A/N: The prologue is purposefully vague, I'm sorry. Builds much more as the chapters progress.
Thank you to my Beta BennyRelic!
I am still working on a posting schedule, so they may be quicker in the beginning as I have a few chapters compiled already. Anyways, enjoy, comment away and give me critiques, I aim to be better.
AU Post Robert's Rebellion: As her world ends a god fans the winds of change giving her children another chance, unwittingly setting into motion events that forever alter the lives of familiar characters. Former Queen Rhaella Targaryen survives childbirth with more than she expected and flees to Braavos with her children and a bit more help. Benjen Stark, fed up with Jon's treatment spirits him from Winterfell hoping to do more for his nephew leaving a changed Eddard to simmer in guilt, regret, and anger. The Targaryens and Starks, having lost too much, seek to rebuild, while the rest of the kingdoms fall into routine...Though something dark is stirring in the far North, an ancient and terrible power. The stories foretold of black wings in the cold, that when brothers wage war come unfurled. The World Eater stirs and the cold responds. (87% ASOIAF, 10% Skyrim, 3% Game of Thrones)
In short: One summer day, Jon is taken from Winterfell but grows up knowing where he came from. Daenerys knows the love of a mother and at least one sibling.
Table of Contents:
Act 1: Chapters 1 - 20 (for now, chapters may be added)
The Flames of Arrax: Prologue: At the end of one begins another.
His eyes opened slowly, confusion and disorientation compounding as he stared into nothing, trying to contrive where he was...
By all the Aedra, Daedric Princes, Divines, and all the Gods known and unknown he had no idea where here actually was. Understanding was paramount in his life: understanding of who he and his family were, where they came from, and above all where they were going. Their people were born with an innate pride in what they were, the Altmer or Highborn, those closest to the father race and truest descendants of the Aldmer. They maintained their perpetual purity and magical affinity primarily through highly selective traditions surrounding marriage and reproduction. Eugenics was a necessity for perfection which all Altmer invariably strived for. Understanding of home, knowledge of the Summerset Isles, Tamriel, or Nirn as a whole did not prepare him for this.
For their end.
For their death.
Time seemed little more than an illusion as he viewed eternity waving and waning with the slightest of ambivalence. Pain, hunger, joy, anger, none of it seemed to exist as if he was nothing but a wandering conscience, barely able to perceive his own presence. All his senses were dead, his mind numb and heavy, his eyes clouded by something; Is this truly what death was? Endless pity, a void for your soul and prison for your mind? If he could weep or even laugh he would, but he was robbed of what it meant to exist. Light was fractured, coming to him in bright bursts just long enough to see that he was nowhere he knew. In the distance, he could see a figure, or rather figures. They were hazy but their slow and jilted movements, even from where he stood, spoke to their confusion. How he knew they were in fact a they he wasn't sure , but familiarity oozed from them, something that screamed he knew them. A bond forged through fire, rivalry, and endless trials. Brother, sister? Though the question never left his mouth he was sure it was them, the two he had once called kin.
He slowly realized he could move, but just, and was now very aware of the discomfort that came from being robbed of motion. He felt heavy, weighted, almost like the armor he had worn in life was little more than stone shaped around him as he tried in vain to move but nothing came of it. It was no matter, he concluded. A solemn admission when he faced the reality of all his choices. Nothing loomed around him, a deep oppressive nothing with faint twinkling stars, or maybe fireflies he thought. If he could shrug he would have. He could make out a faint horizon, a tiny flicker of something quivering and moving in the distance. He was stilled by a sudden fear, a hopeless longing as he turned his head from side to side, looking for the figures he had thought were his siblings.
"Mayhaps, a new chance?" A voice said, softly. He recognized it. They all recognized it.
That voice he thought, faint with a lingering hint of suspicion, almost like it knew he was up to something but knew it was nothing untoward. Was it wrong for him to hope, to try to find some comfort in familiarity amongst all of this bizarre? "Mother?" He questioned aloud, the faintest flicker of a smile drawing at the corner of his lips. He could almost smile. Almost.
"My children" the voice replied.
He couldn't see anything, as he looked around, suddenly aware that he was naked and standing. Exposed. As if they all realized it at the same time, the instinctual need to cover themselves forced them to move, to hide…The weights had vanished, leaving them alone in a shallow shimmering pool of water that skimmed at the heels of their feet. Their distance apart wasn't as great as he had thought. He could feel it, yet couldn't. It was a strange thing, as if the veil of life did not exist in this abstract plane. His body was light as a feather now, a faint construct of someone's imagination as he was willed to be where he was, he rose a nervous hand to his face, but was able to see through it. The trio approached each other, forming a triangle of incorporeal bodies, staring into something and nothing, transfixed as if looking into a mirror that bared their very essence.
Looking around he asked, "Where are we?"
"The place between places." Mother replied, her voice still soft and gentle. She said no more, but he could almost feel a smile behind that voice, though her form still eluded them all. Her voice spoke from the depth of the nothing.
He drew in a deep breath through his nose and released it through his mouth. His eyes found nothing as he looked around, his form turning in circles as he groped blindly in the darkness around him. They were gone. There was a note of panic behind his actions as he walked a few steps forward, the water making almost no noise below his feet before he turned and walked the way he came from, or what he thought was the way.
He felt his heart beat faster, the breaths escaping him in soft shallow bursts as he fumbled for nothing in particular. He had been lost before, he hated it. Sheer will power and determination saw him through the most harrowing of times. He needed those memories, the calmness of a sense of purpose and drive. Nothing came to his mind as he realized where there should have been memories there were was only the faintest wisps of something just out of reach, though as he strained to grasp them they vanished in full. Only a blank and sudden realization that something drastic was going to happen. The panic came in full. His heart was hammering against his chest before he stopped suddenly, his frantic searching pausing. Where is that voice, he thought before reaching up to touch his chest, in particular, to place a stilling hand over where his heart would be.
But when he touched his bare chest, he felt warmth, an odd warmth, a soft slowly flowing warmth. Removing his hand from his chest he looked down, over his palm. A soft sheen of something black caught the light before he looked down to realize the gaping hole where his heart had been.
The panic returned as he looked around wildly.
"Calm my boy." The voice returned.
Anger slipped through the panic as for the briefest of moments he questioned the possibility of calmness when he realized he had no heart…then he paused.
"How am I still breathing?" He questioned.
"Matters not. What matters is that you tried." She replied.
He looked up, his own golden gaze searching the sky as he realized he could see something there now. A faint figure materializing from nothing, though staying rimmed by a nefarious wreath of shadow. She never got closer than fifteen feet away, but there she was, clothed in ambiguity, her solemn figure hidden by a dark robe, shimmering just as much as the endless sky, the same faint lights beaded on the robe; its hood completely covering her face. Her figure was obvious, hidden by the same robe, but he could tell, beneath the shadow and blackness, she was happy.
"I failed." He said softly. "I failed everyone, especially my brother and sister." He finished, his eyes downcast as he questioned it, the memory's that weren't there, who he was, what he was.
"No, I failed you. I failed you all." She said softly. "I should have given you more, we all should have. We didn't give you what you needed to succeed." She said, gently pushing aside his woe. "That was my task, to prepare the three of you." She paused and he could almost see her head tilt.
He thought on those words, but they didn't dissuade that lingering feeling of apprehension.
"Here at the end of all things, the end of all we knew, I can only offer you another chance." She said, not giving him time to reply. He could feel the smile under the hood of the cloak, a soft somber smile, placating in a way though pure enough to foil the emptiness he felt lingering just out of sight.
He had no time to think as he felt himself pulled away, an ethereal hook wrapped around his midsection pulled him far and fast, though her voice stayed near as if she were right beside him.
"We may be gone my children, but you yet live. You tried, you tried to give our world a hope for something it didn't deserve but we will give you something you deserve." Her voice was solemn, as her hood fell from around her head. Her face was beautiful, gently angled with parted lips, a smile showing her pristine teeth as her face moved further away. Her own golden eyes locked onto his as he flew towards one of the little pricks of light.
"Live, you three." Auri-El said, her voice so faint he could barely hear it. "Fill that emptiness in your hearts with more than pain. Live for each other. Live for yourselves. Live to stand and fight another day. Live so that through you, even as this world crumbles and dies, we may have hope. Oh my children, live!" As all was enveloped in black red and white light.