Save the Dragons
Warning: This story is M-rated for a reason, it contains coarse language and mature themes such as graphic violence, self-harm, and sexual assault as per the source material. Readers' discretion is advised.
F.Y.I: You might have noticed there is another copy of this story in the other Song of Ice & Fire/GoT/HOTD category. They aren't different stories, and as soon as this site realizes that the show and the books are in the same universe and merge the threads, I'll remove the copies.
I've never really been interested in inserts, and I still have compunctions against self-inserts, but after reading 'The Blacks, The Greens and the Reds' by Loke_Lyon, which I cannot recommend enough, I was inspired to write this.
This story will be as self-indulgent as I like, so please enjoy.
Chapter 1 – Strange Circumstances
Fun fact: no one knows what happens when you die.
Sure, your body starts to decompose, friends and family pay their respects to your memory, and maybe you were lucky enough to be survived by your children and loved ones. But when it comes to consciousness, there's a staggering lack of evidence on the effects of death. As of yet, prevailing ideas on a deserving afterlife or eternal oblivion still haven't been confirmed by anyone who has died. People who were thought to have died and 'come back' tended to exist only as patients who'd been prematurely diagnosed or figures from ancient religions that he hadn't had the chance to examine personally.
As a biology major, he'd always leaned toward the oblivion idea, electrochemical signals seem to be what make consciousness work, so if those signals stop after brain death, then consciousness should go right along with them.
Lately, he'd been having second thoughts.
Maybe he was experiencing brain death with a warped perception of time and suffering from a prolonged hallucination. Maybe he'd entered a coma and this was all an incredibly elaborate, vivid, lucid dream. Maybe his life was flashing before his eyes and he was overemphasizing the last novel he'd read. Maybe he'd been kidnapped and thrown into a simulation. Maybe there was something to the whole supernatural thing after all.
Maybe that eighteen-wheeler hadn't actually hit him on the way home from work.
It had been a challenge to keep his sanity, in the beginning, he thought it was all a strange dream. One dream about a deadly car accident, followed in quick succession by one where he was trapped inside a woman's womb, cramped and alone in the dark. He slept a lot then, even time seemed to pass differently. But it only got worse when he was delivered into an unfamiliar world in what passed for delivery in medieval times.
Eventually, he realized that it was no ordinary dream, there were only so many times that you could wake to the same dream and not question your sanity or if maybe what you had considered reality had been the real dream. Even trying to kill himself wouldn't wake him up, he was constantly being watched by maids maddeningly worried for his well-being and no attempt ever got further than rolling onto his face for a couple of moments. Finally, he had to face what was passing for reality, this nightmare had become inescapable.
Babies usually don't have existential crises, but it must've made him seem colic.
As his senses developed, he began to notice more and more how real everything around him seemed to be. He'd learned a few reality tests when he took Pysch in school, and it was a terrible realization to find that his surroundings seemed to pass them all. If this was some sort of dream, it was unlike any he'd ever had or heard of. By the time he'd grown capable of suicide, he'd grown afraid of it. Years had passed by, and though he still felt horribly out of place as a grown man inside a toddler's body, living in a strange place, he couldn't help but feel as if it was real enough to not risk it ending.
After years of infantile dread, he came to terms with his fate. No matter how much worse it was than his past life, this was what his life had become now.
Still, he maintained if only to himself, that he had only been so worried in the first place because it turned out he'd been living in a fantasy land. Quite literally so, and not a kid-friendly storybook setting either.
This was the World of Ice and Fire, G.R.R Martin's unfinished magnum opus. Driftmark, Westeros, to be exact.
Did you know that during the medieval period, that three in ten babies would die before they reached their first birthday? He remembered a quote from Martin about maesters having a better understanding of medicine than the real Middle Ages, but that didn't seem to apply to childbirth, if anything Westeros was worse off.
Queen Rhaella for example, from what he remembered from the books, she'd given birth to eight children and only three had survived, and that wasn't even counting all the miscarriages. He imagined it had something to do with all the inbreeding that the Targaryens had been getting up to for centuries. They made the Ptolemies and Habsburgs look tame in comparison, it was a small wonder they could have children at all at this point.
Not a comforting thought for a baby who knew about medical statistics.
When his name day came around, they'd started to call him 'Laenor'. Laenor Velaryon, heir to Driftmark and High Tide.
It was a decent enough name he supposed. He'd liked his old name, but he'd decided a while ago to make a concerted effort to move on from it, even when thinking of himself, because it made things confusing. Otherwise, you might not notice people calling your name since 'who the hell is Laenor'?
Having picked up some High Valyrian from his new Targaryen mother, it seemed that his consciousness had found its way into one of her children, and somehow had displaced that original's. His initial hope that he'd been reborn as Prince Rhaegar and could save the world by just not kidnapping a teenage girl had been lost soon after meeting his older sister Laena, though thankfully, at least he wasn't Viserys or baby Aegon who got his head caved in by the Mountain, and hey let's not take being reincarnated or whatever into the same sex as you were before for granted.
No, instead he had to worry about the Dance of Dragons, or the Dying of Dragons as Glydayn so eloquently put it in his book 'Fire & Blood'. More specifically worrying about how he would be brutally murdered in the lead up to that war of carnage.
Honestly, being Laenor was easier than he had initially expected. He supposed it was because he hadn't really left anyone behind. In his past life or in the waking world, or whatever, he'd just turned twenty-eight, or eight and twenty now, and though he considered himself happy with where his life was going having finally finished his Bachelor's degree, his life still hadn't really begun either. He'd never known his parents, and had gone through childhood as a crown ward, never really getting attached to anyone looking after him or having enough time in one place to make friends. In school, he'd been more interested in getting good enough grades to justify the scholarships that were paying his way through. Life as a biologist wasn't unfulfilling and it wasn't as if he'd never had a relationship, but he always figured he'd wait until he was settled down before he committed to someone special or do the things he always wanted to do now that he had the money.
Too late. He guessed he'd never figure out why that truck driver had hit him or how the hell he'd ended up here, but the result was the same. He'd died, and been born again as an inbred royal baby to a family of pyromaniac lunatics only a few years before they were all going to die in a civil war.
A part of him felt like he should just sit back and enjoy whatever time he had left before the world ended in an eternal winter. But that just wasn't who he was, not then and apparently not now either. He hadn't gone into medicine for the money, and certainly not because it was easy. This world was in dire need of saving, and damn it all if he wasn't going to give it his best shot.
"Muna, I'm hungry. Milk, please." asked the high-pitched voice from its place on the bed. It was odd for a toddler to so politely request to be fed, but then he wasn't an ordinary toddler. For convenience's sake, he'd started making his thoughts known through clear grunts and coos earlier than probably any baby ever, but he'd decided to hold off speaking until he learned High Valyrian, which is what his 'father' still insisted be the first language of their family. Thankfully, learning a language when you're a baby is pretty easy. Before his first birthday, well, name-day, Westerosi don't celebrate birthdays, probably something to do with the high infant mortality rate. Anyway, before his first name-day, he was speaking fluently and in full sentences, and now that he was finally walking, life wasn't unbearably dull anymore.
Muna was the Valyrian word for mother, and I guess since it's shorter than the word in the Common Tongue, which I still can't get over is basically English, the Westerosi Valyrians like his new family used it like 'mama'.
"Hmm," came the hum of his 'mother', "Are you? Well, that's easily fixed." The toddler with the mental age of a thirty-year-old man was scooped up into her arms and set down in her lap before the unsuspecting woman propped a nipple into his mouth and left him to suckle for his lunch without hurting her while she started to sing hymns and massage his back.
"The Mother gives the gift of life, and watches over every wife. Her gentle smile ends all strife, and she loves her little children."
He hated this so much, but it wasn't like he had a choice. He'd tried to switch to solid foods, but his opinions on anything weren't taken very seriously, and with the absence of formula and baby food, his caregivers were insistent that he rely on breast milk for nourishment. Admittedly, it didn't taste all that bad, and it meant that he was mostly left around his mother or wetnurses, but he could never get over the feeling that he was taking advantage of women by doing it.
"The Crone is very wise and old, and sees our fates as they unfold. She lifts her lamp of shining gold to lead the little children."
Just his luck, she'd picked up on it too, noticing that he didn't like it, and he'd been forced to play it off as a gas problem. He usually put up some fuss with the wetnurses, even though he preferred someone who was getting paid to knowingly feed someone else's child, because he couldn't let her think that the problem was her. By the time his second name-day had come, she'd already been through enough with her parents dying young and being set aside in the succession. Two successful pregnancies had made everyone expect even more from her, so he strove to be a robust and healthy baby to keep her from having more and endangering herself.
He'd known OB/GYNs that would kill him for letting some of the things that happened, happen to any woman, let alone his mother. But he hadn't even been taught how to read yet, how was he supposed to explain the dangers of back-to-back pregnancies and sanitation in a world where men weren't allowed in a delivery room?
"The Maiden dances through the sky, she lives in every lover's sigh. Her smiles teach the birds to fly, and give dreams to little children."
He never thought he would grow so attached to her, but it was impossible not to feel sympathy for Rhaenys, she was a kind and spirited woman. But more than that, she was impossible not to love. She was far more clever than a woman in her situation or era could possibly be expected to be, she was usually so full of joy and laughter that she drew in everyone around her, and she loved her children fiercely. She would sing to him whenever she got the chance.
"The Seven Gods who made us all, are listening if we should call. So close your eyes, you shall not fall, they see you, little children."
He'd never had a mother before, he'd never even found out if he had been an orphan or if he'd been abandoned or if his parents just couldn't take care of him. Any maternal figure that came into his life either from the people he fostered with or teachers in school, they were all careful not to become too attached, either because they knew they wouldn't be able to stick around or because he hadn't wanted to take that chance again. By the time he was nine, he'd given up on ever having that, and having never experienced it in the first place, it wasn't sorely missed. But with Rhaenys... she loved him so unconditionally and utterly, that despite his reluctance both from a lifetime of living alone and the strange circumstances he found himself in, he couldn't bear to let that go unreciprocated. So, he pretended, and eventually, that turned into something more genuine than he was capable of describing.
"Just close your eyes, you shall not fall, they see you, little children." she finished the hymn with gusto, as she probably realized that he wasn't near tired, and would have to entertain him instead of putting him to bed. She ran her fingers through the wisps of silver hair on his head and blew into his face when he finally came up for air.
"Thank you, Muna."
"Of course, little one." she kissed him on the top of the head, and carried him over to his crib.
It was inevitable that people were going to notice what a 'talented' child he was. It was bound to be obvious given that said child was actually an adult man who'd benefited from centuries of scientific advancement and had a modern, formal education to boot.
If he'd been reborn even in his old world, he'd still be considered a boy genius, a child prodigy without rival in the entire history of the human race. Yet he hadn't been reborn in a world where all he knew was known by other people who even in his chosen field still knew more than he did, he had been reborn into a world that hadn't even progressed as far as the renaissance in many ways. He'd literally forgotten more about science and technology than every maester that ever lived, ever knew.
It made learning from a tutor kind of frustrating.
Maester Gerardys was actually quite intelligent, and it surprised him that the noteworthy maester actually came from Driftmark to serve Rhaenyra in the future.
He was usually glad to go to one of Gerardys's lessons because it either gave him an excuse to start writing down what he remembered on certain subjects, or the maester would actually provide him with some useful information about the history, traditions, laws, politics, and astronomy of this world. He remembered what he'd considered to be a great deal about the setting from when he read the novels, but he'd needed a lot of reminding, and obviously, most information in this world just hadn't been covered in the books.
That's not to say it was all smooth sailing. Gerardys was legitimately one of the most knowledgeable men alive, and he was still a dullard compared to him. It wasn't his fault, but it made for interesting lessons.
For example, today they were having a math lesson.
"Why hello, young Laenor, how are you this fine morning?"
"I'm good, Maester."
"Excellent. Shall we begin?"
"Please."
A great leather-bound book with parchment for pages was laid out in front of him and was soon followed by a quill and inkpot, 'By the Seven, the first thing on my to-do list is inventing pencils, if I can manage it that is'. Thankfully, paper existed in this world, but since printing had yet to be developed, parchment was still in wide use and preferred for it's quality.
It was really weird to have to do a math lesson with a swan feather and lambskin.
"Today, we will start with sums – the addition of any number and another, or even several others, to equal a total, or sum. I trust Your Grace recalls his numbers from our last lesson?"
"Yes, Maester."
What a chore that had been. It'd taken an hour just to go over the digits, he'd had to pressure Gerardys just to go past ten. Thankfully, Westerosi used Hindu-Arabic numerals, despite Hindustan and Arabia not existing in this universe, so that was a plus.
"Splendid. If you'll excuse me, I shall go fetch some treats for us to practice with, I do believe they will make this lesson all the sweeter."
Laenor faked a conspiratorial giggle and nodded his head. Honestly, Gerardys seemed like a decent teacher, sure slow by his standards but it was clear that the maesters meant to impress the Sea Snake by sending Gerardys. He could advise lords on war or trade, all while serving as a physician, tutor, court historian, and messenger as well as any in his order could.
A lot of math teachers get asked by their students 'What's the point of learning this?', he doubted any of his ever thought to answer that if you ever find yourself reincarnated in a medieval fantasy setting, you'll be the only person alive who knows how to do logarithms. Six years, he hadn't done virtually any math in six years. It had never been his favourite subject, and there were times when he downright hated it, but he had not busted his ass in school trying to get an A, only for it to be utterly worthless.
Turning to the blank pages, he dipped his quill into the ink and began to draw a twelve-by-twelve grid before filling it in with the multiplication table from 1 to twelve. Once that was done, he started writing the various mathematical laws he remembered on the next page. At this point, he had no idea if there were equivalents of Archimedes, Euclid, or Pythagoras in this world, but if there weren't, geometry just advanced a great deal there on page two.
When he was twenty-three, Issac Newton invented calculus (kind of) in 1666. In his previous life, he'd only been slightly younger when he learned about it in University from a professor who'd forgotten more about math than either of them knew.
Now, it had been a hundred years after his ancestor's conquests, and at the age of six, he was re-inventing calculus on page three.
He kept at it, silently weighing in his head if progress was actually worth the suffering of so many students, but eventually, Gerardys came back.
By the time Gerardys walked back in with a tray of lemon cakes, he was on page twenty-nine and wondering if he should get another book for statistics.
"Ah, Your Grace, I see you've started without me." The older man said, pleased his pupil had some initiative and desire to learn.
Laenor had been waiting so long to do this, that he might have forgotten how he was going to explain exactly how he went from arithmetic to differential calculus before his first math lesson had started, so he said the first thing that sprang to mind, "Two plus two equals four."
Gerardys chuckled as he sat down beside him, and slid the book over to himself, and flipped back to the first page. "Yes, yes, indeed Laenor, as does one and three or three and one for that matter, or one less than five but let us not get ahead ourselves al-"
In hindsight, it was kind of funny to watch Gerardys's eyes bulge out of his head like that, as he scanned the pages. He might be ignorant compared to the pseudo-time traveller, but he wasn't stupid. The multiplication alone probably would have gotten him moved up a grade, the geometry into some sort of school for gifted children, the formulas that Gerardys couldn't even make heads or tails of, well those might have surprised the man.
The Grand Maester came around sooner than he'd expected him to, he turned to his student and stuttered "H-has anyone entered the room since I've left?"
That might've been a good out if they were in a school, and not inside a castle with an armed guard outside the door, instead he shook his head.
As might be expected, Gerardys was skeptical, "Laenor, would you mind writing this again?"
He did so, saving some time by starting and then just ignoring the rest.
Gerardys was quick to realize that he was actually the one to write everything down and asked if anyone had taught him. Again, a perfect excuse for a modern school child, not so much for a lordling whose every interaction with a person is monitored and has only ever met one maester.
"Would you care to share the meaning of these 'logs' and symbols?" asked the old maester, as he ran his hand through this beard.
They were there for hours going over it all, servants even came and replaced the tray and brought them supper.
Laenor was just about to start teaching Gerardys about factoring, when the man seemed to realize how much time had passed and the import of what had happened.
"Yes, I think that is enough for one day, young master, until tomorrow."
The maester held his hand as they went to his mother, once they arrived at her rooms, Laenor bid the maester goodbye and went to read his books, deciding to indulge his only real hobby here and cracked open Barth's 'Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History'.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mother and the maester whispering and glancing at him, clearly talking about him like they were at a preschool and he was playing in the sandbox, dead to the world. At one point, he even saw his mother bring a hand up to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Gerardys took his leave, and Rhaenys came over to sit next to him. She wrapped her arm around him, lodged her head on his, and asked him to read it aloud, and he obliged her.
They stayed like that until the night, he'd only just passed the part where Barth starts talking about the genderfluid nature of draconids, when she ruffled his hair and closed the book to look him in the eye.
"Laenor, Gerardys tells me that you did very well today in your lessons."
"Thank you, Muna."
"He also mentioned that you wrote some very unusual things in your book."
He didn't really know how to answer that, so he just nodded his head and tried to appear bashful or contrite or something that makes mothers stop asking questions.
"Would you like to tell me how you learned these new numbers?" It was clear that she didn't entirely grasp what had happened, nor could she have, but it did have her concerned.
While they'd been reading though, he'd come up with something. Luckily for him, there was already a surefire excuse that allowed Targaryens to know things they had no business knowing.
He bit his lip and looked her in the eye. Mothers can usually tell if their children are lying to them, but that's really only because their children aren't actually full-grown men in a child's body.
"I saw them in a dream, Muna."
Laenor heard her breath hitch, felt it even. She clutched him tightly and laid a kiss on his head before whispering into his ear "You mustn't tell anyone else besides your father about this, do you understand?"
"Yes, Muna, I understand."
"Good boy, now let's get back to your book, shall we?"
Dragon dreams, green dreams, premonitions, whatever you wanted to call them, were not something that any Targaryen ignored. Out of forty ruling families, and millions more living in Valyria before the Doom, only one had escaped, because Daenys Targaryen had a dream that the Doom would come, and sure enough, it did. In truth, many Targaryens since had been born with the gift, or the curse, and while each dealt with it differently, did none of them believe that their dreams were as others were.
Later, he would find out that Gerardys had gone to the Sea Snake day and counseled his father that his son was a prodigy, who for the good of the realm was best sent to the Citadel to forge a chain. Corlys had been pleased his son was exceptionally clever and made sure to brag to all at court that his loins had sprung forth a genius, but his son and heir was meant for grander things than serving as a maester. Only the Iron Throne would be good enough, and the marriage that could bring it to them.
The next lesson he had with the maester, Gerardys asked what he would like to learn, and from that day on, neither of them acted like he was a child.
Laenor soon learned that the old man had much to teach him.
The Great Council was fast approaching, the Old King already having dispatched the ravens that the lords of the realm should assemble at the chosen location of Harrenhal to meet to vote on the succession. Mother and father meant to press his claim to the throne, despite his pleas to not waste the effort or coin on a lost cause. There was no sense betting on hopeless odds, and the 20-1 results he recalled from memory soundly dissuaded him. But he was still only a boy to them, despite their faith in his 'genius' which if anything emboldened them.
They were on Dragonstone now, that fiery mountain protruding monstrously from the sea. They had come to fetch him a dragon from the flames.
No dragon egg had been laid in his cradle at birth, so he needed to come to the Dragonmont to bond with one. Mother meant to come with Meleys and help bind him to one of the younger dragons, safer that way, both of his parents agreed. They meant for him to have Seasmoke, he remembered. But Seasmoke would not do, since he remembered how Vermithor ripped off Seasmoke's head during the Second Battle of Tumbleton. He did not want such a fate for the dragon or himself. In order to survive – he needed a greater mount.
So here he was walking down a dirt path with a sheep at his side. He shouldn't be here, he shouldn't be marching into the dragons's den alone, he shouldn't be in this world. He shouldn't even be straight. But he was and he was going to need a dragon if he was going to save them. Now was the time to act boldly, or years from now things would be lost.
He was already covered in ash as he made his way down the trail, the sheep next to him bleating angrily. The air around him reeked around him of brimstone, around him the obsidian caught the star's light and reflected enough so he could see his way on the path. The heat was unbelievable, so hot it made a furnace's fumes feel like a light breeze, but now that he was Valyrian, he kind of enjoyed the heat.
Soon he was approaching a giant cavern wrought into the mountain side, and could hear the bellows of a great sleeping beast. This is where he hoped to find his future partner.
Vhagar was to be his sister's mount, and he would not tempt fate by trying for her. He fully intended to keep his sister alive so that the largest and fiercest of dragons would not hinder him in the years to come. Besides, he would be able to stop Aemond from ever getting the chance to mount her if something did happen to Laena, after all it was only because of his future funeral that Aemond got the chance to ride her in the first place, and he likewise had no intention of being stabbed to death.
No, his was a more accessible prize. Vermithor still remained bound to the Old King, but the bronze medal dragon was still up for grabs. The late Good Queen's mount, Silverwing.
As he entered the cave, he caught his first glimpse of her. Her scales really did glisten like polished silver, while her crest, horns, and claws looked like a tarnished set of the precious metal. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
He had seen dragons before, Meleys was never far from mother's side. The Red Queen was a magnificent creature, but didn't hold a candle to Silverwing, who seemed to match the silver seahorse broach on his chest. She shone so brilliantly against the red hot lava backdrop that she looked like a white star. A star indeed, Silverwing dwarfed Meleys, she was probably about 2/3rds the size of Vhagar. Coiled up in a ball, she was absolutely massive in size.
With every step, more and more sweat would beat down his neck as he edged closer to her maw.
The sheep next to him tried to pull away and bleated loudly and nervously upon seeing the dragon, probably familiar with the ferocious giants.
Enormous pools of sapphire blue emerged from the silver scales to spy at him and smoke bellowed from her nostrils, and his heart caught in his throat worried that she might just melt him then and there.
He shushed the sheep, and held its mouth shut, as Silverwing sized them up. Laenor mustered all his childish strength and pushed the sheep forward before jumping back as quickly as his little legs could jump.
VOOOSH came the ball of fire, pale silver, engulfing the sheep before it was swept up in Silverwing's gigantic jaws. In an instant, torn to pieces by her razor sharp, black as night teeth.
For a moment, Laenor braced himself to be next as there was no way he could escape her if she so desired to eat him too, clenching his eyes shut.
After waiting for what seemed like eternity, he opened his eyes, to find Silverwing watching him closely. Echoing what Rhaenys often did with Meleys, he outstretched his open palm. Silverwing moved her head forward and nearly took him off his feet when she pressed her nose into his arm. She coiled her neck around him, and he began to climb her scales as she made her way out of the cavern.
Holding on for dear life, and nearly swallowing his tongue, Silverwing exited the cave, and with a running start, lept into the sky and took flight as he screamed joyously.
Corlys & Rhaenys would kill him later, but now he had a big f'ing dragon!
Thanks for reading, next update should come soon.
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Next chapter will be some of Leanor's formative years.
Something that has put me off a lot of insert stories in the past, is that so many ignore the quirks of the setting and the entire premise revolves around the character knowing everything about the story, and not changing anything. Anyone who has Googled gunpowder would be able to recreate it (if you don't want it in a story, just deal with it in the story like Loke_Lyon, don't act like it's impossible for the average person to figure out, it's only three common ingredients put together, this story won't even have 'gunpowder' because I know how to make a better propellant that's about as easy to make) and a scientist who has a degree in biology or chemistry would be able to do a hell of a lot more than that. Any change in the story ought to result in a change to the plot, let alone a noble who knows the future.
I don't begrudge people writing themselves into a story and like whatever you wanna like, but I do think that making the story cozy and familiar is a wasted oppurtunity. Seriously, slavery, sexism, magic, and feudalism are all dealt with in canon, and people with modern sensibilities in these kind of stories don't even seem to notice. It's hard to care about you cosplaying as Sansa hooking up with Sandor when you're ignoring all the noteworthy things around you.
This wasn't meant to be a self-insert, but I eventually gave up having it not be since everyone assumed it was, so I'm just going to have Laenor act like I'd try to act if I ended up in his position.
