys said, and he must remember. He inhaled deeply as she stumbled back into the heart of the mountain, to fill his being with her scent.
She smelled of doom.
**************
It was two days after when his Daenys returned to him, more teary and despairing in the light of day than she had been at night.
“They will not listen! Not even father, who listens to any passing hermit’s gabble, nor Gaemon who always bends his ear to me like wind-flattened wheat. They treat me as a child with only childish delusions, though there are already signs that something grim is growing in the heart of our city. The Asshai’i have withdrawn into a conclave, pyromancers and shadowbinders all; I have heard rumours of some faceless creature stalking among the slaves in the mines and the dragons themselves are disquieted throughout the city.” Yes; wretchedly had the stranger of Belaerys screamed, ravaged by some trouble.
Balerion was not troubled. Balerion had a name and a purpose and a heart that beat outside of his body. He pressed himself to Daenys to comfort her, resolving that he would fly out to her father’s very tower and make him listen with fang and flame if need be! Daenys was surely the wisest of all beings, and if she said that the flames would devour this place, flames that Balerion could not fight, then plainly they must leave. There were other places in the world where all the dragons might live, surely? Or else he would fling his Daenys upon his back and they would simply go together, flying wherever his wings could-
Oh! He threw back his head with a triumphant warble, extending his wing to her and flattening himself as he had seen the others do. She stared at him through her tears, before rubbing her face determinedly and climbing up onto his wing-joint. She paused briefly, hesitant and asking about a ‘saddle’, but Balerion was impatient; he tipped her onto his back and crawled towards the overlook. She squealed and flattened herself to him, clinging tightly to spine and frill. He gave a triumphant roar, high and fierce, before launching himself out of the overlook and into the open air.
He kept his wings half-closed, diving swiftly but not deeply, before opening them out and soaring up, high above the city that was all his Daenys had ever known. His tail skimmed the topless tower where her father often sat, and still Balerion rose higher and higher. The city became a smear of colours below as he began to turn long, lazy circles above; at all times he - and so his Daenys also - could see the world beyond the circling, smoking mountains. Grasslands and rolling hills, dim and distant cities and the wide salt-sea, as strewn with islands as a nest with eggs. All is yours, he sang to her joyously, heart-to-heart. All is ours.
The dear girl upon his back was no longer clinging so tightly to him, but was caressing his spinal plates and scales with fearless hands. And she was laughing! He roared again, pleased that she understood and keen for every dragon in the city, flame-breathing and otherwise, to know that he was Balerion-who-must-Remember, heart’s blood to Daenys-who-Dreamed. They were as one and must fly and hunt together, Balerion mused; there must be some way for him to aid her in her efforts in convincing her parent. Mayhaps he could speak with his own. Light-of-the-Dawn, old and terrible, would have at least heard that clamour of that other cursed and blessed night. Mayhaps she, and the Belaerys stranger, and others, had even dreamed of some terrible thing.
Either way, she must see and she must speak. She must. Against his hatchling alone, the Aenar might shut his ears. But against wise Daenys and the Aenar’s own heart’s blood, his Light-of-the-Dawn, he would be helpless to deny the calamity that rode towards them on wings of devouring flame.
Balerion and Daenys flew until the air began to chill, at which point Balerion descended in a slow spiral towards their caves. Daenys grasped a spine suddenly, and he followed her gaze. Yes. He adjusted his descent until he was able to land on that tall, topless tower that the Targaryens called home. He flattened himself to the ground like a serpent, so that Daenys could step down gracefully and meet her father’s astonished gaze with dignity.
“Daenys!” His gasp to her was pure joy.
“Father.” Her answering word was dragon-blessed steel.
**************
When Balerion first sighted the scrap of smoking stone amidst the unending salt-sea, he was relieved. The flight had been long and tiring, and he was ever-conscious of the light-as-cloud weight of his heart’s blood upon his back. His wings were not as broad as Light-of-the-Dawn, who carried the Aenar, nor those of Shadow-of-Stars who carried his Daenys’ mate; at every buffet of breeze and splash of seawater he feared that she would be swept from his back, in spite of the construction of chain and hide that bound her to him. He had not wished to wear such a thing, had desired for her to cling to him flesh-to-scale as in their first flight, but Light-of-the-Dawn had reprimanded him and Daenys had gentled him. Helpless to the will of mother and beloved both, he had acquiesced and now was very glad he had. His Daenys was small even in the reckoning of her own kind, and had already shown a lack of respect for high places. For her, he would bare the shackle.
They had all slept deeply almost immediately upon landing, dragons of flame and of blood all entwined in the shadow of the fortress that Daenys called ‘Dragonstone’. It was as night-black as his own scales, and reared up in familiar topless contortions that felt enough like home to the travelers that it sped them to bone-weary rest. When Balerion woke however, first among his scaled kin, he huffed discontentedly. It was wet. And grey. And the smoke of the mountain was acrid and bitter. There was a chill in the air that was most unlike home. He shifted and shook himself, peering for his Daenys and whining at finding her gone, with the others of her kin.
His complaints disturbed Shadow-of-Stars from slumber and she butted her silver head against Balerion’s flank in annoyance. He span and nipped at her thick neck, made foolish-brave by his discontent, but their mutual showing of teeth was averted by their egg-mother’s snarl. Light-of-the-Dawn reared up over them in command, before blinking and turning her head north. Balerion followed her gaze, seeing nothing through the smoke and mist.
A shiver ran over Light-of-the-Dawn’s brassy scales, and her dull red wings rippled, as though her whole being was wavering. She then gave a startling roar of challenge to some unseen contender beyond their salt-sprayed rock, before turning and stalking slowly to the smoking mountain behind them with a whistle of command to follow, to ignore the…
Balerion sat up on his haunches, considering. They had fled from a flame that his Daenys said would eat their home.
What, then, were Ice-Eaters?
**************
Balerion had melted and pushed and scraped at the rock of the smoking mountain for seasons, and still he felt that his new hollow was not satisfactory. When he and Daenys flew together, he found himself turning inexorably to follow the stars that led to their once-home, to the cradle of warmth he had known; his Daenys pressed her hands to his scaled neck in consolation, and each time it startled him out of his homeward reverie. There still came to the island ships that had come from their Valyria, as she called it; Daenys’ brothers and sister muttered amongst themselves each time this happened, and cast baleful glares at his heart’s blood. Balerion had striven three times against Shadow-of-Stars in fury for her grumbling about his beloved. Three times he had failed.
He raised his head from his inadequate nest with a cry of welcome to Daenys, who ran to him and embraced his whole snout, as ever. She kissed between his eyes as she did when she sought to distract him, so Balerion lifted his head sharply once more to see her mate wandering down the rock-strewn half-path towards the mountain. He growled menacingly, and was met with a laugh from Daenys; refocusing his gaze to her, he realised he had lifted his clinging girl from the ground and that she dangled from his snout. He lowered her to the earth with a warble of apology, and she leaned against him with helpless laughter. The sound warmed him as it ever had, but his joy was marred by a deeper laugh that harmonised with hers.
Daenys turned to meet Gaemon’s embrace. Balerion hissed in annoyance. Gaemon was loud and tall and believed himself very splendid; he was Daenys’ mate, had given her three wriggling hatchlings that made Balerion feel unfathomably large, but the man did not show teeth to his nest-mates when they glared and muttered about Daenys and her dreaming. Balerion would show them more than merely teeth, and Gaemon too, for their lack of trust.
“I thought to go flying, my love. Would you and fierce Balerion care to join us?” the man smiled at Balerion, as though he were not a faithless usurper of her attentions. The dragon snapped his jaws in warning and the man laughed. “He seems eager to meet the skies! A splendid young fellow.” Infuriating! Balerion lashed his tail in frustration, and Daenys gave Gaemon a stern look.
“Stop teasing, husband,” she warned him, and Balerion’s heart warmed at her defence of him. No dragon had ever been bonded to so splendid a being! “You know my Balerion can out-pace your Geliasyndor and father’s Ozaelithas both, in spite of his youth; I would not be so bold as to challenge him, were I you.” The man chuckled, doubtless to hide his wounded pride. Balerion nosed Daenys gently, putting his head between the two and firmly ignoring the way they smiled at each other over the jut of his horns.
“You named him for the god of death, I would not be so bold as to tease him,” he murmured.
“I named him for the god of the dead,” she corrected, tapping her mate’s nose with a admonishing finger.
“Is there a difference?” His voice was soft and reverent, gentled to her wisdom.
“Balerion does not bring death to men, he gathers the fallen and keeps them close. He rules them as a lord and protects them as a dragon, so that they are never forgotten.” Balerion hummed contentedly. It was a good name, that called him to memory’s keeping.
All of a sudden, he felt ice grasp at his heart, and the clouds ahead seemed to swallow the very sun in the sky, so dark did the world seem to his eyes. His whole body shuddered at the force of the howl that was ripped forcefully from his throat, which was as a whisper in comparison to the screech of Shadow-of-Stars and the thundering bellow loosed by Light-of-the-Dawn. Indeed, all of the dragons roared as one, bodies bent by unseen hands to face the distant east. Gaemon surged towards his bonded, hand on the dragon-blessed steel he wore. Daenys gave a shuddering gasp of realisation, and tears began to stream down her face; her mate moved back to her, to take her shaking form in his arms.
Balerion was grateful, for he could not move his head from its strained reach towards and beyond the sea anymore than he could stopper the scream of his voice. For endless seasons they stood united in paralyzed, shrieking grief. Then all at once, as a snuffed lantern, the dragons fell limp to the ground. Daenys cried out and laid herself against his neck, stroking his dark scales ceaselessly. He was dimly aware of Gaemon moving towards the silver heap that Shadow-of-Stars had become, and more distantly of a human clamour at the fortress. He felt very cold.
Gradually, all other sensation faded as he coiled tightly around his heart’s blood. He bent his eyes and his mind and his all to her hands, warm on the ice of his scales, the only warmth that remained in the world.
All that was left was to remember.
**************
He laid broken upon the dark rock like a fallen tower, eyes unblinking and unmoving, as fixed to the heap of wood as the stars were fixed in the sky. The humans were milling and murmuring beyond him, he supposed for some reason or other, but he could not bring himself to care. Daenys’ hatchlings were among them; Aegon who was the bonded of Deeper-than-Water and Elaena who had climbed upon Light-of-the-Dawn when the Aenar was gone. Gaemon was gone as well, and Maelyx who was the youngest of their three hatchlings, dead to a bite of steel. Shadow-of-Stars had lost one and then the other, and mourned both with bitter anger.
Balerion cared not; caring was a power as lost to him as flame and flight, as lost as their Valyria was.
Silver her hair was still, paler than it had been in youth but still as beautiful as the waxing moon. Paler still was her flesh, robbed of warmth and pink-cheeked laughter. She lay unmoving upon the bier of white wood, she who had ever run to him even in her hoar, she who had soared upon his wings over land and sea. The violet of her eyes was forever veiled, and lost to him and to all of their shared kin was the wisdom that had saved them.
Nevermore would she dream of doom.
“Balerion.” The voice belonged to some human or other, compelling him to move. He could not.
“Balerion, please.” It was a good name, he mused, one that gave him purpose and duty; to remember the dead, to love them, to gather them to him.
He stirred, bound as he was to best-beloved’s naming. His jaws parted and the humans beyond the pyre stumbled back. Black flame met pale wood and kindled swiftly; it met pale flesh and burned more brightly still. No slow cooking would be hers, but a rush of fire that led the flesh to swiftly chase after the soul that had fled it.
Balerion lowered his head to the pyre and inhaled deeply. The scent of doom lingered upon the ash and smoke he took within himself, as he gathered the dead to the very chambers of his heart. There would his Daenys ever stay. She he would ever remember.
He flung back his head and howled, as wolves howl to mourn the moon. As wolves, the remains of Valyria joined him, dragons of flame and dragons of blood all roaring as one. There he stayed until twilight became full night, and the swift-burning pyre collapsed to embers. There he stayed until the sun chased away the moon once more, and dawn rose on the first day of solitude he had known in so many blessed seasons.
“Balerion.” A child walked before his gaze, a silver-haired hatchling of Elaena’s. Aerys, yet unbonded. The boy extended a gentle hand. “It’s going to be alright, Balerion. It will be alright. You rest now.” The hand was cold upon Balerion’s scales.
He reared up with a scream, and the boy’s mother ran to protect her spawn. She needn’t have stirred, for Balerion would never raise fang or flame against any that had their uttermost beginning in his heart’s blood.
He sprang to the sky, alone.
**************
Long had been the seasons since his Daenys’ death; deep and dark was solitude’s shadow in the nest that had become adequate only because home was no more. Balerion did not seek a bonded to ease the ache, for none would ever be adequate even though she was no more. Some had tried - Aerys twice - but he had warned them all away, and all had bowed to his grief and left him to mourn.
Until one morning of a dull and dusky autumn when Baelon, who was the second hatchling of Aerys, walked steadily towards him. His elder brother had been Shadow-of-Stars’ last bonded before her quiet end, and his sister had ridden Deeper-than-Water to the nearby isle of the dragonless, blessing them with breath’s heat in battle. Balerion understood that they hunted ships of Other Men there, so that the ships of the dragonless might pass unmolested. This he had learned against his will, for Deeper-than-Water had become a chatterer in their dotage.
Baelon halted before the entrance to Balerion’s nest; he was neither nervous nor hesitant, but reeked of a strange desperation. The dragon watched, unblinking, waiting for the lad to say something. They always said something.
“Balerion. I would claim you as my dragon.” The voice was loud, but strained. Balerion’s nostrils flared; he would belongto none but the dead, as they belonged to him. “My brother is weakening, and now he has no dragon. The blood of Valyria must not waver!” It would not; embers take a long time to burn out, and embers were what remained. He bared his teeth at the boy whose younger sister upheld the blood no less than he, and flew with a dragon already besides.
“I am a second son, and the House will not fall to me, unless my brother should have no children. I MUST have a dragon, Balerion.” The boy withdrew from his belt a long-handled whip. Balerion growled in warning, as the boy unraveled it. Doom had bound him once before, to a dreaming girl with bleeding hands. Ambition would surely never yoke him, for it was a floundering purpose to one whose duty was remembrance.
The boy, fool boy, cracked the whip. Balerion reared up with a snarl, spreading his wings’ shadow over this creeling creature that had already forgotten to what he owed his inflated sense of splendor. No Gaemon he.
“Serve, Balerion! You will serve!”
Flame poured from Balerion’s throat over rock and sand. The boy screeched and dove away, though the fire did not pass near him. This was an art that the dragon had practiced long, and his eye was honed sharp; the licking flame caught the boy’s fallen whip and turned it to ash. He closed his jaws and lowered his head to the boy, snarling and unblinking still.
The fool turned and fled with a scream. Balerion followed in unhurried chase, on thundering foot, all the way back to the fortress of black stone. Terror welled up from every throat as though a Doom were upon them, as Balerion clambered over the wall, knocking men and statuary alike aside in his lazy pursuit. The boy dove into the keep with a cry for his dead mother and dead father. The dragon forced his head through the red doors with a final snap at the boy’s heel, horn and scale scraping wood and stone. He ignored the squeak of another silver-headed hatchling as he wrenched himself free and turned back towards the heart of the mountain.
Balerion curled up in his nest with a sigh. How swiftly they were already forgetting. How easily they lost sight of the dreaming grace that gave them breath and the long-ago bared heart that gave them shared blood. How wise was she, who gave him duty’s name, to trust above all in the memory of a dragon.