AEGON

"Visenya's blade flashed before his eyes in the second of an instant. Dark Sister flew up swiftly towards his face. And yet Aegon was faster. He parried and stopped the strike with his Blackfyre, clanking down and back towards her with at first merely a decent but later a perfect strike.

They were up on the battlements of the inner castle walls, fighting along its crenellations, with the ground a solid hundred feet below them. The silver white moon was up, in the hazy foreboding sky, and Meraxes could be seen dancing like a far silhouette in the horizon, yet still within hearing range. Rhaenys stood watching on the side, a goblet of deep red, sweet wine in hand.

"You two are hopeless. Fighting. Crude violence. All the time. Is that really all you can think of?"

"Violence, of course. Crude, no. We will need to fight and keep ourselves sharp if we are to win over an entire continent, sister", Visenya said, brushing her sword's pommel. "Don't you think?" she asked.

"I don't think it's our swords the people will fear most", Rhaenys said, inclining her head towards Meraxes in the distance – a motion which neither Aegon nor Visenya had the capacity to see, locked in serious combat as they were.

"All the same, it is good to be prepared. The knights of the Reach are said to be the finest in Westeros, and I would not want to lose a single drop of our precious blood to those fools."

RHAENYS

What about losing your maidenhead? She almost said aloud in a spurt of drollness, but stopped herself before the thought could wander to her mouth.

"You said it yourself, sister. They lack our swords.

Aegon gave a hard yet pointless charge at Visenya's shoulder shield.

"Is that all you have, brother?" mocked Visenya, her vicious smile flashing up like a shine of white.

"Far from it, sister", retorted Aegon and flashed right back at her, lungeing his sword to her stomach. She grunted hard, the sound coming from deep within her loins – a sound much deeper, more masculine and yet also more mature than any Rhaenys would be able to produce – before lunging back at their brother, and Rhaenys almost felt ashamed over where her thoughts went.

Had Visenya truly gone through all her years in life without ever making that sound out of passion? Was she simply their mature older sister, doomed to never let herself allow for something more? Or was it because of Aegon's seeming disinterest? No, she thought; Aegon would not have said no to her, but she would not allow it, out of some sense of old bitterness and pride. At least so she thought. She still did not know for certain whether they had ever laid with each other other than the consummation. If they had, they had surely been keeping it secret.

Perhaps it was because of their lord father. If she were to ever allow him to get inside of her, it would mean submitting as a wife and woman to him, and leaving her position as the ever watchful god slightly above both of their heads. She could not help but be fascinated by the thought of Visenya's dour face resting with her sharp nose and chin just slightly above Aegon's pale forehead, as they moaningly went at each other in bed, and wondered with a perverse curiosity just how sweetly her sister would act.

Would she suddenly squeal like one of the proper noble ladies of the mainland, like her friend lady Massey? Or would she in silence simply stand there and allow him to fuck her, like the female spider allows her tiny male, all the while still keeping Dark Sister an inch away from his throat?

She laughed, spriggishly, and then felt deeply ashamed of her thoughts once again.

No, she mustn't think of that. No. Visenya was her older sister, almost like a mother to her, and deserved all of her respect. Forever. She did not know a single soul in the world who she respected more. Not Maester Uvaulde, not Ser Quentyn. Not her dragon, not Meraxes, for they were much the same in youth and immaturity, at least when they were together. Certainly not Aegon. Her brother was many things, but Visenya was ever the greater one, the watchful one, the wise one. Just like their mother and father had been before.

Finally, Visenya seemed to get Aegon in a paralyzing grip, and the fight seemed to be at a temporary end, perhaps for the night. He was stuck and reaching for the hem of her swordbelt, but she could see it quickly and pulled his arm back to hinder him from reaching it. Or at least so she tried. But their brother was a man after all, and his arms were stronger than hers without a weapon in them. He wrenched free of her hold, and took ahold of the belt.

She could see the shock and anger coming from Visenya's eyes, as she came to this vile realization that she was in fact still a woman, albeit a fearsome warrior. And Aegon [ ] his [ ], as they both melted into a sort of acceptance before the fight's conclusion. Rhaenys put aside her goblet on the stone of the crenellations just beside her and clapped eagerly.

"Well done, brother and sister! You too, Visenya", she said. "You almost had him."

Almost. That was a slight. Almost was not enough in Visenya's hard mind, and yet this particular night almost was all that she would have to content herself with. Yet Rhaenys would not be a source of her frustration or shame. Never. She would always look up to her elder sister, no matter how much of a warrior Aegon would prove to be in the future, or indeed, how he already was. And Visenya would not stop here, she knew, or let herself be [ ]. No.

Visenya [ ] with a kick to the chandelier stand beside them, seeing it roll to the side on the ground, the flames fickling in the cold evening quell air.

She was not happy, Rhaenys could tell. But of course, who would be after losing? The feeling of a change of [ ] was rife in the air, as it always was when Aegon would win. She looked to her brother, as he had an exasperated smile of beginning satisfaction and pride on his face. He held Blackfyre up, breathed out one more time from the effort, and slid the sword back into its sheath by his side. He seemed relieved to not have lost towards 'Senya.

But Rhaenys would not take anyone's side, or champion one of them before the other, even after such a great win as this for Aegon. She had a simple and much purer job/role to play in these matters, ever since she was little and looking on not out of disinterest but out of pure youth, when she had been around five or thereabouts, and her siblings [ ] and [ ], respectively. It had only been a childish [ ] at that point, with their parents or Maester/[ ] or Septa [ ] or Ser Quentyn Qoherys looking on from [ ], but all the same, it had always been on bloody alware, although also fun. And Rhaenys knew what her role in this was, as it had ever been. Even now, when she could at least put on her suit of armour and try to match them, perhaps give Aegon a bit of a challenge at some rare occasion with her swiftness, she was still the younger of them, and contented herself with applauding chivalrously at the end, no matter who won, thus ensuring the happiness of both her brother and sister. Yes. That was what she could continue to do, she knew, as they slowly went into this war togheter, swords clangouring against swords, plates of armour brushing up against each other, and loins and limbs entering and closig in on each other in grunting or moaning determination. She would love them both, and somewhere deep inside, she hoped that they would continue to love each other as well. [[[[[The dragon has three heads, she thought, and we musn't fight between ourselves.?]]]]

…

VISENYA

"Very well, brother. You win this time", Visenya said with a reluctant bow, as soon as she had caught her breath.

Her brother smiled demoniously, that childish triumphant [ ] which he at times got, [ ], and she promised herself hard in her heart that she would not let him win the next time. She would not give him an opportunity like that again. He has strong arms, she told herself to remember. Don't let him use them against you like that next time. [ ]

...

RHAENYS

She hauled herself onto Vhagar with a flash of her [ ] in the silver light of the moon above. And they both watched her as she flew away into the horizon as she usually did.

...

Rhaenys and Aegon remained, as her brother gathered together his things and loosened the plates of his armor. He was sweating profusely as he breathed out and tried to calm down after the fight.

...

Feel my heart, brother", she said. He drew his hand forth, feeling her heart beating underneath her thin scaly mail shirt. He felt, he stood there with his arm entirely outstretched the full length between his warm body and hers, and he felt her heart beating inside her sweet, youthful chest. Glowing like red fire, glowing and burning hot with youthful desire.

"The future is ours", he said. "We have all dreamt it. Riding our dragons to the great lands to the west, all the people so small like ants below us. And the great mountains the same."

"If you wish to move towards that future, you will have to fulfil your role

and start to actually ride on your dragon some more,

sooner or later.", Rhaenys said [förstrött], puzzling with her long braid behind her back and trying to get a look at it from the corner of her eyes.

"I will have enough when the time comes.", he said in a determined voice.

"When the time comes? When we go to a dreary war, you mean? Why not anywhere, any time? Why not here and now?"

"I don't want to", he said simply, turning around to walk away.

"You don't dare to", she said.

He stopped and turned back to face her again.

"And is that such a bad thing, if that were the case? No other human in the world beside us would dare to even go near them. He is mine, and out to the Sea with you at that. He knows no other rider, no other face in this world which he would not devour in a storm of flames simply for having the guts to regard him as an equal. I have known him, I have grown up with him, I have loved him with the ashes and fire of my own heart since I was a little boy. Must I fly around on him each day as if I were some necklace toy dangling from his back in order to prove that I'm a man?"

"You do not need to prove that you are a man, sweet brother. I know that very well, and you prove it with great satisfaction every time you want to. You are the Blood of the Dragon. That is what you need to prove."

"The Blood of the Dragon, yes. Not a dragon, unless you had noticed. I cannot breathe fire myself, or else this conversation might have ended much sooner."

"You do not listen to what I'm saying, brother. You are the Blood of the Dragon. We are. If you cannot ride a dragon, who else?"

"I have already told you, I don't feel like riding him on every single bloody night the way you do with Meraxes! Perhaps I only wish to have a quiet night here, still on the ground. Have your merry flight yourself, like you always do, and be done with it!"

"You are afraid, brother."

"You have not seen what I have seen, felt what I have felt. You do not know what it's like. It is not the same for you, with Meraxes."

"And yet you do not fear that he shall throw you off, do you? That is not the source of your terror." She slowly approached him. "It is something else, some trouble of the mind. No?" She stopped to [ ].

"Go on Meraxes, you. And leave me alone for once."

"Yes. You are right to have some fear in you, or else our ancestors would not have made it to this day so that we could stand here bickering about it. Yes... It is true, dear brother. A dragon is something great, someone great, possibly the very second greatest thing in the entire world... It breathes fire upon its prey, it can take wing and fly across the concerns of the earth down below; in its enormous grandeur and dominion over the earth, it owns the very sky itself... And yet we are men. Small, tiny, pink men with soft hands and feet, yes. For certain. And yet with our hands we have grown, we have managed, we have gathered, we have crafted, we have fought, and we have slowly but surely changed the world, all from the fire of our own hearts. And believe it or not, dear brotherr, as such, we have to stand certain and steadfast in our steps before the marvel of dragons, that enormous great thing of wonder which we see before us, and take the charge – as the only thing in this world which is greater and more wondrous even than that."

She stood still for a while, savouring the moment of her speech, as he watched the wind fly in her hair. She was waiting for his mulled-over reply. He would give it to her.

AEGON

"Bronze is more flexible than iron.", he said. "And yet you wouldn't fight a war with only a handful of bronze. Neither would our ancestors. Do you not remember what happened to the ones who tried taming them without proper protection? How many terrors came from that?"

"I trust Balerion. You do too. This isn't about that anyway. It is about the mind. Your great, bronze-like, steely mind over his, ancient and iron-wrought mind, brother."

"You do not know him like I do. If you did, you would shut your mouth and stop taunting me like this. I am your elder brother, unless you had forgotten. You should show me respect and respect my decision to wait."

"I know Meraxes", she said. "And thereby, I know dragons. Oh yes, brother. I understand their intelligence, their wits, and yet even they are no match for us. We have different skills, you see. Dragons know. Dragons understand. Dragons remember, through hundreds and hundreds of years, yes. All of this they do. And yet why is it, then, that a dragon cannot hold a weapon, or build a house, or tie a bunch of ropes together into a net, to catch its prey better?"

"Dragons don't have hands. That is the price of flying." He was growing tired of her ridiculous talk.

"Even if they did, they could not fathom the whirlwind ways which our minds take on the route to a new solution, the achievement of an answer to a riddle which the gods have posed. Do you recall how father would sit for hours tinkering at that metal box of his from Myr, with nothing else in his mind until he came somewhere?–"

"I see what you mean. But that was a bad example, though", Aegon interrupted. "Father never got it properly fixed."

"No, but he came somewhere. He made it forward. Perhaps you or I will make the final step some day. But dragons will not, dragons cannot listen to their forebears and continue on a line they have been given by someone else, unless it is wrought inside their very minds by someone like us, with the connection. They cannot think and plan and create for themselves, like we do. Don't you see? Dragons live, dragons revel, and fly with the wind, yes, and dragons destroy. But they are no match for us in the act of creation. Take your great mind, now, brother, and create something, some shield of yours which you can hold against him, some trick to change his sway that he has over you, something secret, something new, something strange... And take charge, as the thinking man, over the feeling beast."

Aegon did not know what to do or say. She had been building up this entire lengthy speech about the greatness of men over dragons, something which he was duly impressed by, but something which he nonetheless already knew. And it did little to help his frets, and objections. Most of all, he simply had already decided and did not feel like it tonight, no matter her very good points. He stood there, thinking, anticipating, watching her staring at him with her long hair streaming in the wind, her face unusually stern and decided, almost a bit like Visenya just now.

"I'm…- I am tired", he said.

"You are not tired, brother. The Blood of the Dragon does not tire."

"What if I tell you that I am? And Balerion is too, besides."

"I do not believe that for a moment. No, I think that our beloved Balerion would do well to take his chances with Meraxes tonight. Don't you think?" she said, speaking to Balerion as if he were a cat.

"Today is a magical night. There is something in the air. I can feel it. Something great which has changed, and all the new possibilities are laid bare."

"You are starting to sound like Visenya", noted Aegon. "I thought you did not care for magic and the sway of mystical airs."

She stood there for a while, silent, judging him, as he saw in his eyes that she thought he was the most boring man in the world at that precise moment.

"Are you made all of stone, dear brother? I have talked for nigh on an hour and you refuse to change your thick-headed mind even so."

"Perhaps", he said. "But someone needs to stand like a stone pillar when all around crumbles to its fate in this fickle world."

"Spare me the poems. Spare me your severity. Or, on a second thought… Give it to me, so long as it is a fertile, deep, frenetic, craving lust-filled severity of love. You are not some stone boulder, Aegon. You are a man. You are made of sweet flesh and blood, just like me."

They stood there watching each other for a silent while.

"Don't tell me you have not felt it too. The hour is ripe."

"For certain I have felt it. What of it?

"Listen to Balerion, then. Even he can sense it, through his thick, dense, scaly black skin. Can't you, my love?" she called at Balerion to where he stood, some twenty or forty feet behind him to the left. He saw the long downwards-bent head of the great dragon, bowing down to the surface of the green grass of the ground from his long neck, an enormous black beast of a hundred years old and yet now he moved somehow with the senseful, dainty of a young cat or dog, suddenly calm and loyal before Rhaenys's calling words.

"Yes, you are my love, aren't you? My great, big, ugly beast of a boy?…"

"Don't call him ugly if you are trying to impress him", snapped Aegon. Balerion was never one to respond kindly to feeble-minded or foolish, wrongful talk. His mind held in itself vast, sprawling fountains of language, great libraries of knowledge, dragon and human alike, and more High Valyrian than Aegon knew himself. Inside his enormous brain, which was surely a possible quarter of his head, was rymdes greater wisdom than most scribes of men, with their short lives. Balerion understood every word that was spoken between them, though he had his own innate language too, his vast dragon-language which was an entire world in and of itself, and might not care for all of it. But when he heard something which was a direct order, he usually listened, and when he heard something which was wrong to him, he felt it with his entire being the way that he could feel the smallest gust of wind nudging at his wing tips in flight. So, thought Aegon, he must feel it now.

Besides, Balerion was never ugly; he had never been ugly. Rhaenys did not think so either. They were all the blood of the dragon, and saw that the reptilian shapes of their kin were the most beautiful ones the gods had ever crafted, the very fairest shapes that there was. Although the word "beautiful", as it was spoken in the Common Tongue of Westeros, was not necessarily particularly beautiful when compared to the Valyrian word, vakker, [/[ ]], and was perhaps only suited to precisely the sort of deep, b[ ] behemoth-like beauty of the broad-built and scarred Balerion, ironically enough.

"I'm not trying to impress him, I'm trying to seduce him.", said Rhaenys, edging closer to the beast.

"That the same", said Aegon.

"My beautiful battle-scarred boy", she continued. "My great big wondrous boy… Nuha róvégrie róva amendyzie valítsos..."

What is she doing? thought Aegon. They seldom ever approached each others' dragons, for the level of aggression alone. The dragons were all bonded with their specific riders, and neither dragons nor riders were always in harmony with each other. So the same definitely held true for one rider getting too close with the other rider's dragon, be it Balerion, Vhagar or Meraxes.

Sure, they would often stand close by and might even pet each other's dragons at certain times, but only if the dragon's rider was present, and preferrably already in close contact. Otherwise noone would approach another's dragon. At one time, Aegon had seem Vhagar sitting on the vast curtain wall of the castle, as he strode out for an early morning walk and survey of the island. She had been utterly silent, sitting perched up high like an immense [white-grey?] ghost towards the backdrop of the [mulna] sky behind, with a dead, bloody pink and white sheep latched onto the crenellation beside her, as she had returned from her morning hour hunt in the misty, chill hour of day which was most like a white void of all space and time. The way she had looked at him then, staring so stillfully and deftly with cold in her gaze from afar, her entire being and her eyes frozen entirely still except for the light grey smoke slowly pouring its way out through her nostrils – he had been almost certain that she would have struck him down and eaten him right then and there, and yet for some reason she had not. She did not enjoy being disturbed, however. That much was clear, and Aegon had chosen to significantly shorten his walk through the grounds on that particular day, hurrying back and inside the castle again to leave her in peace.

The future can hold anything for us, brother. The future is the great, open, velderly sky above."

"The future is afore my hands."

"Yes. Afore your hands, not in them. So reach forward then, and take it, brother.", she whispered and leapt her way backward up on Meraxes like a pisk/whip of wind.

Aegon flushed red hot, sprang himself like a madman towards Balerion, who was already trembling and roaring like a hurricane from all of the [ ], all the while thinking damn you, damn you, damn you to the Fourteen, you restless she-demon of a trickster! He cast himself up the two or three body lengths up Balerion's right side, yanking his own left leg stiffly to the side in a rushed motion to cover the breadth of Balerion's shoulder blades, just below the beginning of his neck as usual, and felt already surprised that he had survived even this far. The great, black beast started rising, elevating up from the safety of the ground like a giant, shaking cloud of pure massive unbridled power. It is too late now, at any rate, he thought finally, a[ ]ing to the [ ]. All right, then, old brother. Let's brave the storm yet another time.

Aegon felt his heart reaching halfway up his throat to his adam's apple, as his thoughts and feelings and new shields in his mind went up and above his head, far above towards the darkly shining sky above. They ascended, both their heads ever higher towards the sky, and the night enveloped them in that fabulous drill of ardrenaline which was to keep them driving forward, claiming each stroke of their wings for themselves, taking it from the surrounding cold air, all the while maniacally chanting to himself inside his mind, something, which he did not even know what it was, just some spit of a poem which he thought up in the spur of the moment to calm himself, it is ours, we shall take it, my black brother shall not break it, we shall reach and we shall strive and we shall drive and we shall make it.

In six more heartbeats, Balerion had caught up with Meraxes's tail. He was lashing out at her, snapping at her tail, encircling her already, wrangling his entire weight around her as Rhaenys screamed and laughed and whirled in pure ecstatic excitement. Aegon was mad now, truly and beastly mad, and yet he knew that he had to control himself. Take the anger and control it. Apprehend it, now, and control it. Now you are done with your human anger. That will not hurt anyone. You have the upper hand; you are all caught up. Now leave and take the mission. Accomplish it. Go inside him, trust him, and be one with the beast.

Dryness is the first thing he feels. The ever-encompassing dryness which comes from having a dragon's scales and body, and the lack of importance that the chill of the night has to his fiery black heart. He is warm, like always, thought Aegon. No, not he. I am. I am warm like always. That felt good, he supposed. He felt the pressing urgency of his black, scaly underside, as the very second thing he felt, half a heartbeat later, throbbing from beneath and under him even as they swept closer towards each other in that short, eternal moment, his feet grasping at her hindquarters and her elegant, perfect broad dragon hips [ ] to an entrance for him.

He pressed closer, as his wings flapped all the while, and he saw the entire scene almost from without somehow, with his numb-headed rider standing like a doll on top of him to the left in the roaring black wind of the sky, his merry golden-meddled love [ ] and her tiny rider now turning into her mind as well to enjoy it, the hard rain lashing out across all of their faces, and time stood still.