A/N: Quick thing, if anyone knows where I can find a good place to learn Trigedasleng (Grounder Language from The 100) please let me know.
20 minutes after opening her eyes, Lyanna was still coughing trying to get her breathing under control. When she looked around all she could see was beach and trees. Her head hurt like no other, she was weak, thirsty, and definitely hungry. As gently as possible, she patted herself down thanking whatever god or gods were listening that nothing was broken. She managed to find a water skin, cursing when she found it empty.
Continuing her search, she found a small knife that Asher had let her borrow to whittle while she was bored on the ship. So use to its weight she almost forgot about her sword on her back. Luckily it was Valyrian Steel and was very hard to maim or break, let alone dull. She'd left her small pack that contained her extra clothes and small things in the room aboard the ship. All she had was a small knife, water skin, her sword and what clothes she had on.
First, she needed water or else she was going to die of thirst, then food, fish if nothing else. Wiping her forehead she noticed she was sweating, it was much hotter here then her home, she would need water sooner rather than later. Looking around at all the beach she sighed before venturing into the tropical forest.
Stumbling through the woods, Lyanna felt like she had gotten nowhere in hours. Her head was still throbbing, her eyes kept drifting close and it was getting harder to open them back up. When her vision started to get blurry, she had to keep one arm in front of her so she didn't run into anything, but now that was getting too hard.
Making her way to the nearest tree, she leaned back against it and taking a deep breath and closing her eyes. I'll only stay here a moment she thought. She had almost fallen off to sleep, when her eyes opened in silent shock. The forest was dead silent, and it wasn't her presence that had caused it. There was a predator nearby and it was most likely hunting her.
Lyanna knew she was too weak to make a stand, to show that she would be worth more trouble than the meal she would provide. Running was also out, in part to her weakness and it may only compel the beast to chase her. She would need to work fast as her panic-induced strength would only last so long. While she didn't have the strength draw her sword, she pulled the small knife out and slowly looked around.
She hated not knowing this part of the world, who knew what was hunting her. Was it serpentine? Shadowcat? Some other thing that nobody knew of? She heard a twig snap off to her right from a small distance. Looking over all she saw was foliage, but something was out there. She had to be careful holding the knife in her hand while she wiped her brow again. With her vision somewhat cleared she was able to see the beast.
It was scaled but walked on four legs, like the lizards Maester Luwin had spoken of that lived in Dorne. Its tongue slipped out and traveled longer than she thought possible. Looking right at her, it put one foot in front of the other in a slow and lazy manner. It was bigger than she thought possible, larger than a normal dog. Lyanna realized it was stalking her slowly, waiting for her to make a mistake before lashing out.
Lyanna slowly backed up one foot at a time. She couldn't survive a charge from this creature, but both hers and the creatures plan would depend on who could strike at the most opportune moment. One slip and she would be dead. Probably eaten, until she was just bones and refuse lost and forgotten until she turned to dust.
When she heard another snap of a branch, she almost panicked when it came from beneath her own foot. The beast had also stopped and paused in mid step, but seemed to think it wasn't the right time. It was still testing her, maybe it had never hunted a human, or maybe it knew what the shiny piece of metal in her hand was.
She was so caught up in thinking of a way to get out of this, that she almost missed when the suddenly started charging her. Lyanna froze for several seconds and then in panic she started tripping backwards in unsteady steps. When she tripped over some obstruction that was in her foot's way, she almost cried out. The breath was knocked out of her as she hit the ground and rolled a few feet away.
She had no time to figure out if she was more injured as she heard the brush being trampled in the creatures charge to get to her. She tried to get up but wasn't fast enough as the creature was in a rush to get its dinner. She rolled away as fast as she could, but she knew it wouldn't be enough. When it got to the branch that tripped her, it jumped into the air and came down hard on her body with its legs. Lyanna saw the mouth coming down at her and then the ground below her gave way and they both fell into the darkness.
Coming awake and opening her eyes, Lyanna saw that she was in some type of cavern. She had only fallen 20 feet maybe, but the cavern was very wide. Looking around her, she could hear some running water close by. She did scream in shock when she came face to face with the beast that had come after her. Taking a second to process, she noticed that it wasn't moving or even breathing. Backing away slowly, she took in the whole image and found that it had been skewered by bones, very large and old bones.
She moved away and slowly got to her feet. Looking at the bones up and down, she found the tail end and then looked back and found the skull, a large dragon skull. And it was not alone, there were several sets of bones. A nest, she thought, or perhaps room for the dragons to be placed. There was only one place that would have this many dragon bodies on this side of the world. She was in Old Valyria, a place that few ventured since the Doom of Valyria.
Her stomach chose that moment to interrupt her awe in being the first person in 400 years to be here. Feeling something sticky along the side of her head, she found that her wound had reopened. Turning in the direction of the running water, she slowly made her way towards it. She found a small pond nearby, getting down onto her knees before dunking her whole head into the water.
She took in great mouthfuls of water during her dunking. Pulling her head up only when she needed to breathe. The pain in her head was lessened by the cool water and her need for water had been seen to. Looking back at the beast that came after her, she knew where she was going to get her next meal, that didn't mean she had to be happy about it.
She was lucky that the place seemed to be made of stone, she was able to find pieces of both quartz and pentlandite, and using sticks and branches that had fallen with them, and she got a fire going. Cutting into the creature with just a small knife had not been fun, taking out its guts and trying to cut up the meat had been worse. She skewered bits of meat along a piece of splintered dragonbone, she set it over the fire and waited.
Lyanna finally sat back and laid a hand on her full belly. She could survive another day before the meat would be bad, she would try to save it, but she didn't have the time to get the things she would need to preserve it. The pond turned out to be a fountain actually, how it still survived was a mystery to her but she was thankful. Tomorrow, she would explore and see if she could find a way out of here.
But right now, all she cared about was sleep, she figured that nothing had been down here for so long, everything was already dead. She would try to sleep only for a little while, but as soon as she closed her eyes, Lyanna was dead to the world and not even a dragon's roar would have woken her. At least her dreams were peaceful, filled with a white haired beauty running with her in the hills outside of Winterfell.
A/N: So quick thing, I know this was shorter than usual. I'm sorry, but work was kicking my butt with 8-12hr schedules and an 8 day work week. I did want to apologize for that and hope nobody is too terribly disappointed. That should now be over and I can get back to doing updates at least once a week or more. Remember to Review and tip your Cashiers. Ja Ne.
