Shipbreak Bay
"Take Prince Lucerys back to his dragon. Now."
A part of Luke knew right then and there that he had just been sentenced to death.
As he stood there in the middle of Storm's End's Round Hall, drenched and soaked to the bone, with his uncle all but frothing at the mouth to get at him, a frenzied twist to his lips that would have been a smirk were it not so savage... it was all he could do to meet Aemond's glower and desperately try not to give away any more of his fear, for all the good that did him in the end.
Even as the household guards pulled him away and started escorting him back to Arrax, dread quickly pooled in his gut and grew with the sickening surety that his uncle's reckoning wouldn't end there.
It was only their host's blustering and the wall of armored men between them that had prevented him from clearing the distance and gouging out Luke's eye in repayment for his own, guest rights and bonds of blood be damned, and the utter rage in his one eye left Luke with no callow delusions as to what would come next.
Aemond would not let him go, not without trying to take his due in blood.
And the lord of Storm's End had just cast him out into the oncoming storm.
Out to Vhagar, who was as likely to settle for just an eye as a starving beggar was to settle for just a breadcrumb when he could have the whole loaf instead.
Borros Baratheon couldn't have killed him better if he'd swung the blade himself, and whether that was deliberate malice or careless stupidity was irrelevant because Luke could very well die either way.
He swallowed roughly, the inside of his mouth suddenly drier than dornish sand-stone.
No, he tried to reassure himself, it wouldn't come to that.
It wouldn't.
He intended to keep his composure and march his way back to Arrax with as much dignity as he could muster, but his resolve broke the moment the great doors were opened for him and he found himself bolting forward through the sleet and howling winds as quickly as his feet would carry him.
It was pathetic, and they'd rush to call him craven for it, but right then he couldn't bring himself to care about the humiliation and the shame he'd just opened himself up to by fleeing.
Let them call him what they will. There'd be other chances to prove himself, but he needed to get back to Dragonstone and warn his mother of the Baratheon's decision to support Aegon's cause and pledge their swords to his banner.
He wanted - needed wanted to to go home.
Arrax was already half-rabid before Luke made it to his side, the ordinarily mild-tempered beast snapping and shrieking with every other peal of thunder, acting more like some manner of a cornered rat than the dragon he was.
It only took a single flash of lightning to realize that it had nothing with the storm.
Vhagar had vanished.
For a moment, the wave of sickening dread that tore down his spine was so intense it was only sheer will and the thrum of Arrax's fire burning beneath his ribcage that prevented his knees from collapsing out from under him.
He staggered back to Arrax's side and leaned his weight against his bulk.
"Easy, easy." The words were for both of them, and though the high valryian he had to scream out over the roar of the storm was mangled with fear and the pronunciation a butchery that would have had Daemon rapping his knuckles if he ever heard it, it served its purpose well enough. "Be calm, Arrax, be calm and serve me."
His own panic didn't abate, but Arrax settled long enough to lower his neck to the courtyard stone and let Luke scramble onto his saddle, and he'd just barely managed to clamp down on the last chain before the dragon heaved upwards, pearlescent white scales beating the air with fervor born of terror and launching them up and over Storm's End's curtain walls so fast he just about forgot to breathe.
...
Because the gods were cruel and pettier than any man could ever hope to be, it wasn't until Luke had almost let himself begin to hope that he could make it home that Vhagar at last erupted out of the clouds, Aemond's half-demented cackling somehow sounding over her hideous roar.
Arrax screeched in distress and veered hard to avoid the grasp claws, and Luke flattened against his saddle to avoid breaking his neck from the whiplash.
Just like that, the chase was on, and his and Arrax's clawing hysteria ceased to be individual. He bit down on his own screaming as he felt more than heard Vhagar's wings snapping into pursuit behind them. They twisted and dove and fled through the thunder clouds, and none of it was enough because for all that Vhagar outweighed Arrax many times over, each beat of her wings was worth a hundred of his and each raging vicious current that threatened to break his desperate flight might as well have been a soft spring breeze to her.
When the crag appeared dead ahead with the promise of salvation, he didn't have to direct Arrax to turn for the dragon was already diving into the narrow chasm between the clifftops Aemond's outraged howl echoed behind them as Vhagar was forced to swerve away.
Had he been just a little more clear-headed he would made something of the reprieve, directed Arrax to claw a foothold on one the rock shelves below to wait out the storm or done anything else at all. Vhagar couldn't have followed them in if they had, and even Aemond wouldn't have possibly had the patience to weather the surrounding storms for hours just for the sake of playing this sick, twisted game.
But before he had a chance to think of it, to even dare to breathe long enough to steady himself and command Arrax, Vhagar's shadow fell across them from above the crag, easily trapping them in the shadow of her battle-scarred underbelly as she kept pace from above, and Luke lost control over his mount entirely.
Everything after that was a terrible blur.
Arrax wrestled free of his will, flying deeper into the storm in a fierce panic, and finally ending when the muscles beneath his scales grew too rigid with effort and the fool of a dragon turned on Vhagar in one last frenzied attempt to save them both.
"Arrax, no!"
He tried to stop it the moment he sensed Arrax's attention, eyes somehow growing wider still despite the wind and the rain half-blinding him with their fury, but a gout of flame wide enough to swallow an aurochs was already erupting out Arrax's gullet and sailing through the clouds ahead before he'd gotten the first word out.
Vhagar roared in irritation and something far more threatening as the flames washed over her scales and did nothing at all, enraged where before she'd only been aggravated and cleaving to the whims of her rider.
Her bellowing roar chased after them as they ascended sharply through the clouds, and Aemond's screams went from viciously gleeful to near as horrified as Luke had been since this nightmare began as Vhagar bucked against his control and began to hunt.
"No, no no! Vhagar, no!"
That was all he managed to hear before they flew out of earshot. They soared up and up and further up still with the last of their strength, trying to ascend through the storm and find their escape beyond the raging winds.
When they finally broke through the cloud cover the sunlight beyond nearly finished blinding him in its brilliance where the had failed before, dazzling Arrax's scales and rendering the clouds below into an ocean of white gold.
He should have been achingly relieved at the sight, but he could hardly bring himself to breathe as he continued clenching the reins of the saddle tight enough to lose all sensation above the joints.
Even Arrax knew better than to lower his guard, head snapping this way and that, wingbeats frantic and ready to flee for all that he only just barely had the strength to keep them aloft.
Aemond and Vhagar had been left behind, but the fear and threat of death lingered on and grew worse the longer there was no sign of them and the air remained silent save for the rush of Arrax's wings.
They'd been right on their tail. They couldn't have-
He turned to the side as the air whistled and ice shot up his spine, and there was Vhagar, hurtling up directly for them, too fast to evade, too mighty to beat back, and neither he nor Arrax had even the time to scream-
And then, right before the stranger claimed them both, something changed.
Vhagar must have felt it before any of them, for the old she-dragon's maw clamped shut an instant before it would have caught half of Arrax's body between its teeth and all of Luke along with it for good measure.
It was her snout instead that rammed into his wing and side and sent them both careening and flailing across the heavens, but that was it. She didn't pursue it even when Arrax righted himself and prepared to dive below again, and refused to obey even when the wind carried Aemond's confused demands over to them.
Instead, Vhagar's wings continued to heave, holding her in place as the dragon went abruptly, dangerously still in the air and quiet in her flight, gaze darting to the clouds below.
Luke and Arrax were seemingly completely forgotten in favor of nothing he could see for himself. That would have been a perfect chance to escape, were it not for the fact that Arrax himself had seemingly... caught on to whatever scent or presence had broken through Vhagar's stride and went just as still and silent, and unresponsive.
Were they... wary?
Vhagar was afraid?
Gods above, what was it now?
The answer came with a whistling of air and sound that would have been reminiscent of chiming bells if it hadn't been so deep, and the rhythmic thunder-like beat of dragon wings that was so undeniably familiar and yet not, an odd quality to them set his teeth on edge and had him exhaling in mounting alarm.
When he did, his breath came out cold and misty, and only then did he realize that a sharp chill had suddenly overtaken them all.
That was all the warning they had before the clouds behind Vhagar were blown apart and out came...
...
For a moment, Luke didn't understand what he was looking at. The saddle slipped from his grip as his gloved hands went slack.
Back in the days when all of them had lived in the Red Keep, before the poisons of Green and Black had truly seeped and rotted everything and before Driftmark, Aegon had dragged him and Jace and Aemond down to the deepest crypt beneath the Red Keep to the chamber where Black Dread's Skull had been set aside by the Old King at the time of his death.
Luke's grandfather had mourned the dragon's loss so deeply that he'd refused to set it on display in the throne room before the Iron Throne when he ascended to the chair, for he was more than just a symbol to his last rider, and so the skull remained in the crypts for all to see.
When Aegon had led them to it in another dared them to touch, he'd dared them to try and slip between the spear-like teeth and back out again if they were brave enough to try.
"But don't take too long." He'd jeered in another one of his stupid japes. "Else he'll come back to life and swallow you whole."
"No he won't." Aemond glared at his brother, but even he'd tellingly refused to step forward until Jace did.
In the end, none of them made it in, not even with Aegon needling and cajoling from the sidelines as they pushed and shoved each other closer to the skull.
Luke had made it closer than even Jace, but he didn't get a chance to enjoy the victory. Not when he looked up and truly stared at the sheer enormity of the gleaming black dragon bone looming over him.
The greatest dragon who ever lived since the Doom of Valyria dwarfed even Vhagar, and the smallest of his frontal teeth had been four times as tall as he had been and near as wide. There was something more to it as well, some otherworldly presence to it beyond the balefull candlelight reflecting on it and even its monstrous size that had the hair at the back of his neck rising in fright.
Luke had managed to hold out only long enough to squeak like a frightened mouth before bolting. Aegon had laughed himself silly after that, but Luke hadn't cared. That had been the stuff of nightmares.
He loved dragons as any dragon lord should, what he had was Arrax was proof enough of that, but even when long gone Balerion had seemed less a dragon and more a god.
That, or perhaps some fell monster straight from the Seven Hells, and that had just been his skull. He hadn't been able to even imagine how large the rest of him must have been when he'd lived, not even after seeing Vhagar firsthand in all her terrible glory.
He didn't have to imagine any longer.
The dragon that erupted out from behind Vhagar was so large it blotted out the sky ahead of it as it flew forward on wings held aloft by a hurricane of cold.
Its hide was crystal-white and glittering more sharply than any gemstone he had ever seen, its wings were batlike and stretched from one corner of his sight to the other, and when it was unhinged its jaws and roared in deafening challenge, it sounded fiercer and more powerful than any storm man had ever dared to brave.
Vhagar roared back and made to turn, but she was too slow and ponderous to meet her new foe's charge.
Calling it a clash would have been charitable. The unknown dragon was thrice Vhagar's size at least and cut through the air more swiftly than Luke had seen even Meleys fly. Vhagar had scarcely turned around before the utter mountain of a beast rammed into her with an impact akin to mountains colliding.
What little of it Luke could see over his slack-jawed awe and disbelief was over as soon as it began.
Both dragons tumbled from the impact, bodies interlocked in vicious combat as they plunged through the air and disappeared beneath the clouds, falling back into the storm, leaving only the cadence of their clashing roars behind.
That should have been the end of it.
Luke should have fled right then. He should have returned to Dragonstone and told his mother and Daemon and all the others of everything he'd witnessed, and let them settle it.
It would have been the wisest choice to make.
And yet he didn't make it, for as he watched the two dragons vanish into the thunderclouds below, the only thought he had to spare was for the rider who'd almost killed him.
Aemond.
He didn't know what drove him to it, if there was a reason at all, or if it was a bout of inexplicable insanity. Whatever it was, it had him pressing himself against the saddle and seizing the reigns once more.
"Arrax!"
It was a miracle in itself that Arrax finally deigned to obey, but not one he was in any position to savor. The air was driven from his lungs as they dove back into the dark and the chaos, intent on doing something.
Luke didn't think that far had, and he didn't get the chance to, for as he fell back into the storm, heading towards the draconic roars and the thunderous clash below, it wasn't the sight of either dragon that greeted them.
Instead, it was cold.
A wave of wind and ice and white light so cold it burned caught them just as they emerged through the clouds, and Luke abruptly found himself going numb all over and fading into rather blissful darkness, all thoughts and fears vanishing in the ether.
Even Arrax struggled madly for only a beat before going equally limp and heavy beneath him. Distantly, he registered a pleasant feeling of weightlessness, something akin to a scream and a roar wrapped in one, and then nothing at all.
...
By the time the storm broke hours later, Borros Baratheon would receive words that would plunge the realm further into maddened chaos.
Prince Aemond and Prince Lucerys's dragons had clashed with a third, and all five had vanished into the wind with not a trace left behind.
...
Next chapter is an Adara POV, probably, so let's see how that goes.
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.