Author's Note: I've been reading too much ASOIAF economic theory and playing too much CK2 AGOT and Mount and Blade Bannerlord AGOT mods. Oops. Oddly enough this is only vaguely an OC, in that we do not know for a fact whether he was born or not. All the circumstances leading up to his birth did in fact occur in canon.
I also thought it a fascinating way to eventually explore the mountain clans and their...lack of progress even against constantly superior foes that should force them to evolve as well as R'hllor and the context it could hold outside of a crusade (Stannis) or its development in slave cultures (Essos).
And yes I do have many many things on my plate right now, unfortunately I just write what comes to me at the moment, as the goal is quantity of both wordage and concept exploration to increase my personal skills. My goal is to maybe boil things down to one story per fandom that'll get updated. So like I have a chosen ASOIAF fic, Pokemon, Star Wars, and then Secret Fire and such.
Chapter 1: A Burning Falcon
My first memory was the fire that took my mother. Or rather the fire that took my mother burned so hot that it burned away anything from before so that all that remained were ashes of impressions and feelings.
I remember few things of Amanda Arryn, daughter of Alys. A smile warm like a summer breeze, not hot like the fire. Big blue eyes, full of love, that spoke of a crystal clear mountain stream. And her voice, sweet as the plumpest wild berry, even as her pain from the illness showed through, saying, "Promise me, Roland. Promise me one day you will fly free of here, together."
Though perhaps that was a vision of the fire as well.
It was not a literal fire, for all that I remembered burning for almost a week.
I dreamed of fire during that time. As well as things inside the fire. I was shown flames of green filled with pain and suffering. Flames of blue filled with cold hatred.
The red flame showed me weapons of power. The gold flame items of worth.
Last of all a pure white flame showed me a red dragon streaking across the sky with another flame bursting up from a mountain beneath to join it.
I awoke in a cave where incense lay heavy in the air and with sweat coating my body and matting my hair to my forehead.
The only concrete memories that remained were my mother's final words, and my dreams. Some dreams involved what may have been hazy memories of her.
At five name-days I was reborn from a fire not dissimilar from that which my people prayed to. Reborn with only vague impressions of my life before it. Those echoes of my mother. And a warmth for something else...something that felt connected to her as well.
"Rol, son of Ren lives! The fever has lifted!" A bedraggled and soot covered woman hovering over me cried out. Idly I noticed that she was completely bald.
A burly man covered in mountain goat furs with a cloak that came from a mountain lion skinned so that the head remained intact pushed his way into the stone room through a hide flap.
"Ha!" He grunted in pleasure, "My son by the Lady Falcon lives! This is good! Tonight we shall feast!"
As he leaned down to push my hair out of my eyes I noticed that his right hand was a mess of burn scars. Which perhaps explained why regardless of his pleased words his mouth seemed turned into a perpetual grimace.
As he stood I was struck by a flash of a memory from the green flame. My mother crying out in pain and fear as this man's voice echoed in laughter.
And in that moment I knew I hated my father.
It was easy to hate these people I lived with. They were slow witted, even in their own native language, something my mother had disdainfully called the Old Tongue. At some point, though the lessons themselves were hazy, she had taught me the tongue of her people.
But the dreams had given me more than enough to hate my father's people.
They were cruel, dirty, and dumb. The first could, I think, have been forgiven if not for the other two.
They endlessly fought amongst other tribes for scraps of territory in these mountains. They raided the 'Andals' to steal their iron weapons and somehow never learned anything new. They simply repeated this cycle.
All of them except for myself...myself and...my sister! Of course! The hazy edges of memory that had burned away regathered into my younger sister. Only three at the time we lost our mother. A sweet, but very quiet, girl with hair the color of sunshine reflecting off of snow and an insistence on always hiding herself in the depths of the caves when she became scared of our brutish relatives.
Aemma, Aemma who my mother had wished me to fly free with.
By eight I had decided that as soon as I was strong enough I would kill my father and leave these people behind. Taking with me only my sweet sister.
While I had no metric to gauge myself against my mother's people it was obvious, particularly in how quickly I picked up flint working and other crafts of the Burned Men that I was far and away more intelligent than they.
This was even without the flashes of insight I had gained from my fire dreams. They were rare after the fever passed. But oft enough I would see a flicker of a concrete shape in flames that danced nightly in our cooking fires.
It was those flames that showed me where to find the dragonglass that allowed me to create my crowning achievement.
In my twelfth year, as well as I could tell at least, I had seen in the fires a crack in a cliff-face that sat near one of the many streams that cascaded down the Mountains of the Moon.
Thus upon my next hunting trip, they made the boys from ages ten to fourteen hunt small to medium sized game while the disgusting older men played at their silly tribal warfare, I began searching for that stream.
It took me two moons worth of trips and exploration, but I found my goal. Out of that crevice and into the stream fell an entire deposit of dragonglass nodes. Ripe for knapping and crafting.
I began by working the glass into my existing arrows and spears. But the more I worked the more my hands felt like some other creation was waiting to be discovered. Something that would be the fire's gift to me in order to overcome my father.
It would be years until the idea came to me. But it would be vicious, glorious, and most importantly, it would free my sister and I from the clutches of these loathsome Burned Men.
Because just before my fourteenth year began, escaping with my sister became all the more important.
I made a habit of overhearing any important discussions my father or the burnt-bald medicine woman, Shega, engaged in, particularly with each other.
"Aemma has seen eleven years now, Chief Ren," Her gravely voice explained, "To whom should go the honor of bedding your little falcon fledgeling when her moonblood comes, hmm?"
My father grunted in response, "I thought to offer her to Timett son of your brother Tego. He slew three Painted Dogs in our fight last week, and he wishes to create a strong warrior bloodline soon with a son if he can. Bound to my daughter he would be content to not challenge my leadership so long as I live."
The wise woman nodded her ashen head, looking for all the world like a vulture that had passed through a forest fire, "Good, a wise choice. The blood of the falcon has blessings in its sons, as we have seen from your own."
I could almost hear my father grimace more than usual, "Willful too, at least the boys. Rol hides it less well than he believes, his hatred for me. His desire for things outside the tribe."
"The boy only sees the surface, he does not understand the depths of our sacrifices and hatred of the Andals and even the lesser tribes. Next moon is the longest day of the year and the sun shall at its highest rest perfectly on the peak of Witch's Mountain above our vale. Take the boy to the sacred cave on that day and he shall understand. Her fires will speak to him, this I know. Many times have I caught him staring into the fires from a distance, as if he sees the visions we wise witches of the clan hunt for like he was born to it!"
"You think he possesses fire magic? Like the witch?"
"Perhaps, or simply a connection to the visions. None have ever come near the talent of the fire witch and her scion. Not even those of their line."
I ran, I ran far from their conversation and far from any of the many fires my clan cooked in and worshipped upon.
I needed to get us out of here, and I knew exactly when best to do it.