Chapter Text
When Tyrion Lannister was a young boy, he planted himself in his mother’s solar before Mother and Jaime. His eyes were shining. His heart was fervent. He declared with all the passion and certainty of his youth, “I, Tyrion Lannister of Lannisport, shall one day conquer the Cursebreaker’s Folly!”
Mother and Jaime dutifully clapped for him, in concert with each other, but he could see that neither believed he could actually accomplish this. Because they loved him, they did not say so or try to dissuade him. But he knew that there was doubt in their eyes.
No matter.
One day, they’d celebrate his victory!
Years in the future, he would make his name as the cursebreaker who finally broke the curse upon Valyria. History would remember his name forever for it. Brightroar would be returned to his cousins as the ancestral sword of the Lannisters at long last. He would be the greatest dwarf ever born in multiple worlds! Him! Tyrion Lannister, the greatest of all!
Did it matter that for decades, nearing a century now, other far-more-experienced cursebreakers had tried their hands at exactly this already? Did it matter that many had attempted and been made utter fools for even trying? Did it matter that the number of failures was so large that Valyria had acquired the nickname Cursebreaker’s Folly because of it?
Not at all!
None of those cursebreakers had been Tyrion. They clearly lacked his capability. They clearly lacked even half a brain as him. Beside, their haplessness was his gain. All they managed to accomplish with their continuing failure was giving him enough time to devise the real solution. He knew that he would succeed where they had failed.
One day, he would.
Did it matter that unlike his mother or the twins and instead too much like his father, Tyrion lacked a single drop of magic in him? Absolutely not! Brilliance was all he needed to succeed in this grand undertaking… and perhaps Jaime had promised him help with the necessary spellwork elements that would be cast once he knew what they were. But never mind all of that! That was simply a side component of this. The most important – the firmest underlying element that would make all of this work, the most essential of all – was his excellent brain!
He truly needed nothing more than that for had Jaime not agreed in the first place, Tyrion could have simply hired another, a completely random nobody really, for this – thus proving how uncritical in terms of credit for the curse’s ultimate undoing his brother actually was. Not that Tyrion was ungrateful for the aid. Jaime was the perfect elder brother that any dwarf could ask for.
Simply, this was his victory, not Jaime’s. No matter how some unnecessary-to-even-name except-he-could-not-help-himself people might say otherwise. More than one actually–
No, Tyrion stomped all of that down as not important. The scoffing was immaterial, the derision unnecessary to think about, the pity absurd, and the mockery not worth considering, and none of that was anything he should pay any of the slightest attention to.
Because they were wrong.
Some tools and tests for cursebreaking didn’t need a magical person to initiate them. Not a single wand was necessary. Jamie who was currently up in Casterly Rock with the rest of their closest kin therefore wouldn’t be needed at the moment. With his servant Elinor downstairs and busy with cleaning the kitchen, Tyrion had his upstairs workshop to himself.
And his machines.
Tyrion was resting, waiting for his current test to finish running. Once done, he’d observe his results and record them upon a computer. Once correctly imputed, he could begin the data analysis on his latest idea. But it was taking time.
He glanced out of the window and looked up to the high hill less than a mile away where Casterly Rock rested, overlooking the harbor and all of bustling Lannisport. At the very top of the castle, he spotted the distinct folded wings of a wintery dragon and snorted. There was the ever amusing named Snowdrop, the dragon of Mother’s royal friend. The two of them were meant to fly to a wedding of another mutual friend of theirs – one upon dragonback and the other upon an Abraxan – yet clearly had yet to leave.
If they were not gone by nightfall, they’d be terribly late. Well, they still had time.
Tyrion sipped on a glass of Arbor Red and leaned backwards when his tools started to make alarming sounds — screechings that they definitely were not supposed to be making! Tyrion jumped from his seat but it was too late.
His magically enhanced tools exploded and he ducked immediately down. His wine glass clattered to the ground beside him. He heard the sound of shattering glass as a dangerously sharp shard of one broken tool hit a mirror on a far wall.
That could have been his head.
Then he heard coughing that definitely didn’t sound like it was coming from Elinor. Besides, he would have heard the door open first or her pop in magically instead. The sound of house elf magic was unmistakable.
Still carefully pressed against the floor, he looked up. There was too much smoke where his work table should be. Tyrion silently mourned its loss. He had so many happy memories attached to it from previous successes! Then the smoke began to dissipate— And what?
There was a twin of himself — like he was one of the twins — standing where the table had been.
Not-him was dressed like he was about to attend court and wanted to remind people that he was just as much a Lannister of Casterly Rock – not a Lannister of Lannisport, as Father corrected him on, though he lived there – as everyone else, even if the likelihood that he would be lord himself was slim to none, not with his second cousin Tybolt inheriting last year with his grandmother’s recent passing. The previous ruling lady of the Westerlands, Great-Aunt Cerelle, had outlived her son by a decade but her husband Great-Uncle Tywald by only a year. Tybolt, on the other hand, was in perfectly good health and would be marrying Lord Lefford’s eldest daughter next year with every expectation of children to follow.
Hence the low likelihood of the lordship ever falling into Tyrion’s hands unless something happened to kill a ridiculously large number of people ahead of him in the succession, starting with cousin Tybolt and ending with Father and Jaime. Since the chances were just that low, he rarely gave it much thought.
But this other Tyrion Lannister was dressed in a style that resembled what Father might wear like he needed to shout to everyone and remind them whose youngest and second son he was. The colors and sigil of their House were in every stitch like he needed everyone to know that he was a golden lion in red like all the rest and let no one forget it. Ever.
Other Tyrion stared down at him as he stared back up. On his face was a look of complete confusion which matched what Tyrion himself felt at the moment. How had the chaotic explosion of his latest test created a copy of himself?