Driftmark had been a whisper in my mind a promise of peace. I'd entertained the thought, let it take root in my mind like ivy creeping up a forgotten wall. Here, I'd find calm, an escape from the constant noise of Westeros—the stupidity of its lords, the tragedies dressed in finery, the schemes spun by those who fancied themselves spiders and snakes. I had hoped to laze beneath the salt-crusted sky at night or in my room in my more than comfortable bed. Driftmark was supposed to be the place where I would forget the games, politics, all those other things that would make relaxing, lazing around, be allowed to exist in peace more than difficult, a place where I would be unbothered by all for a moment. To be frank, I would have not even tell the rest of my family that I was back. I knew that it would have end in questions and headaches that honestly. I didn't want to deal with right now.
But hopes were brittle things.
Instead of the respite I'd envisioned, I was welcomed by the near-drowned, bloodied form of my brother, Rhogar. I could still hear the screams of his name echoing through the salty air, voices sharp with the panic that gouged at my senses. The wave that had nearly swallowed Driftmark had been faster than the one that rose against Dragonstone. By the time I'd shattered it with gravity manipulation, it seemed as if some damage had already been done. Not as much as there could have been—not enough to erase the island from existence—less than enough it could be said.
Also, more than that, high tide and its surrounding were kinda in higher altitude than the rest of the island which meant that any minor flooding shouldn't have reached it and that most people should have been able to safely evacuate not that I cared but that was the thought.
Well, I had been wrong.
I'd been hovered above the chaos, the plan to slip unseen into my room and collapse into my bed that I honestly more than craved dissolving in an instant. The shouts that reached me were not just noise; they had a name, a name that pulled at something i honestly didn't know I had, deep and unwelcome inside me. A sound, a name.
"Lord Rhogar!"
The rational part of me had wished, almost absently, that it was just a name, that nothing more would come of it. After all, even though I liked him in a way that I couldn't quite admit, Rhogar was still a character, ink and paper brought to life. A brother in blood, yes, but a brother shaped by words I had read and forgotten long before my own first death.
More than that, Rhogar should have been in high tide like I'm sure most of our family was. I didn't honestly care much about him but even if I did, there would be no point in worrying because Rhogar was probably in our ancestral castle. Also, Rhogar could be a common name. Maybe, they were shooting about another one.
But something—something sharp and bitter, uncomfortable and searing—had bloomed in my chest, something that stopped me frtom going into my room, something that made me act, that made me reached out with gravity, splitting the floodwaters below with a thought. There, cradled in the dark, churning lake that the wave had left behind, was a broken, floating shape, one that looked far too familiar.
The shape of my older brother, the broken form of Rhogar.
I didn't think, didn't wait. Even though it sounded cliche, my body moved on its one devoi of any thought guiding Gravity, making it obey to carry the sodden, limp body up to the edge of the fortress where I hovered and honestly, saying he didn't look good was an understatement. As I looked at him I could feel something wanting to crawl up my throat. I shut it down.
His skin, pale by nature thanks to the blood of old Valyria that ran through our veins, had turned ghostly, almost translucent. Bluish and ashen shadows painted his cheeks and temples, the mark of blood lost and life slipping away. There were mottled bruises, dark as night, that broke the pale canvas of his body, splotches of blue and red, and patches of dried blood that clung to him like cruel decorations.
His face was hollow, gaunt, as if the sea itself had carved away the flesh that once held warmth. His cheekbones jutted, sharp against the hollows beneath sunken eyes that were swollen, ringed by dark circles so deep they bordered on black. His lips, chapped and cracked, were a terrible shade of bluish-gray, a color that whispered of breath stolen by the waves.
And his leg. Or rather, the absence, the remnants of it. The stump was more a mix match of meat, fat, flesh and bones stained with blood both fresh and drying. It throbbed with an angry redness, almost like a promise of a rot that could come. Alone, each mark on him would have been grim, but together they turned Rhogar into something that looked more like a corpse than a man.
Rhogar didn't look like the proud man I had last seen the last time I left Driftmark, the one who took maybe too much pride in his heritage, who cared so much more than I could ever in this world, the one who had always bothered me and tried to act like my brother, a mother and a father toward me. This man was gone, almost like a mirage to leave something that seemed to stand on the precipice, at the gate of death, teetering at the edge of whatever awaited beyond.
I hadn't bothered to hide the gravity that rippled around me. With a thought, walls caved, one, two, four, eight, maybe a dozen until there was a direct path between what I knew were my chamber and the room of the maestee. I ignored the screams and the gaso of shock, my gaze searching before locking on the terrified eyes of the Maester of Driftmark, one I never cared before to know the name. With another flick of my will, the Maester flew toward me, purple gravity taking shape around him and pulling him, making him cross the distance between the two of us in a blink of an eye.
I ignored the burning gazes I could feel on my form. My attention was only directed to the maester who looked horrified, maybe terrified, maybe both, I honestly didn't care to know. I felt no need for subtlety. "Make him live," I'd said to him while pointing at the still bleeding, at the still dying form of my brother.
I saw understanding bloom in his eyes at my words. We both knew it hadn't been a request.
The maester, a man aged and gnarled like the roots of an old tree, had blanched. He bowed so low I thought he might crack his spine, the joints in his knees groaning as he stood again, throat dry as old parchment. And so here we were, in my room, the best place that he had told me in high tide at this moment to safely and quickly begin to work on my brother. The irony was as bitter as the taste of seawater on my lips.
'Yeah,' I thought, ' I was finally back in my room. But, sure enough, my bed was occupied by the dying form of my brother while I sat on a chair, watching a maester play at life and death with medieval remedies.'
Others, mostly other Velaryons had tried to enter, to ask question, to ask about my power to Peer at what was happening in my room buy honestly, I didn't want to deal with them at all especially right now. They understood this and left when I held one too insisting on the other side of my window with gravity manipulation.
Rhogar was most likely fucked, wasn't he? The thought felt wrong even in my own head. It sucked. It really, truly sucked. It was as if some deity, some bored god who couldn't stand my existence, had decided that peace was a luxury I was never meant to have.
Oh, you want to chill after taking down Tsunamis all over the world? Sike, your brother is dying not that I cared that much but Rhogar not being there would kinda make things more annoying and boring. Who could I use as an obstacle between the political bullshit of Westeros as efficiently other than him? I didn't want him to die because it would make lazing around harder, that's all. There were no other reasons.
Time folded in on itself, dragging and warping. I sat unmoving, watching, thoughts spiraling into a mess I couldn't untangle. I hadn't come here for this. I came for the lull of the sea, the quiet dark, not for the grim tableau of death creeping over Rhogar.
"Your majesty, your majesty." The maester's voice was a tremor that snapped me out of my thoughts. I knew he was calling me such because he was scared and hoped that by sucking it up as much as possible, I wouldn't let's say uncomfortable things to him not that I would if he didn't but meh, who was I to stop him?
I shifted my gaze to him, and he stilled, his face caught in what seemed to be that delicate balance between reverence and terror. He looked at me as though I were the most venomous creature to slither from the pages of a story, a being that shouldn't speak the words of men but did, because why not? A giant talking dragon, or worse, a demon wrapped in mortal skin. Maybe that was fair; the Citadel's disdain for magic, real magic, was almost tangible. Or maybe that was fanon nonsense I barely remembered. Either way, it didn't matter.
The maester's hands shook, and he bowed low again, rising only when I did not speak. The air between us was thick, suffocating. "Your majesty," he began, voice strained, "I wish to give you word of your brother's condition."
"Speak plainly, maester," I said, my tone even but laced it seemed with something that made the man's pulse stutter.
The maester's throat bobbed as he swallowed, eyes darting to Rhogar before returning to me. "Ser Rhogar's injuries are grievous," he said, his voice dipping to a whisper, as if the words themselves were a curse. "The loss of his leg has left him weakened beyond measure. I did what I could—bound the wound with linens, staunched the bleeding with hot irons. But such methods, crude as they are, may not be enough."
The room seemed to grow colder, silence pressing down like a stone weight. My gaze did not waver, did not leave the man who now looked as though the world might swallow him whole.
"The stump is raw, angry with infection. The flesh around it is swollen, hot to the touch, a clear sign that rot seeks to take hold. I've applied poultices of honey and herbs to stave it off, but the sea water that touched it was foul, full of impurities and filth." The maester's voice cracked, and he hesitated, his breath shallow. "It is likely that if I do not curb the spread, the fever will consume him, inch by inch."
"Continue," I said, the command cutting through the air like a blade.
The maester drew a shaky breath. "His breath is labored," he said, casting his eyes to his gnarled, blood-streaked fingers. "There is water in his lungs, drawn in during those harrowing minutes he spent beneath the waves. He coughs and rasps as if each breath is a battle he wages, and it is a battle he is losing. I fear his strength wanes as his body succumbs to the damp within. If the wheezing does not ease, if it deepens—" He faltered, the final words sticking like thorns. "It could herald the end."
He licked his lips, pressing on as though silence would be worse. "He has lost much blood, your majesty, more than a man can bear and yet survive. His pulse is weak, thready, struggling like a flame in the wind. The pallor of his skin speaks of this—the stark white of bone, the hollowness beneath his eyes." A shiver passed through him, like the ghost of death tracing a finger down his spine. "And then there is the matter of his mind. I cannot say for sure but It is likely he has suffered damage within, from the time spent gasping for breath that never came."
My fingers, pale and long, curled into fists so tight I felt the pull of muscle, the tension that would have been pain in another life. But here, now, it was just a reminder that I was still present, listening, holding back something I refused to name. The room was silent again, but not peacefully so. The fire crackled, indifferent, and the waves far below the stone walls crashed like a heartbeat in the night.
"Tell me, maester," I said at last, my voice low and as steady as the distant drum of the sea. "What hope remains?"
The maester's head bowed, his eyes fixed on the floor as though it offered some comfort. "Hope, your majesty, is thin. I would not lie to you. The fever may take him within days, if not the infection or the water in his lungs. His body is frail, his spirit dimmed by the wounds of flesh and mind alike. Should he live beyond this week, it will be nothing short of a miracle, and even then, he may wake as a shadow of the man you knew."
I turned fully, locking my gaze onto him, and he fought the urge to step back. The fear in his eyes was raw, exposed like a nerve. "Then make miracles happen, maester. I do not care for the odds or the whispers of death. If there is breath left in him, you will find a way."
He inclined his head, the gesture half-bow, half-nod, a submission made not to honor but to the weight of duty, heavier than any chain. "Yes, your majesty. I shall do all I can."
As the maester backed out of the room, each step deliberate and careful as though he feared provoking a beast, I felt the silence fold around me like a suffocating shroud. The air reeked of blood and the sharp tang of burning herbs, a scent that clung to the skin and lingered at the back of the throat. The firelight cast trembling shadows on the walls, and in its flickering dance, Rhogar's form on the bed seemed even smaller, even more fragile.
I looked at him, really looked, taking in the angles of a face that had once held mirth in its eyes, a face that had turned toward me with warmth more times than I cared to count. Now it was hollow, eyes closed, breaths coming in shudders that sounded too much like the ragged edge of defeat.
'He was done, wasn't he?'
The thought slid in, cold and unfeeling. It was easier that way, to treat this as another game, another plot twist in a story that had gone horribly off-script. Rhogar, a character, a piece on the board who just happened to share blood with me. A story woven of ink and words, not flesh and bone yet something twisted in my chest, stubborn and inconvenient as I looked at him, my brother who now lay with one foot in the grave.
The fire hissed as a log cracked, a burst of embers shooting into the air like dying stars. The sound drew my gaze away, but only for a moment. I let my eyes close, felt the tension in my jaw, the throb at my temples. I'd come here to find peace, to hide away from the stupidity and tragedy that seemed to coil around every corner of this world. And yet, here I was, shackled by worries I hadn't chosen and couldn't name.
None of this would have happened if I hadn't saved Lucerys, none of this would have happened if I had let canon left his course, if I hadn't decided to care when I shouldn't have for someone who even in this world originating from ink wasn't even my blood.
The tsunamis, they probably happened because of the meteors. Indirectly, I had been the one who crippled Rhogar. This was my doing.
"Fuck," I muttered, the word a low, bitter note that hung in the room long after I'd said it.
So it's been a while since I posted this story. I'm trying to get back in the grove of writing so I decided why not write another chapter for this story. Monterys is really really beginning to regret his fuck up. Shame that it meant Rhogar going through it. I guess it could be said that this chapter marks the end of the prologue. Anyway, tell me what you think, what you liked or didn't like in this chapter. Interactions are one of my primordial motivators to write a story
PS: I got a p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / Eileen715 with two more chapters for this story. With less than 5 dollars, you have access to everything I write in a month. Don't hesitate to visit if you want to read more or support me or for any other reason