Rhaenys

Outside Rhaenys saw there were nearly a dozen men waiting outside, while inside the Princess was crying out in pain. Her agony was loud and plain to hear, and there was nothing Rhaenys could feel for her but pity.

It will be over for her soon enough though, Rhaenys told herself, as she left, thinking of her own children for a moment. Casella and Goren were still sleeping, she hoped, after she had put them to bed earlier that night.

Most of the castle slept too, while Maester Luwin and some other servants were busy attending to Princess Myrcella, which left Rhaenys to deal with the monster that they had found.

As the red dragon blazed above them, she studied the thing that had once been Leona Tyrell. It was a pale man, long and thin, with wrinkled skin. A hideous creature that lacked an arm now.

Rhaenys stood, surrounded by several men at arms who were there to ensure the thing did not escape, though it had also been chained up by now to a wall in the main courtyard.

Ser Arys had cut off its arm, but it was still dangerous. And they didn't know what it was.

"My lady we should kill it," one of the men at arms called out to her,

She only shook her head though. "Get some wood for a pyre," Rhaenys ordered instead. She didn't know why she did, but some instinct inside her thought it was a good idea. "And the dragon eggs too."

I've gone truly mad, haven't I? She thought to herself as she saw the confused look on the face of the men. She remembered how the old saying went. When a Targaryen was born, the gods would flip a coin, and the world would hold its breath. Rhaenys only gave them a look though, and they did as she told them.

After she did, she turned back to the creature. "What are you?" She asked.

The strange creature took several moments to answer. She wondered if it could even speak at all, until it opened his mouth, and talked in the common tongue. "Truth," it answered.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, though she didn't suppose it mattered much.

"I came here to see wonders, and I have," the thing told her. "The realm will bow. Bow before you, and the children… Your children…"

"My children…" Rhaenys echoed quietly, raising her hand to her chest. Goren and Casella are safe now, she told herself, but she could only worry. This thing had been taking the place of the Tyrell girl after all.

"Yes…" The creature answered quietly. "When the kraken weds the dragon, the realm shall tremble, and it has."

He is taunting me, Rhaenys decided. She had to see through his words. "What did you do to the girl?"

"The little lady?" Asked the strange man. "I used her how I needed to win trust. She is dead now, buried under some dirt here in the castle."

And so there goes another one of the Princess's ladies, Rhaenys thought to herself. One wed without her father's leave, two pregnant with bastards and a fourth was only bones if even that now.

"Go to Qarth my lady, and enter the House of the Undying. You will see wonders that, gain wisdom you cannot elsewhere," the thing called out to Rhaenys as she started to turn away.

She turned back to him, and walked as close as she dared. "Your time is done," she said, as angry as she could.

"So be it…" The thing said, laughing. Rhaenys realized whatever this was, it was not scared of her, or death.

Around her she saw men were coming with wood as she had bid, and another two had brought the dragon eggs from her room. She counted nine of them, all different colors and sizes.

"Make a pyre," she ordered the men, who looked confused.

"My lady… We cannot let him free… We should kill him first," said a voice that she recognized to be Hal Mollen's.

"Keep him against the wall, and burn him there. He needs to burn," she said, feeling as if something was urging her to. She wondered if it was her dreams or simple madness. Perhaps the creature was influencing her now even.

The men began to put wood against the wall, surrounding the creature, who didn't try to fight or call out. .Twice she urged the men to make it bigger, and despite their concerns, they listened to her, placing more wood.

"The eggs…" She called out when she had finished, and they began to bring them to her.

Rhaenys took each on in hand, and placed each one of them gently on the wood surrounding the man, each one like a heavy stone. There were nine there, three less than had been found in the Crypts, but Rhaenys supposed those were the eggs she had given her brothers and Daenerys.

Someone had gotten a torch for her already, and it was placed in her soft hands. Rhaenys held it close to her face, looking at the fire that burned from it, before she looked up at the sky, to the wonder the blazed above, and then tossed the torch.

The fire didn't start as quickly as she thought it would, but it did. At first, the creature didn't call out, but soon it began to cry out in pain as the flames started to reach him. Rhaenys could feel some of the heat standing a few feet away from the fire, and almost felt pity for it.

It's cries though weren't natural, as though it were saying something, some sort of chant or prayer. A spell, Rhaenys realized, and she saw that the others must have realized it as well from how they were gripping their swords and their nervous looks.

Soon the flames were completely engulfing the man, and through the flames Rhaenys could see his skin was burning, turning black, yet his calls persisted.

Blood. It needs blood, Rhaenys thought she heard a voice whisper in her head. She realized it was right, her blood was needed.

Rhaenys didn't carry any daggers or swords on her, but there were plenty around her. "I need your sword," she said to one of the men next to her, some man she didn't recognize. He gave it to her, but reluctantly.

With her left hand around the sword's pummel, Rhaenys moved her trembling right hand to the blade.

She grimaced as she wrapped her hand around it, and heard some of them calling out to her as she gripped it, hard enough to cut herself.

Rhaenys dropped the sword in pain, but when she opened the palm of her hand she saw that she had drawn blood. She flicked some of her blood at the fire, and heard it sizzle much louder than it should have.

Some of the men had begun to move in front of her, as though they were going to move her away from the fire when suddenly they heard a cracking noise from the fire, and the strange creature's voice stopped.

It worked, Rhaenys realized, as she simply watched, as she heard more cracking sounds. After a while, she heard something let out a small roaring sound, small but mighty, and she felt something tugging on her arm. "My lady, you must leave," the voice said, but she only shook her head.

"I must stay," she said to him, watching as the fire burned. She wanted to go in, to step amidst the flames, and feel them around her, but when she stepped forward, she felt the heat of the fire. It can still hurt me, she realized as she watched.

The smoke filled her eyes, making her want to cry almost, yet when she heard the calls from inside the fire she knew she had to be strong. She had woken something, she realized.

A thousand sparks seemed to fly from the fire whenever one of the logs would fall. When she looked into the flames she looked to see if the creature was still there, but it wasn't. Instead smaller creatures where there, ones that Rhaenys wanted to go to, but couldn't.

She thought she saw the flames starting to dance almost when she looked hard enough. Showing monsters and men in a battle, all sorts of wonders and horrors, that all seemed so beautiful.

I have to reach them, Rhaenys thought to herself, but she wasn't able to go any further. Instead she watched, listening and watching the fire, hearing a few more cracks, and seeing some of the strange creatures inside.

It was dawn when the final cracks came, as from one of the eggs, a small golden creature emerged, and after that it was finally cool enough for Rhaenys to be able to walk into what had been the pyre.

The remains of the strange creature seemed to be nothing but ashes beneath her feet now, while around her there were seven young dragons, each a marvel for Rhaenys too look on, as well as two eggs that had fallen where Rhaenys had placed them, blacked, but unhatched.

Green and purple, and black and blue and white and gold and silver the creatures where, looking at her, when two of them moved from where they had been and got onto her.

When she turned around, she saw the men who had been with her all through the night were kneeling. I hatched them, she realized, feeling some pride,

The red dragon still blazed in the sky above them too, and around her Rhaenys spotted people from all around the castle gathering round, while Rhaenys tried to collect the new creatures.

Her relief came when she spotted Valaena Velaryon, who stepped into the ash-filled remnants with her, and began to collect the dragons. All around them, men prayed as they passed or knelt or simply looked on in wonder and amazement.

She wasn't sure where to place all the dragons or even what to call them, but eventually she caught sight of Torrhen Stark. "My lady…" He greeted, as many others had, his voice running with half a hundred different emotions.

"My lord," she said to him, looking into his pale eyes. Rarely did they seem to give any emotion, but now they did. "We must find somewhere for them," she told him, and he nodded.

"For a certainty my lady," he said, his voice not truly there. He quickly found Maester Edwyle, and together they began gathering servants, who began taking the dragons from her.

If dragons had returned to the world, she wondered what else might happen. She thought of the creature's words, how he said that the world would bow before her children, and she wondered if he meant them, instead of Casella and Goren.

Rhaenys tried to follow as the dragons were taken elsewhere, and stood watching as men erected a kennels of sorts for the dragons too, when Maester Luwin found her.

"Rhaenys… What have you done?" The man asked her, a look of worry in his grey eyes.

"How is the Princess?" Rhaenys asked instead. The girl's labor must have been over by now if Maester Luwin was here, speaking to her she figured.

"Not well I fear," Luwin told her. "Her labor was… Difficult," he said.

"I should see her," Rhaenys said.

The maester started to protest, but Rhaenys started to walk towards the Princess's birthing room all the same. "I woke dragons," she told him as they walked.

"The last dragon died a century and a half ago," Maester Luwin said in disbelief. "How…"

"I do not know. I burned the… The thing… And placed dragon eggs in with him, and they hatched," she said, explaining what had happened as best she could. She didn't know what had happened truly, or what had compelled her, just that something had.

"Your hand, my lady," Maester Luwin exclaimed in protest, and Rhaenys finally looked at it for the first time in what seemed like forever. She hardly remembered the cut at all even. Most of the blood had dried on her palm, but it made her think of Daenerys whose fingers had been cut to the bone when she had stopped a man from killing Goren.

"It is fine," Rhaenys said, as they approached the birthing chamber.

One of the Princess's maids was waiting outside, and two more were inside. There were two other women, one who was nursing the babe at her breast, and the White Knight, Ser Arys Oakheart stood there as well.

Princess Myrcella herself lay asleep on the bed, no doubt exhausted, though the sheets were still covered in much blood.

"She had a son," Maester Luwin told her quietly from behind. When the wet nurse had finished with the boy, she offered it to Rhaenys, who took him in her arms.

"What's his name?" She asked as she rocked him in her arms. He was a little bigger than her own babes had been, with wisps of auburn hair like Robb's covering his head, save for one spot in the middle, that was golden like his mother's.

"Eddard," she heard the wet nurse say.

Rhaenys realized at once why the Princess had chosen the name for, that it was for Robb's father, who they had just gotten word had been killed in King's Landing.

Robb had always been a friend to her in her youth, and Theon's especially, and she wondered what he would do next, what he could do next. In the North, she was the enemy, just as much as Queen Cersei.

She remembered what Daenerys had told her. How she had given her maidenhead to Robb even after his marriage to Myrcella. He wondered what he would do with her now, with this son of hers, and his, now that his father was dead.

Perhaps Daenerys will get her wish, she thought to herself, but that didn't seem right to the babe that she held in her arms. This son of his had come into the world with dragons. With my dragons. "Dragonborn," she said to the room. "He's Eddard Dragonborn."

Rhaenys put the boy down and began to walk away. The castle was going mad now, with servants rushing about, confused what was happening, but after some time it was her mother that she found.

"Rhaenys… It's said you hatched dragons," her mother said, no doubt confused by the impossibility of it.

"I did mother," she said, taking her mother's arm. They walked together to the yard, looking for the dragons.

There were some struggling with the dragons, though it didn't seem they could fly or breathe fire. At least not yet.

She saw that it was Maester Edwyle who had taken command of the yard now.

Rhaenys led her mother to one of the dragons that had been put into a cage. "Aren't they beautiful?" She asked, pointing to it. This dragon was golden, and she remembered it was the last to hatch.

It would need a name, but Rhaenys didn't feel ready to begin placing names to the dragons yet.

Her mother gave a nod. "They do," she said, placing her finger through the cage, as though she were reaching out to the dragon. "Your father would be pleased."

For once, Rhaenys felt herself smile at the mention of Prince Rhaegar.

Author Notes:

Well sorry about the wait. I guess I should be clear that daily uploads aren't the norm. There's one more chapter (the epilogue) and an appendix that only was able to translate to the AO3 version of this, and then it will be onto the next part of this series.

The epilogue will be out tomorrow I guess, along with the appendix, so yay! I haven't even determined the title for the second part, or even started on the prologue (I've gotten a good deal of work done on other parts though) so it may be a while before you see more from this series.

Anyways, thank you guys for reading, as always, and as a reminder, I don't own ASOIAF.