"Change the wrappings every day. Jiri, Tony will show you how to do it cleanly. I don't have anesthetics, so skin grafts will have to wait." Harri laid back in her bed and closed her eyes.
Jiri allowed the man to wrap the strange, stretchy white cloth back around her arm. It was tender and hurt to touch. She'd been born a Dothraki. The massive community had been all she knew. She missed the days when she needed to do nothing but ride and play games with the khalasar. She'd had many friends within Khal Borgo's flock, boys and girls who liked to race each other on the biggest horses they could steal from the screamers, to laugh when someone couldn't get their mount to obey them. She missed the days where she sat in a circle with the older women and learned to weave grass baskets while the elders told stories about their history, the gods, and the evils of the Land Beneath the Broken Till.
When she left, she had expected to die. Bloodrider Gaq had made it clear that the days of playing and weaving and laughing were over. She was expected to allow him use of her body whenever he wished. Jiri had decided she would rather die than let him do that again. Why were all the other women so happy to be used like that?
But she missed so much, and now even more of her life was gone.
Only Sundancer listened to her anymore. When their camp had first swelled, she recognized one of the girls her age, Merra, who had joined them after they visited Lys. Merra had seemed so lonely and so unhappy – could she not see that there was fun to be had in the khalasar? Did she not want to weave baskets and listen to chants and ride as fast as she could on horseback? – that Jiri had taken it upon herself to teach Merra the Earth Mother's tongue.
The Storm Goddess defeated Borgo and killed Gaq. Everyone the Dothraki had taken were to stay with her. When Jiri spoke to Merra again, the girl pretended not to understand Dothraki. She pantomimed the way Gaq liked to grab a great fistful of her hair while he took her from behind and yank on it until her neck screamed in pain, laughing with others who spoke the low tongue of the old dragonlords.
It thrilled her to be Maegi. It was forbidden, the worst crime. She had heard so many stories about the awful things they did, murdering Khals dishonorably after stealing their seed, dread rituals and perversions of the natural order which offended any god she might care to worship. But they were all so wrong. Sunlight was warmth and nurturing, happiness and home. It could be wrathful when Jiri told it to be. And no one could take it from her.
She remembered Merra's body. Gaq had died weeks ago, but the girl from Lys looked used in the same way. Jiri thought Merra looked much smaller, all still and stiff like that. Her face was frozen in sobbing agony. Jiri had hated her, but she didn't want that to happen to her.
"Why were they so wrong about maegi?" Harri cracked an eye. Jiri would never get used ot the way her irises rotated in her eyeballs.
"Explain," she yawned.
"The elders, the men, the singers, they all say magic is a dreadful thing monsters use."
Harri laid back, squirming her back into the mattress. Jiri thought she looked very small. When she fought, she had a presence bigger than even the Khal and his Bloodriders. Dormant, she was just a slight woman, perhaps a bit taller than average. With her eyes closed, she looked like everyone else, if prettier and healthier.
"Forget everything they say about magic," Harri said. "It's not anything in particular. Maybe they have stories about really awful magic from a long time ago. Or maybe it happened last week, I don't know, I'm too new here. Magic is just a tool. It's how you put your ideas into the real world. Hurt people hurt people." she put her arm over her eyes. "Don't be like them. Use magic to learn and grow and heal and build. Forget what anyone else says about it. It's not a weapon, it's a tool and you can use it to create good or evil in the world."
"Can you teach me?" Harri's eyes remained closed, but her expression shifted to one of great sadness. Did goddesses cry? She looked like she might. With such power, why did she not reorder the world to be pleasing to her?
"I don't know," she sighed. "It feels like my limbs are made of lead. Everything seems so very hard when before Thanos, it was trivial. Ask me questions about magic and I'll answer them if I can. Experiment, and come get me if something goes terribly wrong."
Jiri paused. She had heard a Ghiscari legend from a trader in the magnificent Vaes Dothrak where a man was given the chance to ask three questions to a god who would answer them honestly. What pressure it must have been, it was to know you had three opportunities to gather powerful or secret knowledge.
Did Tony know as much as Harri? She could not know, they spoke different languages. "How do I use AllSpeak?" she asked finally.
Harri smushed her face into her pillow, half turned towards her with hair splayed across her face and into her mouth. "Mmph." she blew her hair out of her mouth. "You're used to drawing power from the sun. You can find that source in the sky, right?"
She nodded.
"Search this room like you would for the sun. Can you find me?"
Jiri opened her sixth sense and searched. Fumblingly, she felt around the house. It was shaded and closed off from the sky, the sun far off through the roof, and fainter than when she was outside. She found Harri in front of her. The goddess's power was shuttered like a lantern.
"Reach in," Harri advised. Jiri touched the shutters. A vast and alien landscape revealed itself to her, flat and devoid of features. It was the Dothraki Sea without green grass, a clear sky of colorless grey. She had no body or physical representation within the massive landscape. At first she worried of losing herself, her own body and mind, but as soon as the concern roused her, she realized she could still open her eyes and see the inside of the shaded room.
"Is this…you?"
"Yes, a very dreary place," Harri said impatiently. Something told Jiri she was not actually impatient. There was just a – sense that she did not want to talk about it. She was ashamed and miserable. Jiri did not voice what she'd discerned. "Now listen carefully. AllSpeak does not actually change the sounds my mouth makes when I speak. It only changes how your mind interprets it. Listen to me as I speak not in words, but syllables. Pick apart the vowels and consonants. Can you hear the way my tongue, lips, teeth, and throat move?"
Jiri made an effort to do so. She banished meaning from Harri's mouth and cocked her head. She waited and she listened.
Harri continued to speak, a gentle susurration of vowels, rising and falling. They flowed into one another, softer than speaking usually sounded. The consonants were gentler, and came less from the throat.
The goddess cleared her throat. "You with me?" Jiri nodded. "Now listen to the words with your sixth sense. I'm using more than sounds. Everything you understand from my mouth is filtered through AllSpeak."
Jiri listened again. She felt along the monochrome landscape as Harri spoke, felt for something that stood above the grey hills and sky.
Something powerful sparked in the goddess, a sort of satisfaction, a profound rewardingness and pride that went deeper than any trivial accomplishment. It colored her, inked in the dark grey hills with maybe a hint of green. A flare of pink embarrassment drew her attention. Jiri realized she had failed to find the part of Harri linked to AllSpeak. She was feeling pride in herself through Harri's mind.
"Sorry." Harri sat up. She bleached out again, that landscape that defined her returning to its deadened state. "I'll make it more obvious-"
"Don't be," Jiri said impulsively. "It was beautiful."
Harri let out a shaky sigh and leaned against the wall, curling her knees up against herself. "M-my words. Feel the meaning-"
"I know." Jiri did not worry that Harri would punish her for interrupting or insulting. She could feel that Harri would not. She swore she could feel something, elusive as a butterfly in flight, incredibly subtle yet touching both her and Harri's minds.
Harri kept up a stream of words, mundane blathering about the weather and the state of their supplies. The butterfly shrank and she lost sight of it.
"Maybe something with more meaning?" she hazarded. Another pink flare shone in Harri. Then the pride returned.
"You are too clever by half," Harri accused. She felt mischief, a bit of exasperation, but all good-natured. "I know Tony put you up to this. Probably got the idea from Harley."
"Who is Harley?" Jiri felt the butterfly again.
"Some kid Tony met in Tennessee while on the run from terrorists." Harri folded her legs on top of each other. "He was in a rough place, we'd just fought off an invasion from space – and that's a generous way to put it. He got lucky, someone put a nuke in his hands at exactly the right time. Just-" Harri paused. The word 'nuke' struck her like a hammer. A devastating weapon, greater than dragons. Annihilating a city in an instant. A white flash, a second sun. Glass from sand, a virulent poison staining the earth.
A flood of images. Jiri saw through Harri's eyes, so many many more colors than her own. Surrounded by a city of glass and steel, grey skinned monsters crawling and flying, shooting arrows of blue light everywhere. Colossal bronze beasts wriggled in the air, larger than even the great towers. A yawning black void disgorged endless enemies. A little red figure, heaving a white device through the gap in the world. Just like the one Harri came through.
Jiri felt a surge of emotion from her, like everything was too complicated to put into words even with AllSpeak. Strangely enough, Jiri understood perfectly.
She touched the butterfly with her senses. It was like a web of infinite spider-threads. Two strands connected her and Harri to the butterfly in the middle. Many more led out into the world. More still ran out beyond her comprehension, in bizarre directions that did not coincide with any directions on the horizon, up, or down.
"I found it," she told Harri.
"Good. Remember that you are not casting a translation spell from nothing. The goal is to call that same butterfly to yourself, anytime you need to communicate with someone across languages. Feel it. What is it like? What desires fuel its existence, what purpose does it serve and why does it want to help us?"
Jiri examined the butterfly closer still. It was not like the sun, blazing with glorious power and bathing the breadth of the earth. It was a subtler thing, and the power that lit it did not come from within. The tiniest gossamer thread fed it with a trickle of power, with Harri at its source. She touched the butterfly. Help me understand. That's your job, isn't it? Tell me about yourself.
The butterfly felt thrilled to hear her desire. I can do that! It exclaimed to her. I'm here so everyone may understand each other.
She felt more complex, less verbalized ideas from it, too. Diplomacy was a big one, a way to resolve conflicts that left no one hurt in the end. Learning, learning of the world, aid, the butterfly dumped everything into her head all at once, ideas so complicated that AllSpeak itself was defining them as it sent them to her, ideas for which the Dothraki tongue had no words. Overwhelmed, she lost her focus and the feeling vanished.
"I have to keep all of that in my focus at once?"
Harri shook her head. "The precedent already exists. You just have to reach for the soul of the magic. What do all those feelings boil down to for you? Invoke that idea. Magic is intelligent enough to do the rest."
Jiri felt the butterfly and its threads vanish. "Can you understand me still?" Harri shook her head. She said something in reply. It sounded just like how Tony spoke, 'r's and 's's in a blend, half a song without a melody. Like the Lamb Men of Lhazar.
She reached for the sun and fed the memory of that idea into it. I want to understand her. I want to connect with and learn from this woman who speaks a language I do not.
The idea missed the soul of AllSpeak, Jiri could tell. It was not exactly perfect. But the butterfly niggled at the back of her mind as if to say Did you mean to call me? She grabbed it and let it feed on the power she'd drawn down. The butterfly connected their minds of its own volition. "Hello?"
"Congratulations," Harri smiled. "You're a magician."
"Tony Stark."
"Yeah?"
Tony set down his makeshift clipboard. In the aftermath, they'd done a headcount. The majority of the survivors were women, the majority of those had been attacked in one way or another. From a camp of three thousand men, under a hundred remained. Twenty three men, sixty five women, not including himself, Harri, or Jiri. Lynesse had lived, so had Myranda and Jiri. Serra had died. Of the men he knew by name, only Coruja and Monafryd lived. He learned the three archers' names later: Carman, Syrio, and Samahanabad. Carman was the left-handed, squinting one. Syrio was a silent, patient man with olive skin and a balding skull, and Samahanabad was a big, ebony-skinned man with a bald head and a massive bow that curled around his shoulders.
"Can you understand me?"
He turned around. "Jiri?" the kid gave him a big smile. "You speak English now?"
"Harri taught me."
It was too perfect for her to have learned the normal way, complete with an American accent and everything. "AllSpeak. How does it work?"
She picked up his clipboard, brows furrowed. "This shouldn't work," she marveled. "I don't know how to read in any language." Jiri rubbed her forehead. "It's a lot. You have to find the butterfly."
Well, that was extremely helpful. "Can you explain?"
"Harri showed me her doing it. It's like reaching for the sun. It's hovering between us, touching both our heads." the kid reached out at something in the air. "See?"
Tony learned how to do it himself without much trouble. The sun shone overhead. It was a beautiful day. It felt unfair in the aftermath. There were still bodies everywhere.
"How was Harri?" He walked and talked, headed towards the hot air balloon. Jiri looked at him with small eyes.
"She did not move until I asked her a question," Jiri said. "She does not…initiate. I always fear I will offend her, but I do not think there's enough fire in her to care. Did you make her help you with food and camp?"
Tony nodded. The envelope was laid out across a cleared field. There were mud and bloodstains on the silk from where it had fallen on bodies. He drew a bit of sun and wiggled his finger. How did it go again? "Tergeo," he muttered. The fabric fluttered a bit. He tilted his head. Maybe it looked a bit cleaner. He hooked the basket back in and glanced back at the kid. "Take me for a ride?"
Jiri nodded. "You invented this?" The process of taking off in a hot air balloon was not particularly luxurious. The basket had to be tipped on its side while the envelope inflated with hot air. Tony grabbed the edge of the wicker as it tipped up. The massive red, yellow, pink and purple blob drifted into the sky.
"No," Tony said. "Actually, can you just keep the thing inflated without lifting off? I'm going to grab Harri."
He vaulted over the basket and located the witch moping in her bedroom. He dragged her outside and gestured at the balloon. She stared up at it from the porch. The sun lit the envelope from behind, a glorious checkerboard of silken colors, mud and blood. Harri slipped silently in next to them. Jiri stuck her arm in through the throat again, drawing heat glyphs in the air.
Creaking, the balloon lifted off. Harri leaned her elbows on the railing and looked down. Her hair hung down around her like a curtain. Jiri intuited when to slow down on the heat. They leveled off a thousand feet up. "Smooth sailing, Sunspot." Tony leaned against his side of the basket. Jiri smiled. The balloon bounced up a bit in response.
He looked down with Harri and the mood went solemn. Their camp was maybe five by five football fields of ruined shelters. Mud tracks trampled just about all of the grass in the central space, ripped woven grass and cloth scattered among the doused and damp ashen firepits. They hadn't had time to clear away the bodies of friends or hostiles. There were thousands of them. Wildlife had begun to close in on the massacre. Carrion birds flapped below in small groups, big predators approaching from all sides.
It was a major feast. "Did you fly once?" Jiri asked. AllSpeak interceded for Tony. She had asked Harri, not him. "I remember you had wings, I'm sorry if I shouldn't have mentioned-"
"I love flying," Harri admitted. "This feels like a carpet, but with integrated shade. My wings can't be healed like other wounds. They need mithril I don't have." She rubbed her scarred side.
Part of her ribs had burned away, Tony remembered. Mithril and Valyrian steel acted like matter and antimatter. They annihilated each other. "Sounds like we need a space station."
Harri slumped, bracing herself against the other side of the basket. "You want to leap straight to the space age in your lifespan, without a wand?"
"I managed."
A crossbreeze caught the balloon and pushed it gently to the east. Harri wiggled a finger and corrected the balloon's course. She looked up at the dirty envelope. The filth vanished. "Where would we even start? We'd have to gather materials from all over the world and start from nothing, it's a billion steps-"
"Not nothing," Tony corrected. He projected the tech tree into the air in front of them, scrolling through the overview. "Friday left me with plans. And everything is backed up in Malibu, all we need to do is open a keyhole-"
"Tony." Harri's tone stopped him. "I know you are used to asking me to do things and then those things getting done, but I can't do that. I can't do anything."
Tony scoffed. Jiri looked at her strangely. "You can still heal. I might've died if you couldn't. Remember the gut stab wound, courtesy of Mr. Nutsackface?"
"You want to surpass twenty-first century technology from rocks and sticks. We have nothing and no one but the two of us to advance the tech tree. And my magic is a shitty cudgel where it needs to be an army of constructor robots and a library of knowledge."
He cleared his throat. "Giant cart of treasure ring a bell? I figure that'll kickstart electricals, cook up a couple of basic suits – I'm sure you can figure it out-" Harri shook her head, propping it up with a hand. He trailed off.
"You defeated the khalasar," Jiri reminded her. "Is that not power?"
Tony assessed the witch. "She's used to being a god." he kept his eyes on Harri. "I remember she made a hospital appear in the middle of New York City after the invasion. Are challenges foreign to you now? Can't handle a bit of pushback?" he remembered the way she refused to heal refugees unless he gave them a pat on the back first. Irritated, harsher words spilled from him than he would have said otherwise.
"Are we storybook characters like you, Harri? Is that why you don't care? We're the Avengers. Yeah Arya's dead, and- Parker," he forced out. "So let's get some vengeance. That fucker's gotta die, and you're not helping." Tony breathed heavily. Harri looked away. She twisted in her corner and vanished with a crack.
Regret crashed down on him. Jiri startled, watching the place where Harri had been a second ago. The balloon bobbed with the absence of her weight. He slid his back down and sat on the wicker floor. Jiri kept her hand up, warming the balloon. "Thanks, kid." She nodded.
"Who's Friday?" she asked.
"Female Replacement Intelligent Digital Assistant Youth. A helping program." Jiri nodded dumbly. Tony wondered if explaining concepts like computers and artificial intelligence was too difficult for a stone-age girl. "I feel like a Howard."
"What's that?"
"An insensitive idiot," he gusted. "Who – probably – means well."
"Should I land?"
"Probably for the best."
Jiri put her fist down, relieved. He didn't even have to prompt her, when the balloon began to fall too quickly she gave it another shot of heat. "What about a wand?"
"Where'd you hear about that?"
Jiri shrugged.
"You talked about it before Borgo first came. Asked where to find dragons. Old Valyria to the south." Jiri pointed out from the basket towards the horizon. "Would it fix this?"
"Maybe. I could go there." But Jiri shook her head. "Or not. Why? Allergic to dragons?"
"Who would not be," she snorted. "To go to the ruins of Valyria is to die. It is known. Legend of Aurion the dragonlord. He rode a mount as big as a palace, the color of blood and ash. Or so the elders said. Him, his dragon and ten thousand men to reclaim Valyria. None returned."
Tony whistled. Valyria's threat level went way up in his mind. 'Threat level,' God he was turning into Fury. Was that what responsibility felt like? He saw the balloon's shadow converge on them and braced himself. The basket thumped into the mud. Jiri vaulted over the ledge before the balloon could tangle them in it. Tony splished over the sodden mud, shaking clumps from his shoes.
"Watch out for tigers, Sunspot."
"They will not bother us if they are fed." Jiri appeared unbothered by the smell of death. "They will be fed well."
Later, Tony joined Coruja in cleanup efforts around the kitchen and pavilion. It was all a very gruesome scene, people had tried to hide in and defend from the three stone buildings in all of camp and as a result, much of the death was concentrated in the bathhouse, kitchen, and pavilion. Tony scrubbed with the survivors until his knees and palms were raw with watered down blood and rough rags. He and Coruja put the water tower back up; they were the only ones left who had worked on the project out of a team of twenty men. The blood stained deep and they had little soap to work with. No one would forget what happened.
Resentment burned in his chest. This was what evil was made of. Tony felt the ugly thing inside his chest. It whispered of awful deeds, things well within his reach. It was the same blackened part of him that wanted to forget about the Middle East, to send every devastating weapon he could dream of into that hellhole and let everybody kill each other until there was no one left to commit atrocities. It was the voice colonists surrendered to when they consigned natives to 'savages' who could do better with their land. It was everyone who ever summed up a geopolitical conflict with 'why don't they just' and left it at that. Apathy mingled with hatred, and an arrogant certainty that he could do better.
The kitchen only became clean enough to work in for dinner. Monafryd suggested eating one of the hyenas but Tony hadn't the heart to kill one. They did not kill any of his friends today. He shot down a handful of vultures with beams of sunlight. He helped clear the pavilion while food was prepared. None of the survivors had been cooks, mostly women with some rudimentary skills.
There was just no way to bury their dead. They had thousands of bodies to dispose of. Tony dumped all the Dothraki in a pile at the edge of camp and let the wildlife feast. They were easy to pick out, dead near metal weapons with bells braided into their hair. The refugees were much more ethnically and culturally diverse. They were lined in dignified rows and clothed or wrapped in blankets. Samahanabad had volunteered to keep scavengers away and shot at everything that tried to peck at them with his massive bow. He was a giant dark sentinel, moving only to draw his huge golden weapon.
Weary in body and soul, Tony ate with the survivors. He accepted a bottle from Coruja. "Pentoshi vintage," the man said. "We make the best stuff." Tony poured a glass and swirled it, holding it up to the torchlight. It was fruity, almost enough to mask the sour alcohol.
"I've had worse," he agreed.
"Discerning taste," Coruja joked. Tony sipped again. How many years sober was that? Back to zero.
"I can play wine snob with the best." Coruja made to grab the bottle, then glanced at him as if asking. "You don't need my permission."
"It is more your victory than mine and besides. This came from the first wagons of spoils." Coruja closed his eyes and tipped his glass back. "It tastes different when it is not a scrap from your master's table," he murmured.
"It's, hm, not really a victory at all." Tony's hands came alive like a second voice. He quashed the urge to chug the whole glass. The first sip had reawakened an old thirst. "Lots of people dead and all that." He swallowed a demented giggle.
"But we are alive," Coruja pointed out. He gestured to where the honored dead lay in rows. Samahanabad stood a shadowy sentinel over them, his bow glimmering in the torchlight. "They were not so lucky. Will Harri not be joining us?"
Tony's mood soured even further. "Fuck her. I get she's got problems, but the crisis comes first. We didn't kill every last one of those animals. They're gonna be headed back to the mothership to tattle on big bad us."
"My sentiments exactly. Mind if I join you?" Monafryd carried a wooden platter of food with him. Tony gestured silently at the empty space on the bench. "I have gauged the interest of several parties, Tony Stark. We all are of the same mind. There are not enough of us to withstand another attack. We wish to return home to Braavos."
"Then go," Tony said. He bit into his wing. It was bland and dry. Fatigue ambushed him out of nowhere. He was still going through caffeine withdrawal. He suspected it would get worse for another month before things would get better. "Take a horse or something. There are more than enough left."
Monafryd smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. "You misunderstand. A lone traveler is prey to bandits and cutthroats, sellswords and slavers. Twenty men, plus a warrior like Harri, a party like that would be safe."
He grumbled. "What do you think, Coruja?"
The Pentoshi looked startled to be asked his opinion. "I owe you both my life and good health. I might have liked to go to Braavos when I first escaped Pentos, but only because I did not know where else to go." Monafryd glared at Coruja. He shrugged. "It is the truth."
Tony turned the thought over in his mind. They'd not set down roots yet. Not really. They could leave the house and its blessed indoor plumbing and go see what Braavos was all about. But… Valyria was in the south. If he understood correctly, Braavos was about as far from them as Valyria, in the opposite direction. And Valyria might mean a wand. A wand meant magic which just might mean going home.
"I can't go," he admitted.
"Why," Monafryd demanded. "What is so special about this bloodstained patch of nothing in the middle of the Dothraki Sea?"
"This is where the rift put us." Tony pointed straight up. "I don't like it here. It sucks. People barely shower, murderous hordes wander around, and apparently slavery is still rampant. Frankly, I'd like to go home, and the only way I can think to leave is through the way we came."
"You came through the broken sky," Coruja murmured. "And the Storm Goddess? What is it like on the other side?"
"Not so great right now," he admitted. His mind helpfully replayed Peter's face dissolving into ash. "But it's home."
Coruja set down his glass and leveled with Monafryd. "I owe Tony and Harri my life and my freedom. I do not intend to repay them with abandonment-"
"I did not suggest that," Monafryd snapped. "I wanted us all to leave for Braavos. I want to live. Do you think that we can withstand another raid, Pentoshi? The twenty of us, and eighty women? Borgo was not the largest khalasar out there. I estimated ten or five-and-ten thousand men. It is not uncommon to see hordes of forty or fifty thousand." he gestured around at the stone pavilion, then the lake of glossy obsidian. "This place is marked. We may find it again, when you are more prepared. Whatever you could possibly want, you can buy in Braavos."
"Even slaves?" Coruja challenged. Tony's stomach turned.
"If he wanted those, then his opinion is not worth caring over and we would be better to abandon now." Monafryd looked down his nose at Coruja.
Tony found himself wavering. An actual city (no matter that it was medieval or renaissance) would be a boon. Employees, resources, security, it all attracted him. But…
"I need to go to Valyria."
Everyone fell silent. It was proof that other tables were listening in, plenty of eavesdroppers dropped their pretenses to stare at him like he was an idiot.
Monafryd broke the long silence. "Well there, I certainly will not follow."
Tony looked around. He had known it was bad, but this felt like something else. "Why is it so bad?"
"Aside from the fact that Aurion the Dragonlord lost his mount and ten thousand men to the cursed land?" Monafryd laughed hollowly. "Every child in the world has heard stories, Tony Stark. The greatest empire the world has ever seen, gone in a day. Imagine this: any man who entered the ruins would find the spoils of an empire that covered from the western shore to the Bone Mountains, untouched for two hundred years. If he returned, he would instantly be the richest man in the world."
"If," Lynesse muttered. She seemed to have lost her appetite. Myranda stared with her.
"Some fools do," Monafryd admitted. "An old king from the Sunset Kingdoms, Aurion of course, a Targaryen girl flew the Black Dread there some years ago. She returned in no state to testify and expired soon after. Balerion had a nine-foot gash in his side, and King Tommen Lannister was never heard from again. Every once and a while the Purple Harbor hear of a crew with more greed than sense who cast off for the old ruins, but maybe one in ten return, always those who turn back at the sight of the broken islands. That is where you want to go, Tony Stark. A land of endless dusk where stone men shamble and the greatest dragon alive fled from wounded."
"Sounds like a regular Ohio," Tony said. His joke fell flat. The tension in the pavilion was unbearable. Even Coruja and Jiri looked unwilling.
"So you will not go there?" Monafryd checked.
"Titan wasn't exactly a walk in the park either," he muttered under his breath. "No. Dammit, I have to go there."
"Why? What is so pressing that a man who professes to have been here all of a week needs to run straight into the most dangerous place in the world?" Monafryd pressed.
"A wand." Tony put dramatic flair onto the word, let it drop into the pavilion like the word 'Valyria' had. All he received were incredulous looks.
"I wish you the best of fortune with this 'wand,'" Monafryd said a little hysterically. "But I will not follow you there. Better to walk alone in the Dothraki Sea."
The prospect of going to Valyria looked worse and worse. Tony could not justify going without real prep, but nor could he scrap the idea. There just wasn't another option. He cleared his plate. "I'll look into the feasibility of escorting you guys to Braavos first." It felt like board meeting lingo, like they were calculating how they could pump up the value of their shares. Tony forced himself to reevaluate. They weren't motivated by greed, they just wanted to survive. "But I won't ask anyone to follow me, either. No one's making you stay here. If you want to head for Braavos, be my guest. If not, I think a year is a fair timetable. One year from today, I'll personally guarantee a party safe passage to Braavos. Capice?"
Tony read general agreement. "Good. Now in the meantime, let's not mope around and wait for death to catch us."
"Valar Morghulis," Monafryd intoned like a goodbye. It was Tony's first time hearing foreign words at the same time as AllSpeak translated their meaning. All men must die.
"Not today," he replied. "Not today."
AN: It's been a while. Finals had me busy. This is also unbeta'd. The backlog of chapters is starting to stack up, but I haven't gone through them so they might need a lot of revision. With revisions, added chapters, and splitting really long ones, I've probably got up to chapter twenty or something. I've been toying with the idea of going back to my HP/IC crossover and finishing or fixing it, but it feels like a project to tackle with somebody else, if anyone's interested in spitballing or something. Specifically, if InhaledAtoms is still reading this, I've found your feedback super helpful a number of times.
I wish FFN supported three category crossovers.
I've been on a bit of an aviation kick recently, in case you couldn't tell.