Blood sacrifice
Author note: If some of the scenes in this chapter comes off as somewhat odd, I blame it fully on the whole struggle of "seeing a scene in the mind VS actually getting it written down in words" which I faced when writing the chapter. / Rogercat
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Rohan, early January of year 3019 of the Third Age:
The news of Suleiman successfully becoming the new Sultan of Rûm, was welcoming news for Elia and her in-laws. That meant Sauron had one less follower in the War, and a new ally for the Free People of Middle-earth. Of course, Suleiman could not come to their aid at once, he needed to stabilize his powerbase first and be watchful for the possible chance that Khamûl could show up after sensing the magic from the imperial palace in Rûm.
"Suleiman sends his apologies that it must take some time before his secret fleet will set sail towards Gondor, but many men are needed to be called up to be soldiers," Oberyn explained when he showed up personally in Edoras to tell how things was going in Dorne and in the East of Middle-earth.
"Please tell him to not rush ahead," Théodred requested as he listened on the words of his younger brother-in-law, "if Sauron finds a way to cut him off from helping Gondor and Rohan in the war, we will have a much harder time to fight for the freedom of Middle-earth."
While their younger relatives held this discussion inside Meduseld, so was Morwen, Théoden and Laywyn busy with a far more pleasant task, training the youngest members of the family.
"Uuuuugh, so hard!" Aégnor complained when he got to test his great-grandmother's old hunting bow from her youth and naturally failed to even draw back the string much. Even Rhaenys and Aegon, who was taller and stronger than the twins thanks to being in their adolescence, found it tricky to use the bow.
"Fengel's betrothal gift to me is not that old that it will break in the hands of a child, young ones."
With all the ease of using the bow for most of her life, Morwen drew back an arrow and sent it flying into the practice target. Naturally, Laywyn also used this as an excuse to show her own archery skills that had been refined over the many years she had spent as a leader of the Rangers of Ithilien despite her gender and hailing from the royal family of Rohan.
"I hope that you will not need to use the bow in the war, Mother. I know that you desire to help even in your current age, but I would rather want you to be safe indoors with Elia and the other women."
Realizing that he only said this out of worry for her, Morwen smiled gently at her only son. After all, she was well into an age among both the Rohirrim and Gonorians where one could expect her to become more fraile for natural reasons.
"Do not worry, my sweet son, your sister will do most of the work by acting as the captain of the shield maidens. I only aim to help to the best of my ability with some defense on a safe distance."
Noticing that Andréth's hair braid had started to become loose because they had been training for a good hour and more, Morwen started to fix the hair on her great-granddaughter out of habit with her own four daughters, of which only Laywyn now remained.
"Rhae, what is wrong? Are you sensing something that we should be aware of?" Aegon wondered, seeing how the oldest of the four siblings was staring into the distance.
"Dragonstone...somehow I have a feeling that we need to keep an eye on that island, just in case…" she responded, but not really sure on how to explain it well. Only that she had a bad feeling about danger, and that instinct had proved itself true more than once over the past years even before the War against Mordor had started last summer.
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February 16th, the same day as the Fellowship of the Ring sans Gandalf who they believed to have died in Khazad-dûm, left the Elven kingdom of Lothlórien:
In the Temple of Shadows, Visenya had been searching through the library of old scrolls. Now she had found one on blood magic which originated in the East when Sauron began to gather the Nazgûl under his control, of how one could use even long-dread relatives to strengthen a curse or blessing.
"Hmm...I would be rather pleased to see how uncle Eddard would manage my Master, after all…"
Crafting the signature three-headed dragon of House Targaryen in sand on the stone floor, she double-checked the instructions to get it all right. It was especially important that she mentioned the precise blood relatives for the spell to work. Then, picking her fingers so blood began to drop down on the sand image, she spoke the spell:
Though the flow of time
Ties of blood connecting
One generation to another!
My paternal ancestors
House Targaryen!
Hear my commands
to strengthen this spell!
Fifteen Targaryen Kings
hailing from Aegon the First,
ending with Aerys the Second,
my own paternal grandfather!
I sacrifice this blood in my veins
from you, for the use of Sauron
The Lord of Mordor!
And then something happened. Just like when Khamûl had used her Targaryen blood to find Tywin Lannister thanks to that House Baratheon shared blood ties to House Targaryen, the powerful magic gathered in the Temple of Shadows over four thousand years, now reacted on that she had blood connections to a different world.
"Great Farao!" Visenya called out to her Master through the magic, "I willingly offer this gateway to yourself and the Lord of Mordor for your choice of use! Let the Lion Lord fear your power to destroy him!"
By mentioning Tywin Lannister, she got the attention of Khamûl.
Far away in Mordor, Sauron actually took away his focus from the search of the One Ring when he heard what the girlish voice said, and even seemed to smile, if he would have had a body in that moment.
"You have found a very interesting mortal little pet to use...Khamûl."
The former Farao did not respond, as the nine Rings of Power acted up on the wish of Sauron.
And then a blinding pillar of light was sent up in the sky from the Temple of Shadows, with Visenya acting as the support through her blood.
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Dragonstone island, the Blackwater Bay:
The smallfolk living on the island were used to the volcano being active, if only by pale grey steam rising from its hot vents and smoke rising from its peak. The Targaryen castle, bearing the same name as the island, had been abandoned since Stannis Baratheon and his wife Selyse had left after becoming the Lord and Lady of Storm's End over seven years earlier, while there was no signs of that Crown Prince Lyonel Baratheon may come anytime soon to make the old castle his own home.
"I understand the order to not let the castle become uninhabitable, but what is the use of a castle with no Master or Mistress in change here?"
This was one of the annual days when some families from the villages around the island had to clean and air the castle, and not everyone was that cheerful over this duty.
"The Crown Prince turns 13 this year, surely it will not be long before he may wed and come here with his chosen bride...eh?"
Suddenly, the ground began to tremble. But it was far stronger than the usual ones happening normally. A true earthquake was about to happen.
"An eruption is about to happen!" someone cried out in terror at looking out through a window and seeing the rising pillar of smoke and thunder clouds with lightning bolts near the peak of the volcano.
"We must get down to the fishing boats and ships, we can only be safe out at the sea from the lava!"
But what none of the peasants knew, was that the ashes of the long-dead Targaryens, many who had been buried below the castle after their bodies being cremated, happened to be the triggers of the eruption thanks to the magic spell spoken by Visenya and the blood from her father Rhaegar Targaryen.
"Run! Run!"
The maester of Dragonstone, who was one of the very few people on the island able of reading and writing, hasty wrote down a short summary of what was going on for King Robert on a parchment, added some sand on the ink to dry quicker and then tied the message to the raven before releasing the bird. It would be impossible for the capital to send help in time, but at least the royal court would get information of what happened now.
"Seven who are One, please save our souls if we are doomed to die! If this is a sign of Your wrath for the sins of humankind, then we shall make penance…."
Most of the commoners ignored and ran past the septon who thought that basic prayers to the Seven would be enough to stop the danger, instead focusing on getting down to the shore where fishing boats and ships would quickly be filled with refugees.
As the volcano violently erupted, spewing up a high-altitude column from which ash and pumice began to fall, Sauron took a temporary form of lava to watch the new surroundings.
"Lovely, lovely, a new world to fall under my control! Khamûl, your little mortal consort has found a very nice gift...hm?"
But there was something he could sense. A power that could possibly try to resist him. A power of freezing cold, able to bring winter.
"I would rather keep this world for myself, thank you."
Using the lava and fire, Sauron now revealed why he had been chosen as Morgoth's most-trusted lieutenant, being the greatest of his servants in the Wars of long-gone Beleriand in Middle-earth, and sent out flaming paths in the air on targets that he felt to be troublesome in the long run.
But in Rohan where she had just been doing some talk with her brother and Griff, Rhaenys sensed what was about to happen. The part of her who once had been Mara, took over the body at once and she screamed while releasing her own magic to protect Dorne though the current descendants of her own by House Martell:
"DESCENDANTS OF PRINCESS RHAELLE! AWAKEN THE BLOOD OF ELENDI INSIDE YOURSELVES!"
At her side with his own foresight acting up, Aegon saw in horror how the ruins of Harrendal was the first castle to be consumed by the flames Sauron had sent, and how the Eyrie was another target.
"Lady Lysa and her children are there right now instead at the Gates of the Moon! They will be killed!" Griff realized in horror as Aegon indirectly shared the vision with his second-cousin when he touched the former Targaryen prince's shoulder. Despite the danger that could happen, the son of Lemore chose to open a portal to the Eyrie.
At Storm's End, Shirren, Rhea, Mya and Eric heard the warning of their past-life sister in their minds, as did Brienne of Tarth and the royal Baratheon children apart from Myrcella and Tommen, inside the Red Keep, for the simple reason that the third princess and second prince was sired by their own maternal uncle Jaime instead of Robert and thus did not have blood ties to House Baratheon at all.
"OURS IS THE FURY!"
With their own past lives as some of the princesses and princes of Kemet, the magic was awakening inside the Baratheon-blooded children. Joining their powers together in the two castles, two separate massive whirlwinds where the winds even forced up the sea water below to add in strength to block out the incoming firestorms from Dragonstone, was set free around Storm's End and King Landing to act as a barrier.
At the Eyrie:
Lysa had refused all audiences today, and just wanted her little family to be left alone for themselves, not even letting any servants sans Rhoyne follow them out in the gardens. And it was not just for some private time with the kids, this morning she had felt those butterfly-light flutters in her stomach that she had learned to read as the ultimate proof of being pregnant again.
"We must find a good excuse to leave the Vale before any of the washing women notices that I have not been bleeding at all during my stay here! They will see it on the bed sheets and since I can not tell that I have remarried in secret, people will start to wonder if I am having a love affair with someone in Dorne!" she whispered to Rhoyne, happy over that Tirwald had blessed her womb again little over four months ago but also fearing what could happen if someone else realized that she was pregnant.
"Mother, I want to go home to Rohan already! It is boring here!" Amanda complained, while Eorl was running around to get rid of some energy. Where she was seated on a stone bench, Celia made a frown over what she read in a letter from her cousin Sansa Stark, as Ned Stark was in the capital with his heir and two daughters to have them "form friendships with their own social group and not have an isolated upbringing" as Robert had said some months ago.
"Just how blind are she to the difference between character and appearance after being raised on romantic songs and tales about handsome knights? Of all the southern young Lords and minor nobility that she may be wed to, Sansa complains that her chosen betrothed is Samwell Tarly, and not Loras Tyrell or some else who is a future knight!"
Lysa was about to agree with her firstborn child that Sansa indeed was a little naive about that all good-natured men had to be handsome, but quickly cast a glance over her shoulder when a portal showed up in the other end of the garden, Griff falling though to land on his hands and knees.
"Griff?! Did something happen…"
"Talk later, get through the portal NOW! Sauron has somehow gotten control of the volcano on Dragonstone and is sending out firepaths on various places in Westeros! One of them is aiming right at the Eyrie at this very moment!"
Hearing about this incoming danger, the two women grabbed hold of Eorl together and dashed towards the portal with the girls right behind, Celia not even bothering to take her beloved doll Ela from the ground where she dropped the doll, as a result of realizing that it would not be worth death for a childhood toy. Grabbing the confused Eorl, Griff looked around to make sure that there were no sudden witnesses that could tell of this, before jumping after his grandmother Rhoyne and closing the portal together with Aegon. It ended up being in the last moment, as the Eyrie then exploded by the force from the power of Sauron as it hit the impregnable castle of House Arryn. Whatever unlucky servant that did not die directly in the explosion, fell to their death as the Eyrie was several thousand feet above ground.
Only a single one of the famous sky cells avoided to collapse in the explosion as the castle above, the very lowest-placed one, and there, in a remaining corner, would the half-burnt doll Ela later be found, as the the ultimate proof that Lysa Arryn née Tully, her two daughters Celia and Amanda Arryn, and the four-year-old "Ronnel" Arryn was among the victims who died when the Eyrie was destroyed.
But the firebeam that had destroyed the Eyrie continued north, with a specific goal in mind. When coming to the famous Wall, the fire simply melted a massive hole in the ice like a blowtorch thanks to that Sauron was not a being of this world, many of the black brothers on guard duty witnessing it even on a good distance from Castle Black and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, the easternmost castle of the Night's Watch by the Bay of Seals.
The Lands of Always Winter experienced a massive melting wave as the snow and ice melted very quickly from the extremely unexpected heat as Sauron was a Maia of fire, and it kept focusing on an underground cave deep into the frozen tundra. Whatever the number of White Walkers that remained from the previous eighth thousand years ago, they all found themselves literally burned out of existence by Sauron as the cave became the the equivalent of the fire inside a forge with the temperature of the lava on Dragonstone or Mount Doom in Mordor.
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Oldtown was another target, and while Hightower, the seat of the noble family with the same name, very narrowly avoided being hit by incoming fire, the Citadel with the order of the maesters was less lucky.
"The Library is on fire!"
"Save as many books and documents as any of you possibly can!"
But no matter how much the order of the maesters, their novices and the people of Oldtown worked together to limit the spreading fire, getting water in buckets from the city wells and even the sea as a desperation, and saving as many books and documents they could get their hands on, it was impossible to stop the massive fire.
By the time that the sun settled, it was all too clear that three-fourths of the Library had been consumed in fire and that the Citadel had lost a massive amount of their gathered knowledge over many generations to the flames.
But for Tywin Lannister, who in that moment was on a ship sailing towards the capital with Genna and Kevan alongside their families, witnessing Casterly Rock and the whole mountain below explore out of existence could not be described in words.
"The Rock!"
"Our ancestral castle...!"
Tywin was too stunned by shock and disbelief to even say something at first, as he stared in horror at the scene as the ship sailed farther and further away. Somehow, everything of Casterly Rock turning into fine sand and dust vanishing for the winds or falling into the sea seemed to imply what could very well happen to him now, if the King found a reason to strip him off everything that Tywin had worked his whole life for.
"Enjoy your fall from grace, Lion Lord. I will hunt you down, and let you witness the end of your whole family name," a mocking whisper said like a hissing in his ear, and Tywin spun around to face whoever it was, but there was no one standing behind him.
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In the Temple, Visenya had collapsed on the floor from the massive strain of magic. But all over her body, was now marks like the Eye of Sauron, to make her a living key to keep the portal between Dragonstone and Mordor open so the Dark Lord soon could send the Nazgûl to Westeros on their flying fey-beasts in order to spread terror among the people there.
In the Old Palace:
Nearly all of the Martell family members collapsed when the barrier around Dorne finally eased, as a sign that the fire beams from Dragonstone no longer threatened them.
"Ow, ow…proves just how powerful Princess Mara of Kemet must have been with all the magical powers of her murdered siblings heöping her to open the first portal between the two worlds..." Doran muttered under his breath, a shocked Mellario helping him back up in his wheelchair since he had fallen out of it.
"Doran! Oberyn! Come and look in the water mirrors, a lot of important places have gone up in smoke!" Ellaria called from where she had been near one of the garden pools with Dorea and Loreza clinging to their mother and crying in terror over what just had happened, and from where her long-time lover stood up on trembling legs on the balcony, the garden pools showed which places that no longer existed.
"Storm's End with Stannis' branch of House Baratheon and two of Robert's love children?! The Red Keep with the royal children and the capital with some other of the unknown royal offspring!?" Oberyn asked in alarm as he tried to dash down the nearest sandstone stair to the garden, having a feeling that the younger generation of House Barahtheon would be very important since so many of them were the current reincarnations of Mara's siblings from Kemet.
"All of them are alive, but it seems like the sudden use of magical power against such a powerful danger did put a huge strain on them, padre!" Sarella confirmed from another end of the gardens, where the heavily pregnant Arianne had been with her.
"Hard to blame them for fainting afterwards. It is not like they would really be trained in magic, with their current lives…" Obara said in a faint voice, as the pool at her feet showed how a horrified Robert found most of his royal offspring lying unconscious on the floor in one of the great halls, and how Stannis in his role as Hand of the King tried to command some form of order in the chaos of King's Landing following after that the sudden storm outside the capital vanished as quickly as it had arrived.
In Rohan, the royal family as well Tirwald was horrified to hear how close his wife, son and step daughters had come to death.
"You four are NOT going anywhere outside the borders of Rohan again until Celia is an legal adult by law, at least!"
Given that he said so as a result of his very understandable fear for them and what nearly had happened, Lysa forgave his stern words, even if she would have liked her Rohirric husband to let them all go from his bear hug.
"Sit down," Elia ordered in a gentle manner, signaling to some housemaids to bring some blankets and tankards of something to drink. Without doubt, Lysa and her children would soon go into shock when the reality of how near they had been to death came crashing down in their minds.
"Thank you," Rhoyne spoke to one of the maids when she got her share of the drinks, Griff sitting beside her to check on his maternal grandmother.
"The Eyrie, all gone…"
Then, Lysa seemed to realize another thing that first surfaced now.
"By the Seven and all that is Holy! Everyone will think that we died!"
Sadly, there was nothing Elia could promise to help in that situation. Just as her brothers had seen in the water mirrors, anyone who had not died in the explosion would fall to their death. None at the Gates of the Moon would even be able to fully identify all the bodies, because of the impact when a falling body would finally land on the ground.
"Gods...uncle Brynden, Catelyn and Edmure….!"
It was with great sorrow as she cried, but Lysa had to realize the new reality of her life from now on. Never more would she meet her uncle and siblings face to face again or be able to show herself outside the Martell court with a disguise, because everyone would ask impossible questions of how she and her children had survived. It would bring House Martell greatly unwanted trouble with thr rest of Westeros in the middle of the war against Sauron, and she did not want to repay them in such a manner, not after helping her so much over the years.
"I am terribly sorry, Lysa. None of this can be solved in a manner that will not be without problems further on…"
It was all Elia could offer in this situation, honest sympathy because it reminded of her own worst fears during the first months in Rohan after being saved by Théodred, that she would never meet her family again.
"Madre….I am worried about how Sauron was able to take control of the volcano on Dragonstone…" Aegon admitted, clearly shaken to the core over how easy some of the most powerful castles of Westeros had fallen to the unbelievable power of the fallen Maia.
"Especially as Viserys and Daenerys are still in Essos, and can not have been used as the way to open a portal because their Martell blood is ruined by the two generations of sibling marriages and whatever really happened at Summerhall!" Rhaenys added in after a quick look in a water mirror to confirm where the last two children of Aerys II and Rhaella were at that moment, "besides, House Targaryen lost the remains of their magic with the loss of their dragons during the reign of Aegon III!"
It was a mystery, indeed, but not one which they could deal with now. There was a war right at their doorstep, and the royal House of Eorl needed to focus on that first.
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Author note: Some of you readers may wonder why the Martells have not yet realized that Visenya exists, and this is the reason; the Temple of Shadows basically acts as a barrier that hides her presence from being found out, and remember, she have spent her whole life around Khamûl. House Martell and Suleiman is trying to hide their magic from him because they fears what the former Farao may do to them if they were caught and brought to Mordor, so they have not found out about Visenya in some way
Sauron killing off the Others/White Walkers and the Night King because he did not want any later troubles with them? YES! He is a Maia, basically Tolkien's version of a archangel, and he is the second Dark Lord after Morgoth for a reason
How the island of Dragonstone is placed towards other important places in Westeros and how Sauron could strike against them: .
And Sauron tearing a massive hole in the Wall was inspired by the undead Viserion doing the same on the last episode of season 7 on GOT