THE TRAIN THAT WAS PROMISED

(Or, when Honkai Star Rail meets Dance of the Dragons)

Summary:

Many stops awaited the express upon the star, some expected, some planned, some not at all.

The train left a world of ice for another, of ice and fire and dragons that danced.

Notes:
1. All disclaimers apply. A Song of Ice and Fire and related works are property of George R. R. Martin, and the TV series are property of HBO. Honkai Star Rail belongs to MiHoYo.
2. This work was written by someone who knew his Tolkien better than his GRRM, and his GRRM better than his Hoyoverse.
3. Like most things I write, this is meant to introduce to each other two fandoms that would otherwise have very little to do with each other.
4. This piece is/was/is being written during the early, formative days of HSR, and most certainly will not reflect the state and/or lore of the game a dozen updates down the line. That said, effort will be made to adjust the story in the making to reflect current HSR lore as best as possible.
5. This fanfic is also cross-posted on Spacebattles and AO3.

PROLOGUE

When Aegon Targaryen came to, the night had worn thin.

It was as like as not to be his last night. In his heart of hearts he knew it well. He could barely lift his hand off the softness of his bed. His leg was numb. His mouth was bitter from the aftertaste of tonics of all kinds, meant to prolong his life but just as like to cut it shorter.

The bedchamber of the king was lonely and lonesome: Aegon liked his furnishings plain and functional, and his chamber had been long transformed into the likeness of an infirmary, full of the scent of tinctures and milk of the poppy. The gods both old and new had blessed him as much as he could have asked for: his mind was not to be muddled by poppy. Not yet. Lord Commander Corlys Velaryon of the Kingsguards was outside, separated from the King's domain by a thick wooden door. Ser Corlys was to guard Aegon's body, but the place of Aegon's thoughts and dreams was the King's, and his alone.

He took some effort to push himself upright. He was four-and-sixty, now, and a shadow of the man he used to be. His steps on the stone floor were slow and shaky, but deliberate.

The most powerful man in Westeros was spending his night alone amidst the fog of sulfur of his House's ancient seat. The fog could make a man hazy, it could drive a hearty man into melancholy and hysteria. It could make a good night into a dream full of ill tidings.

Then again, ill tidings and how to deal with them had been the fortune of House Targaryen. Fire and blood, informed by dreams, and tempered by the will of the dragon.

Aegon the Conqueror walked to the dragon-patterned window left open that looked out into the sea. The first light of the day was streaming in from a sky thick and misty as wheaty gruel. A hundred stone-dragons cast by old magic upon the parapet framed the horizon. Aegon knew the view well, as he did every place of Dragonstone. He was born there, raised there, planned his grand conquest there.

He would die there, he was sure of it.

The horizon was beautiful. The sun was rising from the East. To the West was the continent he would bequeath upon Aenys and Maegor. He had had worries about their future: the heir was weak and preferred to please rather than fight, and the spare was everything the heir was not. Maegor was without a dragon, yet, but it was all but known Balerion would be his when Aegon's ashes had been set in the ground.

Balerion.

As was habit, Aegon called out to his loyal dragon, and the dragon obeyed. With a roar, Balerion rose to the sky from his night's roost, and down he descended upon Aegon's tower. His descent slowed as he came closer. The Black Dread was as agile as he was large, and his landing upon the ground before the keep raised only a gust of strong wind. The dragon's coming and going was as common as the sun rising and setting upon Dragonstone.

Aegon took some time to regain his footing. Once the gale of dragon-flight was his delight. Now the most considerate of wing-flap threatened to throw him on the floor. Age came to them all, bearing the Stranger's whisper.

Aegon's mind reached out, and met his dragon's. Mighty, dreadful, loyal Balerion was there, perched upon Dragonstone, as he would be for a long time to guard his line. The dragon's thoughts was full of concern as to Aegon's health and fate. Or rather, resignation. Dragons did sense their rider's demise coming, more likely as not, when Valyria was strong still. The thought of death, and foretold death even, had frightened Aegon once – he who was once young and thought himself invincible and immortal.

But now that the Stranger had sent his herald, mayhaps, Aegon was less fearful and more accepting. He had lived a long enough life: enough to conquer a continent, build a kingdom upon the ruins of six old warlords', leave behind a legacy sure to be inherited by his children and grandchildren.

He had lived long enough to see one sister-wife pass, and another estranged. He had lived long enough to be alone.

"Stay," he ordered Balerion, in the Valyrian tongue. "Stay and listen." The dragon obeyed, and craned his neck so his eye was as close to the tower as could be. Balerion was so large that Aegon was barely the size of his dagger-like iris. All was right with the world.

"I dreamt," Aegon said, and the dragon's eyes moved. His voice was weak, but commanding all the same. Once Aegon could have trusted his sister-wives with his dreams. Now he would trust only Balerion in all his glory.

The dragon knew. Aegon was a rider as much as he was a dreamer. Of his dreams of the Prince that was Promised and the Song of Ice and Fire, none knew so well as Balerion: for he could show Balerion what he saw; to others he could only tell – and that was if he desired to tell at all.

Their eyes met, their minds met. And Balerion was to know what Aegon knew.

That night his dreams had come back to what they were as a child. Dreams he had as clear as the song of dragons singing over a Westeros whole and united, that drove back the endless winter and the frost that would engulf the world.

That was the one dream. The other was of wagons that blazed the trail of stars.

There, above the world Westeros and Essos shared, where the stars and their nameless gods dwelled, was a track straighter than Valyrian highroad, put there by forces as arcane and unknowable as candles of dragon-glass.

Aegon did not plainly think the wagon and the trail and their travelers were there, he knew they all were there, and in this knowledge he held as much conviction as the fact that the Targaryen line would save the world from the ice with the fire of their dragons. He had dreamt of them, not so often as to raise alarum, but frequent enough to make the knowledge part of the litany of things that were meant to be. Heavy were the tales to which the Targaryens were privy.

There the world-travelers lived and blazed their trail across the cosmos like a comet given life: purposeful and deliberate. Their mission was to clear the cosmos of what they called the cancer of the universe, that throbbed black and gold, that turned men into monsters and life into death. Beyond that Aegon had not, could not, fathom, and that filled him with such dread as was unbecoming of a conqueror.

What was that cancer of the universe? What did it have to do with the winter that never ended? Was it one and the same with the Others who plagued the other half of his dreams, or another occurrence altogether and just as frightful? Aegon had his theories, but he could never say with any sort of certainty if it was one way or another. The three-eyed raven and the legless wolf that often appeared in his dragon-dreams did not quite know, either.

The dreams of the star-travelers had never been clearer than they were that night. Aegon leaned against his walking-stick, but his gaze upon the dragon's eye was strong. That night he had dreamt of many things, so vivid he thought he could lift his wrinkled fingers and graze across that which he saw.

The dragon's mind rumbled. Of course Balerion did not fully understand that which was relayed to him. Dragons were beasts of war, and as aggressive as they were loyal, but in the faculty of thoughts and reasons never cleverer than a barely-weaned babe. Balerion was smarter than most, and even then the mere thought of traveling the cosmos was beyond the Black Dread.

Aegon shifted his thoughts to something Balerion could more easily understand.

This he told, wordlessly: He had seen a girl of shiny whitish hair, standing against the march of the Others who streamed out of corrupted soil set ablaze by that cancer of the stars. He had looked at her before, gazed upon her visage, and decided she was a Targaryen, and a descendant of his own.

But that night he had seen her dressed for war. She stood there, draped in a war-cloak white and blue – that clashed with the black and red of his House, for reasons beyond him. She clicked her heels, raised her banner, and the grim-faced men about her followed. This was the daughter, Aegon decided, he did not have, but his descendants would – and that alone brought pride to the old conqueror, who thought his legacy was all but secured.

Three siblings gathered around her, their hair bright as beaten gold. A knight among knights bearing the weight of duty like it was his own and no one else's. A beauty whose voice was velvet and hands were the making of gods, and a figure short and blurry, whose feature was wrapped behind a veil of white mist. Lannisters, he thought, for what else could they be?

If so, then the other girl that stood by Aegon's would-be descendant might as well be a Stark, for black was her hair and snow was on her heel. Butterflies gathered about her, her face was blurred and her features unreadable, and her hair was black on one side and blue the other, such like they said of the Faceless Men's cowls.

They stood looking upon the vast Northern wasteland, where the dead walked and the Others marched in their glassy armor of crystal-blue. But they did not stand alone. For the wagon had come to a stop.

The wagon, now clad in gold and wreathed in mist, was driven by a dwarf of a wagoneer whose ears were so grotesquely long they touched the ground. A weary old man who had seen the birth and death of worlds was seated behind the driver's place, and next to him was a woman born from flame, wielding flame, and had died in flame, in battle against a foe meant for the gods.

Aegon saw the travelers from the stars. Of such folks his visions were less clear. The image of a golden shine of fire and death emanated from their chest, and it burnt as they swung about their club of ironwood that shone blue – the color of star-dust. A bow-string drawn taut, bearing the resilience and chill of an iceberg with it. A spear shrouded in green, revealing naught but a bright long tip. A raging whirlwind of roaring thunder. A scope gazing upon the stars, and a pen to scribble down what was seen. A puppet brought to life by an incomprehensibly erudite mistress of knowledge aging backwards.

There were many more, beyond count, rising from their seat and streaming through a sliding doorway that ejected steam and gleamed purple and gold as the passengers disembarked. Be they friend or foe, Aegon could not tell so well. He was old. His dreams became blurry with age, and less so indicative as he would have liked.

But this he knew: "They are coming, Balerion," Aegon said. His voice broke the silence like a thunderbolt shredding the clear sky.

Balerion's mind rumbled again, and his confusion was so palpable Aegon through he could draw a knife and cut it. And Aegon smiled.

"Beyond that you need not have a care. All you shall do is defend my line," he said. "Bring fire and blood to that which would threaten them. And when the travelers from the stars come, you shall help my children and grandchildren handle them: with bread and salt, or with dragonfire and Valyrian steel as it is demanded."

This Balerion could understand. Aegon heard a bubbling noise like raising magma within the dragon's throat, loud and clear.

For long did dragon and rider stand, wordlessly, noiselessly. Thoughts came slow, now that the tale was done, dripping like water-drops off a rain-soaked parapet. When Aegon sent Balerion off, it was with a nod, sharp as like the Conqueror was in his prime. This it said: Do not worry, triumph is guaranteed. To believe you would win was half the battle, that was how Aegon had lived, and if he was to pass a message to his children and grandchildren, that was it.

His thought came to the painted table, carven in the likeness of Westeros in all its glories and its flaws, that he knew better than any man.

Today, he thought, he would tell his grandsons a story or five when he still could...