Disclaimer: I do not own anything in Game Of Thrones either the books or the TV series. I give full props to George R. R. Martin and the show runners for coming up with the material that has mainly been my inspiration for many of the changes I am making. While I am doing many new things that I think haven't been done in the cannon world I do not claim to have come up with any of this originally on my own. I was inspired heavily from reading the first half of the first book in A Song Of Ice And Fire and watching many trailers and listening to many fan theories about the books and TV series.
Author's Note: Welcome one and all to my very first Game Of Thrones fanfiction. I have literally no idea how it turned out so your help is deeply appreciated. If any fans of Game Of Thrones end up reading this and would like to give me some pointers or tell me what's glaringly wrong with my story than please do so. I do not claim to have a deep grasp of the Game Of Thrones world and with this story I'm technically going in blind. So please give me feedback on if this is a good start or if it isn't give me some advice on how I could possibly make it better; also any help on glaring or not so glaring grammar issues you find irksome let me know. Thanks for listening to me ramble and enjoy the first chapter!
The white dragon egg just sat there. In the middle of a dense field of grass about knee length of an average height person – the egg sat on a boulder top the size of a trebuchet weight. Currently the sun shown hot and bright casting heat wave after heat wave upon the rock somehow the egg was untouched by the sunlight. It was cloaked in shadow, and the only way a man could see the color was if he was an inch away from the egg itself. But since the heat radiating from the rock was so extreme, that would be almost impossible. Unless that person had clothing or gear that could withstand extreme heat. There was a man, trying to see the egg from a long distance off however. All he saw was a fairly large black object sitting on a fairly large flat rock in the middle of a very large field of very tall grass. Instead of focusing on the egg for that's what the object was according to the man's current knowledge, even though from this distance any other man would have only seen a great blob of black swirling atop a rock in the middle of a grassy field, the man standing there focused on the grass. Due to the heat any other man would have avoided the spot. Most people in the middle of the heat-baked area of Westeros had superstitions about the heat waves creating sometimes-deadly heat mirages. The man staring at the rock knew somehow in his mind that despite the fact that the heat was beating down relentlessly the area in front of him was not a normal mirage.
A woman stood behind him, watching the man for any signs of fatigue. The woman was black, a slave imported in from the slave continent. Her main purpose currently was to keep the man safe from the mirages and because she was a bit stupid she had been a bit more inclined to believe the superstitions. The people who had hired her had given her very specific instructions to keep the man alive. She wanted to keep him far, far away from the mirages in the first place but the man had been too insistent. He really wanted to find something and the woman was too afraid of the consequences of failing her masters. The man wasn't her master no but he wasn't necessarily as low as her in the social order of things. Hours passed and day turned to night but still the heat waves beat down. The slave woman knew it was night time, in her bones she knew but still it was light out and still the heat beat down upon the egg, the rock, and the very long grass.
"What are you watching? Can' you see it's just on' of 'em mirages?" The slave woman, who hated her name almost as much as she feared her past, asked the man standing only 10 feet in front of her. The man was covered from head to foot in heavy black fabric tied to his boots and stretching into gloves that covered his hands as well as a hood that stretched over his head. The man turned to her and his lips and chin poked out of his hood the lips turned up in a grin and the woman was surprised to see no hair on his lips. This rang alarms in her head her masters had said specifically that there was a description of him in an ancient text in the man's pocket. Luckily enough the slave woman, currently labeled Kara by her masters, earlier last week had dug into the man's travel bag while they had camped for a night. Either the man was a fake or he had somehow disguised himself. When Kara passed her hand in front of her face she saw her naturally almost purplish black skin. But when she extended her hand all the way out towards the man her hand turned a different color.
"I'm watching the thing on the rock can't you see it too?" The voice of the man spoke and it sounded exactly as the ancient tomb had described.
"I don't, I can't look past your back. I've been given very specific instructions not to look away from your back, and I can't disobey those orders," Kara replied her voice solid and unafraid even though she knew she was currently standing in the direct influence of a mirage. "My masters warned me about this. They said …"
Suddenly the shadow on the rock moved and the man took a step forward his voice caught as he shouted hoarsely in surprise. The mirage was fluctuating and as soon as the woman stepped forward to touch the man's back the man shot forward plunging his feet deep into the grass the tips of the green blades rising to his knees. Halfway to the rock the man stopped and his head twisted back to look at the woman he growled in frustration and said, "Come here a moment, after you go get my travel bag and out of it extract the heat gear."
"Heat gear?" Kara asked stupidly.
"Yes!" The man roared. "Just do it!" Without another word the man turned back to stare at the shadow on the rock and what he believed to be an egg. He stood in the long grass walking on a small stone ridge. What the slave woman couldn't see and what she didn't know as that the grass surrounding the rock wasn't normal grass; the man knew for a fact that an insane alchemist named Ardemetrium had grown the grass for a specific purpose. The man drew the hood back from his head and the flap of fabric fell to rest against his back when his head was exposed the woman saw scars crisscrossing the shaved skin covering his skull. The patterns were random irregular and very much still livid like they had been done in the last few weeks.
"I have the bag sir, but I don't … my god! What happened to your head? Sir?" Kara asked in sudden desperation. She knew something wasn't right but her addled brain couldn't keep up with the fast paced events. It wasn't her fault she was so dumb it actually had to do with something that had happened when she was born. Rapped from the age of 1 to 10 years old she had been released beaten senseless and trained into an obedient slave; it's that since she had been so defiant after being ripped from her birth place that the slave masters had to have been too rough with her in order to get her to cooperate.
"It's the mirage, the heat is changing us. Either that or that black shadow on the rock is effecting the heat. You know the stories, the superstitions about the mirages being dangerous?" The man asked.
"Yes," Kara responded. "It's very strange isn't it? I always remembered the stories as bein' much darker tales than this. Usually they happened at night, but this… Sir we've been standing here for hours and you've only moved very recently. It should be night time … but…"
"Why is it not dark?" The man said, he pointed above them. "Look up and I guarantee your eyes will reject what you see." Kara's eyes traveled upwards and she saw somewhat of what she was expecting. Stars were out and the sky was black as a raven's feathers. But it seemed that there was a light emanating from somewhere in their immediate vicinity. The man flipped the black hood snugly back around his head but not before the slave woman saw the man's true features … it was then that she knew the man was the real deal. She hadn't disobeyed her masters and she had accomplished her mission.
"Sir, I bid you turn around," Kara said menacingly. She had enacted the next part of her plan, the one suggested on the sly by one of her more cunning masters. It would end in blood pouring into the roots of the surrounding grass. "You cannot go any further, on command of my masters. I wouldn't trifle with them sir they are very powerful and you will be very sorry if you disobey them. So now step away from the rock and come towards me."
The man chuckled and turned around when his face was visible to Kara she blinked. The eyes staring at her menacingly from beneath and in the depths of the swirling blackness of his clothing made Kara feel true crippling fear. Had it not been for the comforting weight of the large Valerian steel hunting sword strapped to her back Kara would have sunk to her knees right when the man had used his powerful hateful eyes on her. But as it was when the man looked Kara straight in the eyes he saw something to be afraid of, something that wasn't at all planned for and therefore it had a rare advantage over him. It wasn't often that anyone had the jump on the man for he was skilled in a great many arts, of both perception and fighting. But this time when Kara drew the sword out from the hidden sheath strapped to her back the man was staring at something he never expected in his unnaturally long life; death. True death and he knew that before he got his hands on the egg sitting in the middle of the large stone his blood would be feeding Ardemetrium's plants at his feet. In truth the grass was much longer and its stems extended deep within the earth much farther than anyone not learned of Ardemetrium's powers would ever suspect. It just so happened that the man did know of the powers of the legendary and mythical alchemist, but sadly the man also knew of Ardemetrium's tragic decent into the inescapable clutches of insanity born of not too much power but of too much knowledge of the world around them. It didn't take long for the man to accept his fate but that didn't mean he wasn't going to go down without a fight. Perhaps he could out best this expertly trained slave and steal the white dragon egg from its nest; but then again fate had a way of working against those who were determined enough to change the course of history. Often enough they ended up dead or worse forever trapped in some sort of otherworldly state of torture.
"Come then," The man said his voice growing darker and as it did so the air around them changed and grew darker than either of the people's minds could go. It became night around the white dragon egg and when the darkness came, the inky blackness surrounding the white dragon egg departed and Kara's eyes widened when she saw it. The man's next words blurred into a shout of surprise as Kara flashed forward; she brought her sword down in a vicious strike to try and catch the man off guard and crush him completely while his defenses were down. What Kara hadn't counted on was the man parrying her blow. Kara's deadly blade flashed to the side instead and cleaved several feet off the top of some blades of grass. When this happened the man moaned in pain and the weapon he had used to parry Kara's blade fell to the thin stone bridge clattering off and falling into the grass below. The man began begging for a quick end; Kara's steel obliged. The blade flashed down and for a moment before it cut into the man's neck severing his head and his right arm from his body the light emanating from the white dragon egg reflected off the perfectly crafted blade of Kara's Valerian steel sword. The keen blade sliced into the man's neck and parted the flesh bone muscle and tissue with a great whisper tearing noise. It filled the air with a wet shusch sound.
The man's body fell to the side and after dropping 100 feet thudded on the ground to lie amongst the ends of the Togavurs, blades of grass that could grow to very great heights given the right root environment. Kara now stood where the man had once stood; she regretted not forcing the ancient tomb off him before forcing his soul from his body with a deadly swipe from her sword. When she did move forward however her soul felt much lighter than before a definite weight had been lifted from her shoulders because she had fulfilled her master's mission. The correct old man had been killed in such a way that would never allow resurrection and now Kara must leave. But staring at the white dragon egg she somehow couldn't bring herself to do so. What if the egg was to hatch soon and no one was around to nurture and care for the dragon? Or at least provide the hungry creature with its first meal? Kara had learned enough from rumors circulating about how Drogon grew so rapidly from his small size. Daenerys Targaryen, according to rumor circulating among the slaves, had fed Drogon from birth. So what if the white dragon egg hatched and no one was around to feed it? Kara was caught in a dilemma should she take the white dragon egg and raise it or should she smash it here and now with her sword to make sure that another dragon never comes to wreak havoc on Westeros? What Kara should have done was walk away then and let the dragon to hatch inside the heat mirage which had immediately come back after the man had died. By the light of the Neverending Mirage Kara saw plain as day that the black substance had returned to surround the egg. What was it? Kara asked herself this question and curiosity reared its dangerous head to sink itself deep within her consciousness. If what she had assumed was true that the Neverending Mirage would eventually hatch the white dragon egg then why hadn't it done so already? It must have something to do with the blackness surrounding the egg Kara decided firmly in her own head. What else could it have been? A shifting sound of grass came from below and slowly the blades of Togavurs twisted around each other and shoved upwards as if they had been trying to get something from below upwards. Kara watched in amazement as the ancient book flew up from below and came back down to land a mere 5 feet from the white dragon egg. The blackness surrounding the egg faltered momentarily and a blast sent the ancient book skittering across the rock towards the edge so it would fall back down to the ground below.
Kara's hand shot out and caught the book before it fell her entire right arm was sheathed in a steal and leather armor piece. It was the heat protection gear that protected Kara's arm flesh from being burned when it had come in contact with the large flat stone. The slave woman jerked into a standing position and backed up very carefully but somewhat quickly from the stone itself. She cursed herself for not already knowing how to get past the heat seemingly emanating from the stone. The first word she read on the second page of the ancient book was, Ardemetrium. It was strange and when Kara tried to say it the strange phrase tasted very different parting her lips than she expected. It was a name she realized and when she looked down at the pages beyond the single word or name scribbled in the middle of the old page she discovered the truth behind the Neverending Mirage. The Mirage itself wasn't its namesake, it was not a mirage but in fact a very cleverly designed defense system for the white dragon egg. The more Kara read from the ancient book the more she realized that the Togavurs, the thin stone bridge, and the trebuchet sized stone were all part of an elaborate defense system created by Ardemetrium to defend the white dragon egg form ever being taken away. But as Kara read the Mirage had a definite flaw to it; the heat it used over time would have been enough to hatch the dragon from the confines of its almost impenetrable shell. Apparently Ardemetrium had solved this by taking some sort of substance and slathering it all over the white dragon egg. Once he had placed the egg in the middle of the stone and quickly darted across the thin stone bridge to the edge of the Mirage the mechanisms in place had been activated. The substance slathered on the white dragon egg had instantly cooled it so the extreme heat wouldn't affect it at all. Kara even in her addled mental state could clearly tell by just reading of the discovery that the black substance itself was a miracle and a marvel never before achieved by any alchemist ever.
In her excitement Kara forgot to check behind her to see if anyone was watching because despite the Mirage's power to distort what people perceived as real and fake they would still see a slave holding what was definitely not hers. Even if they weren't slavers it was common knowledge what slaves did with very valuable information, they became very dangerous people who could disappear in the blink of an eye thanks to their social status. What if a slave had acquired a very valuable and ancient tomb of knowledge but disappeared with it due to fear that she would be punished? This was the common fear that slaves would steal all the knowledge and make off to destroy it or exploit it to kill off their masters. Kara had this thought run through her mind only once, it died down and withered to almost nothing once she read that the only remaining power held within the ancient book was how to get the white dragon egg out of the Mirage. The book didn't tell Kara if she would survive if she attempted this feat for it was very complicated and required utmost concentration. But then again on both sides of the last page were scrawled signs and sigils clearly spelling out an alternative way to stop the Neverending Mirage. Perhaps someone else, perhaps an alchemist would be willing to help Kara in translating the words into meaning.