"Where have you been!? I was worried sick!" Shouted the fuming Daenerys as she glared at her would-be-protector, if he was ever here, in anger.
"I stayed up the whole night in worry and only had Podrick to guard me!"
"What's wrong with Podrick? He seems to be a good sword and definitely has my full trust," Nico said in amusement as he glanced towards the guard, who stared ever onward with dead, lifeless eyes.
"That is not the point! I want to know where you were!" In truth, something about the guard made her skin crawl, and she hated it when Nico left without telling anyone. Nico's clothes smelled brine and seafoam on top of his usual earthen smell. With exhaustion in his eyes, he likely used his strange shadow-biased travel to portal to a coastal city.
"I went to Braavos for business and met up with some people. I managed to procure a meeting with someone important and will talk with them next week." Nico stated nonchalantly as he leaned back on the expensive ironwood chair, looking like he would pass out any second.
"What do you trade in?" Daenery knew Nico wasn't telling the whole truth, so if he was insistent on lying to her, she would make it harder on him.
"What?" Nico looked up, confused.
"You said you were in Braavos for business, which means you're a merchant and trade in goods. What kind of goods do you trade-in."
Nico looked exacerbated. "It's just an expression. I meant I had work there, and if you must know, I went to meet up with the Iron Bank."
"Why did you meet up with the Iron Bank?" Danny was worried now, as the bank was known for its less-than-stellar enthusiasm for getting its payments no matter the cost.
"I'll tell you later when it becomes important, but just let me rest for now." Before Danny could even object, Nico's soft snoring permeated the room.
Lionfish swam fast with the Priestess, whom he forgot her name, and various advisors to meet up with the sea queen. Just twelve hours ago, reports were filed about a massive creature just beyond the darkness of the trench, and he was convinced whatever it was could not be held back with his heavily exhausted forces. They might have the superior numbers, but the trench had superior tactics and had played a game of who could stay awake longer. Each hour, they sent small suicide forces that caused enough damage to make it impossible to sleep but small enough that they weren't sacrificing too many men. Worse still, they randomized where they would attack from, forcing him to double the manpower across his whole army.
"The queen will see you now." Stated one of the guards as soon as the party stopped before him. The queen solar's door opened with a heavy groan as the centuries-old coral door opened, revealing a homie yet spacious space with stone tablets dating thousands of years sitting on the walls. On the far wall laid the Queen of the Western Sea. Her sea-green eyes and black hair signified her as a member of one of the most ancient families alive. Her tail was as black as her mother's, with specs of gold laced throughout it, desperately trying to signify she was her father's daughter. The young Queen got up and greeted them at the door, looking saddened at her father's passing just six months back.
"What is it, Lionfish." She asked in a tired but commanding tone.
"We have reason to believe a Kraken, Sea Dragon, or Leviathan is just beyond the darkness preparing to strike our forces." He stated the grave news quickly to avoid wasting time on unnecessary pleasantries. Fear flashed through her face before she quickly masked it with a face of calm neutrality. "What's more, there has been confirmation of a sea dragon in the shivering sea."
"Is there any response from the Son? Has he answered our calls for help?" She asked the Priestess already knowing the answer.
"No, his shrine is as silent as the grave. Neither the Father nor the Mother are answering either."
"Sea-god forgive us." The Queen cursed as her mask cracked a little bit more.
"There might yet still be hope. In the order of the trinity, we have been unanimously sensing an ancient sea presence in the north of Westeros." Lionfish cursed quietly in his head as he had explicitly warned the Priestess to not tell the Queen about the asinine idea that somehow a child of Poseidon that wasn't the Son could exist in the barbaric surface world.
A strong spark of hope lit up the Queen's face as she regarded the Priestess. "A new son or daughter? Or just another yet-to-be-discovered artifact." Either way, an object of that power could likely turn the tide of this war like a child of the sea, but neither was likely to be found in the dry lands.
"Considering its power, we believe that it has to be a child of Poseidon. We have seen no artifact of this magnitude before." He cut in before the Queen could do something so foolish as gain the ire of the Old Gods by sending forces up to the surface world. "There hasn't been a child of the sea in millennia, nor do we have sufficient reason to believe one has come now." 'Not that there was any strong evidence before now,' but he didn't add that last part, knowing how strongly the Queen believed in the trinity. He was a believer in the faith of the one. This belief was founded long ago when scholars realized that the only god they ever directly dealt with was the one the iron-born land dwellers worshiped as the Drowned God and the Trinity worshiped as the Son.
The spark of hope flared brighter within the eyes of the Queen as she began to mentally calculate the plausibility of a mission to retrieve a being they hadn't the faintest idea of what they looked like in a land none of her people had visited in thousands of years.
"Send word to my brother that he will hold the crown until I get back. I wish to go with you on this journey." The Queen's response surprised all the people present, as they assumed she would stay behind in the sea.
"My queen, are you sure this is wise?" Lionfish asked the naïve Queen, silently freaking out about the logistics of taking the Queen to a dangerous land on a mission that requires stealth. Made worse by the fact that they would have to limit the number of people actually on the mission to avoid detection.
"I agree with the general, my Queen. We cannot guarantee your safety on such a perilous mission." If anyone discovered that merfolk was walking amongst them, they would be sold to the highest bidder or forced to be some highborn mate. The worst fate would be if the Ironborn discovered their existence.
"I am going, and that is final. I need to appear strong for my people in such an unprecedented time as this one, and bringing back a child of the sea would guarantee such a thing." No one told her it would look better if she stayed here and just sent her best men on the mission instead because she wouldn't have to leave her seat during an 'unprecedented time.' The Queen likely wants to be one of the first to meet the child of the sea.
"There is another matter to discuss about the mission. The entire sea and all the kingdoms within felt the force we detected. We won't be the only ones seeking the source." One of the advisors spoke up for the first time, pointing out the most obvious flaw in the plan other than the fact they would stick out more than an intoxicated octopus.
"We are the closest kingdom to Northern Westeros, other than the Shivering Lands. We will get to him first." The Queen dismissed the worries of her advisors with a wave of her hand. "We leave in two days."
Fate was a fickle thing to attempt to interpret, for it frequently purposely gives false trails and sudden shifts to its narrative to become nearly impossible to fully grasp. The Three-Eyed Crow should not have been utterly wrong about everything, including the fates of hundreds of people. Yet, the last time he looked at the strings that connect everyone and everything, they were arranged entirely differently. Most of them intersected with one absurdly bright one that wasn't there before.
'I need to dig deeper.' There is no way this can be true because not even the strongest people can change fate drastically, not to mention it as if fate can't touch or predict him. The strings are constantly jumping around and changing with each action he commits. With barely any effort, the ancient mortal's continuous was suddenly yanked thousands of leagues away into a distant forest. He watched the being in question walking with hundreds of lowborns through the Wolfswood Forest.
Everyone was tense, but none more so than a Singer of the Forest and a powerful magical being on top of a horse with a white coat. The two peculiar people looked to be fighting, as both seemed to have raised voices and were red-faced.
"No, Gregaus, you cannot make life-changing decisions for me. I do not want to be a King! I am a lord, and that is already too much. The responsibilities of a crown are not for me!" The first speaker isn't a king from Westeros, for that would cause even more shifts in fate than already shown, but for him to be the King of the Forest…
"Percy, I have every right to claim you as my King. You are already bound to us, and we are to you. Making it official would make us feel a little bit freer." Gregaus huffed with annoyance as if she was talking to a stubborn child, much to the Crow's confusion. She gave this new Lord the passion of King of the Forrest on a whim? This cannot be true, for even the foul hardy would know that act would bind their fates together. It would have to be a majority decision by all the Singers. 'I must speak with the Singers again. I have forgotten to leave the Network for many moons.'
"I would never abuse you or your people like that!"
"That is exactly why you should bear the crown's weight!"
"I don't want…" Suddenly, Percy stopped talking as his head snapped towards the crow Bloodraven warned into. His eyes, glowing bright sea green and swirling like a sea storm, seemed to stare past the crow and into the mind behind the bird.
"I do not know who you are, but I don't appreciate spies. Fly off or leave that bird, which I don't particularly care about. If I see you spying again, I will kill that vessel and find out where you are." The forest seemed stifling as a presence he rarely felt seemed to take up the entire space and peer into his soul. This young Lord was unmistakably wielding divine power. Without glancing at anyone, he warged back into his own body with a gasp.
Back in the Wolfswood, only Gregus didn't look at Percy like he was insane for yelling at some random crow. The Stark children looked at him in amusement, and the surrounding mortals stared at him as if he had lost his mind.
"Let's drop the King talk until we get to Sea Dragon Point." Percy bit out to the Child of the Forrest, riding her usual buck as he watched the tree canopy carefully for any other foreign presence.
"What is it?" John seemed to grow more serious when he noticed Percy seemed genuinely worried.
"I do not trust those crows. I think somebody or something was peering through them."
"You think the Gods where watching?" John asked with amazement as he stared back up at the spot where the crows once were.
"Not the Gods, but nothing to be worried about either," Gregaus answered John.
"I still don't trust them any farther than you can throw them." He told the Singer.
"Nor should you. Bloodraven is genuine in his attempts to help people. Still, he has a habit of ruining the lives of the unlucky few to attempt to prevent the fate of the many."
"What does that even mean?" asked Arya on her horse with a face of scrunched up confusion.
"It means he has a habit of messing up people's lives," Percy answered for the Child.
They found themselves camped at a stream for lunch, and conveniently, both he and Arya were free from any responsibilities.
With a grin, Percy brought Arya to a young tree with its trunk about as thick as his thigh. With a flick of his hand, Riptide was unleashed, and with another flick, it was in 'writing mode.' He drew three lines on the trunk of the tree, one above her head, one at waist height, and one at Knee height.
"I want you to hit each of these lines in quick succession as hard as possible and fast as possible. Before camp is fully packed up, I want at least the bark gone on each of these spots." Percy gave her a broken broom handle much to her confusion.
"Aren't you teaching me how to fight?"
"I am, but before we can teach you technique, we must build up your accuracy, precision, endurance, and strength."
"This isn't how John and Robb learned." Arya was skeptical about the usefulness of hitting a tree with a stick.
"I don't care how they learned. I am your teacher, and as such, you will do what I say." The quirky and sarcastic Percy was gone, and in his place stood a veteran of wars surveying a new recruit.
"Fighting isn't just skill or cool moves. You need to train your mind, body, and spirit to survive. My people have a saying: 'There are two types of warriors: the warrior of the mind and the body. The mind is Athena's domain, and the body is Ares's, but both are required to succeed on the battlefield. I am currently teaching you Ares's domain, and in time, I will also teach you Athena's."
Arya hit a tree with the same three marks every time they made a stop. For the first week, she hadn't even taken the bark off any of the trees. Arya's muscles were so sore that she could barely strike the tree accurately. At the week's end, she took the bark off. Still, after Percy congratulated her and celebrated her small victory, he gave her a heavier stick and changed the pattern of the lines.
The progress was slow, but they made it to the ancient ruins of Sea Dragons Point intact and on time. The people Percy hired from the surrounding lords were already there repairing the outer wall first. Arya didn't care because she was too focused on her task. She grew a firey determination beyond anything she had ever felt before, and she could be found hitting that log from sunup to sundown.
"He really is just having you hit a log repeatedly?" John asked as he walked up to his half-sister as she rapidly hit the log again and again. Each strike begins to land with an accuracy that he hadn't formed for the two years of training with Sir Rodrick Cassel. Looking down at Arya's biceps, John saw a slight bulge of muscle beginning to form. It was tiny but still a more significant improvement than he could imagine.
"You weren't at training again today. You usually are there if you don't have needlework with the Septa." John remarks absently, though he worries about Arya's dedication to learning the blade. She seemed to be overworking herself. Percy, on multiple occasions, has had to drag her to meals to get her to take a break.
"If I can get this, I can eventually participate in the training, not just watch." She commented, breathless from hours in the sun and physical activity.
John decided to get what he came out here for over with. "Father is coming, and according to the scout he sent ahead, he is unhappy."
Arya stopped her hammering and quickly turned around to face John with a face of excitement and worry. Probably knowing her thoughts, John answered the unspoken question, "I do not know why he is coming, but I don't think his goal would be to take you back to Winterfell. He seems madder with Percy than us."
"Why would he be mad at Percy?" Arya asked, looking both relieved and perplexed.
"The rumor is that the Boltons were assassinated and that father blames Percy."
"Why would father be mad about that? The Boltons tried to kill us!" John took a face of contemplation for a moment and then answered as he tried to collect his thoughts. "The honor and pride of the other houses can be a fickle thing. They are already nervous about the father naming Percy a lord and a bannerman since he is a lowborn. It doesn't help that no one has heard of him or the land he hails from, and as such, they feel threatened by him. The only thing stopping some of them from revolting at the injustice would be their loyalty to your family."
"Our family," Arya said without missing a beat.
"Huh?" Confusion crossed the second oldest's Starks eyes.
"I like what Percy said back at Winterfell. We are family, John, whether you like it or not."
"Your mother wouldn't agree," John argued, though slight tears pooled in the corner of his eyes, and his voice broke.
"I don't care. Percy is a bastard, and look how these people love him already. I hear the people professing loyalty and trust in their new Lord. I don't understand why Mother wants you gone, but I can promise you that Robb, Father, Bran, Rickon, and maybe our sister do not."